"Streetfighting": The Rifle Platoon in MOUT

Infantry Magazine, Sept-Dec, 2000 by Captain John W. Karagosian

Some shooters should stay oriented on the building until it is completely secured. While many platoons have standing operating procedures (SOPs) that require them to mark every window and door, this never happens in reality. In the heat of battle, room-clearing teams have other things to do. Cleared floors and buildings must be marked, but we should not have an unrealistic expectation of what our clearing team will accomplish.

Moving in MOUT. Many units have proved adept at clearing rooms using the stack technique. Correctly employed, stacks allow us to dominate a room with overwhelming firepower in a short time. While room-clearing techniques are outside the scope of this article, one by-product of this one is that leaders like to stack outside on the friendly side of the building so they will have better control of their soldiers. The reasoning seems to be that reduced dispersion is all right, because all distances are compressed in urban operations, but there is a fine line between stacking and bunching up. It is not uncommon at the JRTC to see five to ten soldiers stacked behind every friendly held building when perfectly good cover and concealment are available on the other side of the very wall they're leaning against. This makes soldiers extremely vulnerable to snipers and to airbursts from 82mm mortar fires. Platoon and company command posts, reserve squads, and casualty collection points are some of the biggest offenders. Good forward observers are aware of this trend and will act accordingly. Because buildings offer cover and concealment from enemy fire and observation, they are the best avenue of approach through a city. Stacking outside buildings and moving around exterior walls offer speed, but we put soldiers at risk when we think of buildings only as obstacles to our movement. Remember: If you're doing nothing, don't do it outside.

One technique that can greatly affect our ability to defeat the enemy in MOUT is to enter on the second floor, or fight from the top down. One of the best examples of this was on 20 September 1944, in Nijmegen, Holland. The 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, fighting to seize the southern edge of a critical bridge across the Waal River, was faced with dug-in, resolute SS troops, determined to contest every room and building in the Hutier Park area and bridge approaches. Many of the multi-story buildings were adjoining, paralleling the streets leading to the bridge. As a result, the paratroopers were able to fight along the rooftops, entering through the uppermost floors and fighting downward to clear the buildings methodically in succession.

North Vietnamese Army (NVA) defenders in Hue, South Vietnam, used different techniques when the 5th Marine Regiment fought to take back the city in February 1968. In the Citadel, an ancient enclosed fortification, the NVA sought to inflict maximum U.S. casualties but realized that they would eventually be forced to withdraw. The 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, attacked to the south, crossing a series of residential streets running east-west, which were labeled, Phase Lines Green, Brown, and so on. The NVA established primary and alternate defensive lines on the south side of these streets.