Home-made S-2

S-2 the hard way... and other failures.

The 1-17's soldiers said their train-up was also marked by an absence of good intelligence on what they would be facing in the Arghandab. In their zeal to give their men some insight into their future area of operations, noncommissioned officers such as Staff Sgt. Matthew T. Sanders, 1st Squad leader in Charlie Company's 1st Platoon, resorted to printing out information on the Arghandab region from the Long War Journal, a respected non-Defense Department Web site, and posting it on bulletin boards.

"We made our own little S-2 because we weren't getting anything from the S-2 [intelligence directorate]," Sanders said.