Individual Level:
1. Not maintaining “guns and eyeballs”. Thinking that to talk to someone to the rear or side means having to look at them. “Guns and eyeballs” means keeping focused on possible enemy avenues of approach while conversing.
2. Focusing inward immediately after clearing a room or building. Thinking that you are safe by simply shutting the doors and windows and leaning with your back on the wall. Squad leaders must keep their Marines on their toes at all times. The focus must be outward with observation outside the building.
3. Silhouetting themselves in doors, windows, or around corners. Tending to stick weapons out of windows or, after clearing a building, walking around exposed in front of windows. Marines must set up proper observation and/or firing positions. They can get one or two rooms back and still observe out a window and at the same time be harder to detect. Marines must stay low to the ground when moving around inside a building.
4. Not keeping track of ammunition consumption. Many times Marines have no idea how many rounds they have left. They enter a room only to realize that they are empty. They must keep track. It is difficult in this environment, however there are brief periods in action that must be capitalized on by reloading and redistributing.
5. Not using their sights during close range engagements. When the fight in close quarters battle becomes fast and furious, Marines tend to use pointing quick fire techniques to engage the enemy within rooms. When this was done during live fire experimentation, the Marines that took the extra second to use their sights attained more killing shots then the Marines who used the pointing quick fire or instinctive shooting techniques.
6. Too much noise. Squad leaders had a hard time controlling their Marines noise level once inside a building. While it is true that once shooting begins, the enemy will know the general location of the fighting, Marines that used hand and arm signals in buildings and reduced their noise level had far fewer casualties. Moving slowly and cautiously while covering each other by fire in the building is more effective. Remember, “slow is smooth - smooth is fast”.
7. Casualty aid procedures. Falling into the trap of not giving buddy aid during training exercises. Knowing that there are not “true” casualties and disregarding the “wounded” or “injured”. To keep the skills for individual and buddy aid Marines must be forced to do these procedures. This is a must to survive in combat.
8. Not clearing overheads, corners, or behind furniture. Marines tend to forget that meticulous clearance is absolutely necessary to fight and win in the urban environment. The one time that they forget to check under that staircase is the time that they will die. This is one of the largest problems that marines have when clearing buildings. Squad leaders must train them thoroughly in detailed clearance.
Squad Level:
1. What size to move across a danger area? Although the size of the group to move across a danger area is situational dependent, many squads and platoons tried to rush a squad at once or sometimes a platoon across. This usually results in one or two Marines making entry into a building while the rest are left out in the open and easily destroyed by enemy machine gun fire. When rushing individuals across, the enemy would miss the first one or two and then pick off the rest. Also, the enemy would kill Marines at the entry point from within the building and there by negating any support for the entry. This is the primary reason for using a fire team as a general rule. The fire team is small enough to make it across a danger area quickly and yet large enough to place a large volume of firepower upon entry.
2. Casualty evacuation. Squad leaders quickly lost track of casualties and failed to signal supporting forces to evacuate casualties. Once a building is taken, squad leaders should reorganize, locate casualties and evacuate if necessary. They also routinely failed to signal or radio that they had casualties or where the casualty collection point was located within the building. This should be the senior fire team leaders additional duty thereby relieving the squad leader of some of the pressure.
3. Failure to mark the forward line of troops (FLOT). When moving through a building, squad leaders should ensure that their Marines are marking the FLOT using some type of marking system out on the flanks of the building that supporting forces understand and can see (i.e. chem lights or engineer tape). This lets the supporting forces know to shift fire two rooms ahead. If this is not done fratricide will occur. Marines routinely forgot to do this and cases of fratricide were frequent.
4. Failure to mark the entry point. Entry points must be marked to let follow on forces know where it is safe to enter and what the route of movement is. Additionally, these marks can convey to follow on forces if the building is cleared or not, if medevac is needed, or if engineer support is needed.
5. Channelization. When attacking, squad leaders forgot to plan for breaching barbed wire using hasty methods. This resulted in the squad becoming channeled into enemy killing zones. This is part of the visual reconnaissance that should be taking place prior to movement across an open area to the squads next objective.
6. Failure to do proper visual reconnaissance. Squad leaders must conduct a proper visual reconnaissance prior to moving to the next building objective. They must decide where their entry point will be and what equipment will aid them in breaching the building.
7. Forgetting to bring assault equipment forward. Squads are instructed to assault the building and leave the assault equipment (i.e. ladders) for follow on forces to bring up. Many times the follow on squads forgot to bring the equipment up for use in assaulting the next building.
8. Failure to mark which rooms have been cleared. Some system must be in place to establish cleared routes through the building. Otherwise infiltration will occur.
9. Squad leaders not spreading Marines out inside a building. Once a building or a section of the building has been cleared, squad leaders must reposition Marines to cover 360 degree security. Counterattack is always likely. A common habit is for Marines, especially headquarters elements to bunch together in a room.
10. Teams and squads not carrying night vision devices (NVGs) at night or forgetting flashlights. Marines must remember to bring NVGs and flashlights with extra batteries into buildings and subterranean areas.
11. Forgetting about the massive firepower of machine guns. Marines rushed acrossed open area and forgot to use their machine guns to place large volumes of suppressive fire to cover their movement.
12. Squad and team leaders forgetting to brief EVERYONE in their squad where the entry point of the building was located. If everyone does not know exactly where the entry point is located an entire squad can be killed because of the one Marine left “out of the plan”.
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