No ‘surrender’ — What really happened between US and British Marines at a training exercise
Don't believe the hype.
By Andrew Milburn | Updated Nov 9, 2021 3:52 PM
Voices Marine Corps
“Royal Marines force US troops to surrender just days into training exercise.” The headline appeared last week in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. The article beneath had an almost breathless tone to it, unusual for a paper that is considered a serious broadsheet. A Royal Marines Commando (battalion) had “eliminated almost the entire (US) unit,” “dominating them” and forcing them to “ask for a re-set half-way into the exercise.” So thorough was this drubbing, apparently, that the Commando’s “killboard” was chock full of destroyed U.S. equipment.
The truth might be considered less newsworthy for those who prefer to see the U.S. and U.K. militaries as peer competitors rather than allies – but is quite impressive all the same. The exercise which the Telegraph mistakenly calls “Green Dagger” was the Marine Corps’ biannual Marine Air Ground Task Force Warfighting Exercise, or MWX for short. During these events, battalions, regiments and sometimes entire divisions face off against one another in a free-playing force on force exercise that replicates the conditions of warfare against a peer nation. In this particular exercise, the 7th Marine Regiment, playing on home turf, was the adversary force, pitted against the Hawaii-based 3rd Marine Regiment who were the attacking force. The British 40 Commando was a subordinate unit under the 7th Marines, alongside a Marine Special Operations Company and a Marine infantry battalion (2/5). Opposing them under the 3rd Marines were two battalions of Marine infantry along with various supporting units. There was no part of the exercise in which 40 Commando was pitted alone against a U.S. Marine unit and would have thus had the opportunity to “dominate” them. At no time did a unit surrender during the exercise, nor was any unit almost completely eliminated by 40 Commando. The exercise does not involve an objective means of scoring, although casualties are recorded and dispatched to a “Zombie FOB” until resurrected, and the use of killboards is a subjective, usually inaccurate, means by which units attempt to track the destruction of enemy assets. The exercise was halted for a period of several hours while all participating units searched for a truck platoon that had gone missing – but there was no “re-set” to allow any units to recover. In short, among several statements made in the opening four paragraphs of the Telegraph article, none was accurate. I know this because – as they say – I was there.
https://taskandpurpose.com/voices/us-marines-didnt-surrender-british-training-exercise/
