James was the first one out of his vehicle to return fire from the rear of the vehicle. He moved away from that position because the person in the back seat was taking that position with his fully auto weapon.
He then ran to secondary cover, popping smoke and continued covering his team. The enemy was gone after the initial contact that had ended almost immediately after it started. It was a hit and run. They were simply attempting to suppress fire of an ambush that none of them saw.
Why didn’t they see it? Because “Johnno” the team leader was not watching his AO but instead was having “Camel” back up the rearward BMW with his door open because he dropped his “MCI” (cell phone) out the window. You can hear him say this and the door bell dinging. (MCI had the cell contract)
They never should have been stopped there. That was not James decision. Johnno should not have been dicking around ignoring his area of responsibility. James freely admits that he made a mistake when he tried to accelerate the vehicle thinking it was disabled, when in fact it was in neutral. He made a mistake in the heat of battle and moved to return fire.
The fact is if he had accelerated, he wound have left the other vehicles (the rest of his team) behind. All three KIAs were already mortally wounded. The hard-sided Mercedes was disabled and the driver of the rear BMW was dead. The insurgences were already leaving.
The fact is, that all three men were that were killed, were mortally wounded in the initial contact . In the video you see some fire later. This is the passenger of James vehicle squeezing off rounds as he dies. Johnno shrieks “stop firing!” Because he knows the insurgents have left and it is his own team member firing.
James then immediately moves to cover Johnno as Johnno renders aid to mortally wounded Jay Hunt.
They were operating in two soft sided vehicles and one hard sided vehicle. They were on what was termed “the most dangerous road in the world” at the time. The men killed were in the soft sided vehicles. This was not James decision. They were stopped for an extended time against SOP under Johnno’s orders, not James.
James freely admitted mistakes were made that day. I have yet to see one of his critics post a video of themselves under fire, in an ambush. The decisions that got people killed that day we’re not made by James they were made by Johnno and others above him.