Operation Euphoric Diabetes

Howser showed great initiative and independence in moving alone through occupied territory in order to save PFC Leroy after he had become detached from the main element following enemy artillery. And frankly he deserves a shiny button for carrying my cardiac arrested ass for 23 minutes under heavy fire.

Acting in both an ground capacity as a marksman, and in an air support role, LCpl Zaytsev provided vital air-to-air and air-to-ground support during this mission, earning a confirmed air-to-air kill in the process. His hard work in both spotting targets, and executing attack runs at the FAC-A's direction, were invaluable to the squad's success in eliminating the Chelt spotters.

Provided key fire support and obscuring smoke during several assaults. Avalanche was responsible for destroying several enemy strong points at a distance which threatened the squads security and chance to stay on mission.

Excellent work all night, suppressing constantly, providing fire arcs, good call outs to the rest of the squad, and taking charge of the situation while the boss was down and/or playing radios with the air force. His work inside and outside of the rock to keep the squad secure was exemplary.

Morse, with a limited support group of NCOs, ran a successful op, for a time being the co-ordinator of air/ground forces as well as running the ground element. She did so with aggression and maintained momentum when necessary. Despite at times being injured, Morse maintained squad leadership and the mission preceded to plan.

Morse found herself unexpectedly in command for the operation and did very well in the face of adversity. Of particular note, Morse utilised the available resources and delegated well where possible to avoid overload. Additionally, Morse was able to respond and adapt well when an approach did not meet with success and adjusted tactics and methodology to achieve a different result (Specifically, it was cool seeing Edain adapt from avoiding resupply until we really needed it to resupplying early).

Hi Mom

Me again. Not that it’d be anyone else, but anyway. Had a bit of a crazy day today as the squad got tasked away from SAR to complete another assignment from Command. That doesn’t sound too bad, I hear you say, but the tricky bit was both Captain Pointer and Sarge Grym were busy elsewhere, so the Colonel tasked me with it instead. So, you know, no pressure or anything. The mission was simple though, in theory. Command had reason to believe that the Chelt had spotters on the mainland that were observing the air traffic in and out of Maxwell Field, and reporting back to their leadership on what we were doing. Our job was to go find them to permanently discourage this behaviour.

The Colonel gave us three LZs in a triangle, within which were the observation points and some sort of command and communications centre. I misunderstood the brief slightly, and thought we had to visit each one and clear the immediate surroundings rather than sweep and clear the entire area in the triangle, but that got cleared up quickly enough as you’ll see below. Not the greatest start to mission command, but if anyone noticed they were kind enough not to say.

At the start Leroy was flying one Huey with most of us in, but he didn’t have a map, so I got to sit up front with him (I later found out that in fact, no one else had a map, and they were all relying on me, which was not great for the old heart rate). The other huey, initially acting as a gunship, was flown by Zaytsev, he’s our marksman, but does have a habit of wandering off on his own and needing to be rescued. Fortunately though, given the map situation,the first LZ was almost due north of Maxwell field, and once the gunship had done a few passes over it to discourage any locals we landed. It seemed quiet at first, but then we heard some voices in the foliage and as I stuck my head up to investigate a grenade flew over the rock I was behind. Don’t worry though Mom, I’m fine, we have very good medics and after the briefest of pauses I was back on my feet.

We then proceeded to storm up a hill, clear it of Chelt, then turn about 90 degrees right and storm up another hill. There’s lots of uphill here in the jungle, but not very much down. At the top of the second hill was one of the observation points we were looking for, but no comms equipment, so we had to keep looking. This is where my misunderstanding earlier changed things. If we’d continued along the ridgeline to the south east we’d’ve found another observation point, but I thought we were done in this area and needed to head to another LZ. We were under attack from another ridge line though, so we had to do a fighting retreat back to the helios, during which I told Torrent we were headed north west when we were actually going north east, which could have been a critical error if it hadn’t been for the fact the helicopters were to the west, and the north part had been cut out by the radio as well. We all met up again though, and made it to the extract to fly south along the coast to the next LZ.

The second LZ was, you’ve guessed it, at the bottom of a big hill. Well, technically at the bottom of a big ridge, with two smaller spurs coming down either side of us. So everywhere is up apart from south, which is sea. So up we went again.

The next while is all a bit of a blur I’m afraid. We were hit by hostile fire almost immediately, but we still had the gunship in the air who were able to ease things up for a bit, even taking down a hostile biplane, giving Zaytsev his first confirmed air to air kill. My main memory is running up the hill, with smoke going off to all sides, and the sound of Torrent’s machine gun just carving us a path. The Chelt had machine guns too though, and artillery, so the medics were kept very busy patching us up and keeping us going. Myself and a couple of others made it up to some rocks below the ridgeline, and tried to hold them until the rest could catch up, but the resistance was strong and we had to pull back downhill and call in a resupply.

Sounds easy doesn’t it Mom? Only we couldn’t see the parachute on the crater because of the tree cover, and we were under near constant attack from above and the eastern flank. Then, to top it all off, the supply plane crashed on its way out and nose dived into the jungle about 20 metres from where I was sheltering under a rock. Fortunately, we had managed to get some more air cover by this point, and Captain Scatter was able to locate our supplies and guide us to them, while he sorted some air attack runs on the hillside above us.

With air clearing the ridge we assaulted uphill again and made it to the top, at the western end of the east-west ridge. Air were doing repeated runs on the eastern end so we moved north west to a small hill with a Chelt camp and cleared that, then back south east to a second highpoint along the ridge. While checking a large rock to ensure it didn’t have any caves, we found that there were surviving Chelt hiding in some bamboo and reeds, only they didn’t start shooting until we were amongst them, so that got messy, but Uncle Sam prevailed. There was still hostile activity at the hilltop to the east that the airforce had been working, so we moved that way to support them, clearing a small mountaintop fishing community as we did so.

We didn’t find much activity in the hilltop itself when we got there, the air had dealt with most of that, but it quickly became apparent that a large rock on the southern side of the hill had tunnels dug through and beneath it, so we had to go in. I tell you Mom, I get shivers even thinking about having to storm those damn rocks. I’d hoped to spare you some of the worst of what we see here, but I cannot, in good faith, describe clearing these caves and tunnels as anything other than bloodbaths. I want to tell you that I somehow managed to change that, to make it okay this time, but I’m afraid I failed in that. We almost lost Leroy. It was bad Mom, I didn’t think he’d make it, but somehow did, and is expected to rejoin us soon. There were just Chelt everywhere, everytime we tried to breach, or pulled back and tried to medic they attacked.

We had to call the gunship down so we had more people on the ground, and even Captain Scatter joined us from somewhere for the final push. Thankfully, this one was short. We must have already cleared out most of them, but I did commit the cardinal sin of pushing in while still being treated. It was just a scratch, and we needed to keep the momentum. I made sure to bandage myself as soon as the entry was secured, but I still feel bad for it. The tunnels were, thankfully, not very extensive, and we quickly found and destroyed the comms centre there, completing the mission.

I tell you Mom, I’ve eaten since we got back, and showered, but I’m just so exhausted. Trying to keep track of everything on the ground, make and communicate plans to the squad, and then also coordinate with air to make sure we didn’t end up in any place they were bombing, it was just, a lot. There’s beers again tonight, and I’ll probably have a couple, but I think I’ll be asleep on my feet before I have the chance to enjoy more than that. A win is a win though, and morale seems to be high, so I guess I can’t have done too bad.

Love you

Morse