Scout Platoon OIF VII.avi

This video is dedicated to the Soldiers of the Scout Platoon in 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment. They carried the burden for the 3rd Heavy Combat Brigade throughout OIF VII, October 2009 through October 2010. In being assigned as the escort platoon for the Babil Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), the platoon conducted combat patrols daily (often 2 a day) continuously for 10 months. Their escort missions carried them to over 120 different locations, covering over 15,000 miles (mostly driven, some walked), resulting in roughly 2000 hours 'outside the wire'.

Typical missions included delivering humanitarian aid, school openings, provincial level governmental leader meetings, and water treatment plant inspections to name just a few. On the rare day without a PRT escort, the platoon was retasked to another mission in support of the Brigade. Without a doubt, no Soldier worked harder than a 2-69 Scout.

However, throughout it all the Scouts made the best of it. As these pictures and videos show the Soldiers and NCOs kept their sense of humor. The US Army has 7 "Army Values" - Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Through the year long deployment the showed every one of these values day in and day out. But as you can see they showed one more- Cheerfulness. The British Marine Corp instills cheerfulness in their elite troops as a necessary value during combat. The Scouts certainly stayed cheerful during some of the hardest days- rollovers, vehicle breakdowns, and rocket attacks.

Finally and most importantly, this video is in memory of 2 great Americans: Specialist Anthony Magee, member of Able Company, 2-69 Armor, killed in a rocket attack in April 2010.
Specialist Michael Snellgrove, medic for the Mortar Platoon, 2-69 Armor, died while on R&R leave from OIF VII.

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• Scout
• Platoon
• OIF
• VII

[thasa01]

Captain McCarver you did an awesome job leading the scouts before your promotion. A ton of the credit goes to you too.