I spent some time in their neighborhood. This was one of the "rules" we followed in the field, because this lesson was learned the hard way before my time.

It's kind of amazing to me that the people who actually have lived in these environments for their entire lives don't know better. They know this is how they fight; maybe they got used to fighting us?

I'll tell you this- if that was an American soldier looking down that scope at a pile of sleeping Taliban, he would probably not have been allowed to open fire because we let pussies in Washington decide how to fight a war against hardened guerillas halfway across the planet.

I recently watched an old Russian movie of a battle with Germans. The movie is more or less a docudrama and there's been a huge memorial erected at the site of the battle. In the end, out of a battalion only six survivors are left. The battalion wiped out about 14 German tanks and repelled all the foot soldiers or killed them.

The Russians had dug fake trenches and set up wooden artillery and then entrenched behind that line with real trenches and real artillery.

The results of the first engagement were quite predictable as the Germans shelled out the fake trenches and then moved forward over that line and encountered the real deal. Four tanks were taken out before they retreated and resumed shelling on the actual trenches and artillery.

My only critique of the Soviet forces is that rather than trying to hold their position for the second onslaught they should have prepared a third line of trenches to retreat to.

Anyway, the Germans blasted their trenches killing a great many of them and then moved forward. No Soviet reinforcements were to be had. The Soviet forces had tied grenades together and when the tanks went over the trenches the Soviets would use those grenades to break the tracks then firebomb the tank crews.

By the end of the engagement all tanks had been destroyed and any German survivors on foot had run back to the main battle group which comprised many more tanks.

The German commander not knowing there were only six men left of the Soviet forces from afar could only look over the scene to see the German tanks ablaze and disabled with his troops scattered all over the fields. He pulled back and went looking for another way past the Soviet lines.

The reason the area was key was that behind the Soviets lay a highway the Germans needed to use. By blocking access to the highway they succeeded in slowing the advance of the German forces enough to allow Soviet forces to get into position. Had the German commander realized how effective the first three engagements had actually been he could have just had the rest of his tanks surge forward and onto the highway.

As far as Russian movies go, this one is very good.