Douglas Cubbison - Interview with SSG Cunningham - 10th Mountain Division

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Text originally published in 2007 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2013, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

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10th Mountain Division

Interview with

SSG Cunningham

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

Douglas Cubbison, the Command Historian for the 10th Mountain Division, conducted a series of interviews with the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan during January 2007, along with several additional interviews conducted in February 2007 at Fort Drum, New York. The interviews are fairly wide ranging in the topics covered but all center around one particularly memorable event for the soldier being interviewed, such as an ambush, a patrol, a firefight, a helicopter crash, or a hero ceremony. This transcript is from the interview with Staff Sergeant Cunningham conducted on 24 January 2007. The other interviews conducted by Cubbison can be found at the transcripts for Brigadier General James Terry, First Lieutenant Justin L. Sax, First Lieutenant Jorgensen, Sergeant First Class Connors, Sergeant First Class Eban Duer III, Sergeant First Class Hunsacker, Staff Sergeant John Bickford, Staff Sergeant Anthony Nilon, Sergeant Jemon Calhoun, Specialist Joe Mattie, and Specialist Edward J. Vasquez.

Interview with SSG Cunningham 24 January 2007

DC: Mr. Douglas Cubbison (DC), Command Historian, 10th Mountain Division. Im talking to Staff Sergeant Cunningham (SSC), with Charlie Company, 3-71 Cavalry. And he is the sniper employment officer, and we are going to talk about his experiences on the deployment here. SSG Cunningham, you have a pretty specialized job here in the squadron. How many soldiers work for you?

SSC: I have six guys, six snipers that I came over here with. Our mission changed, so they gave me a bunch of FOs [forward observers], six more of them. All together I have twelve of us. So we went from a sniper team to a sniper/FO team. Thats how many guys I got, sir.

DC: Have you worked much with forward observes yet, or with this type of employment?

SSC: This is the first time I had worked with FOs as a sniper, I had come into combat with snipers, I had worked with FOs in the past, like Air Force guys that call for fire, call for CAS [close air support], I had worked with them in the past in combat, but this was the first time with them as a sniper.

DC: Now did your mission change once you were over here?

SSC: We came over here with the training, we were training as three man sniper teams, it was my senior sniper, my other senior sniper, Hawes, John Hawes and Howard Mercksburg. There was a team leader which was those two, then the sniper, and the spotter. Thats pretty much the way the team worked. It was a big enough team that they could employ the M24 sniper rifle and have proper security. Unlike the standard two man sniper team, we bumped it up to three, that way there was a little more security out there. More 360 security, so we trained like that, my job was to stay in an area like this [a forward operating base], and get the mission from higher, brief the mission to my men, they would make the plan, they brief it back to me, I say yeah or nay, and they go out and do it. As soon as we got into country, we got word from, I dont know where it was from, but we were told that we couldnt work in a three man team, just because we needed more men, so we bumped it up, that is I got those FOs, but before that. Sorry, could I back track a little bit?

DC: You sure can, no problem.

SSC: We came up here, we did our thing at Salerno, we were getting ready to go up here. They sent me with Hawes sniper teams, and a couple of other recon team guys. And we came up here just to link up with the ODA element that is here, and find a place for Charlie Company here on Naray. We did our first mission, which is to walk up that mountain back over there. And that was a smoker, a real big smoker. [the mountain he is referring to is the one with an observation post on it, a several thousand foot climb on the other side of the river].

DC: Thats just a few thousand foot elevation change, isnt it [Im being a bit sarcastic]?

SSC: Yeah. I mean, right now, it really isnt a big deal, because weve been doing it so long. But that first climb, like when those 82nd [Airborne] guys get here, it is going to be a real a smoker for them, I mean were going to just walk up an easy hill like that. So we walked up there for our first mission, which was to overwatch them [the rest of 3-71 Cavalry] going through the valley, it was a big smoker, but it was cool because Hawes has been to combat before, but everybody else hasnt, so it was a good eye opener, OK, this is what were going to be doing, this is what we need to focus on.

DC: So when did you form the team?

SSC: The current team now?

DC: The sniper team back at Drum.

SSC: Man, that was a while ago. I dont really have dates.

DC: You had enough time to work together, and to get used to each other?

SSC: When this unit, the 3-71 first started, there were only a couple of us here [at Fort Drum], Colonel Fenti, the CSM, a couple of other people, me and this other guy, Mercks. We slowly got more and more people, and me and Mercks were [sniper] team leaders. Once I went for BNCOC, I came back, when I left for BNCOC I only had a couple of guys in my recon team, but that was great, we were doing some good training, I came back, they moved me into the sniper employment officer position, because that guy was going to drill sergeant school, so I took over the snipers, I had one guy that was sniper qualified that was Sergeant Hawes, he had been to Iraq as a sniper, my other team leader was Sergeant Marksbury he used to be in the Rangers like me, he has been here a bunch of times. So that was pretty good.

DC: Pretty experienced soldiers?

SSC: Good team leaders. But everybody else was a brand new Private. And we all needed to be sniper qualified, I needed to be sniper qualified too. So we all went down to Camp Blanding [Florida] and we all passed. We were the only unit to go do down there and have everybody pass. Which was good. We had a good train up with SSG Hawes, he did some good training with us, we went down there, all our guys got through, which was awesome. Then we came back, and we started doing our training to come here.

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