173rd Combat Jump

[Spartan]

The 173rd Airborne Brigade had their jump into Iraq certified as a combat jump. Makes you wonder when it takes over a year to call it one.

Linkage.

[Steadfast]

The report on that combat jump was on a clerk's desk and only that item! He had to wait 11 months and 29 days until he got another report before he could release the one on the 173rd or they woulda sent his ass to the front. Smart clerk.

[Slowpoke]

I don't know anything about this jump, but if it's anything like the one in RVN during Operation Junction City, it's bullshit. In RVN, they jumped into a DZ so secure that they were setting up Brigade HHC within an hour. Not a shot was fired in anger. We arrived 90 minutes after the jump and Vietnamese kids were running around the perimeter selling sodas. From what I've read about this jump, Spec Ops troops were waiting for them on the ground.

[proud dad]

Ranger Slowpoke, my brother wrote home about the jump in operation Junction city and he said the samething you did. He also said that there were a lot of troopers that got bumped from the jump by every REMF clerk with any pull or rank, who were helicoptered back to their base soon after the jump and did stay and patrol with the 2nd battalion. He did not take place in the jump as he was in the 4th Battalion and they were air assaulted in on this operation to be the blocking force. I don't think they called it air assault back then though.