Operation Gray Scaffold

Whatever the opposite of a commendation is, that's what I'm putting in for. Sgt Tweaker actively made life more difficult for SA RDX who had overall control of the mission, willfully disobeyed her orders and charged into the rock she'd specifically said not to charge into. Did he get his stripes by collecting box tops from cereal packets?

Excellent job identifying the collaborators in their fake medical uniforms, and burning them alive. Also excelltn job keeping the vehicles running and generally being a good egg. For an airman.

A strong and measured example of leadership from SA RDX, despite disjointed and unhelpful counter-orders from SNCOs of the USMC who made her life, and the operation, harder than it needed to be by deciding to try and take over without a clear idea of the mission, or situational awareness of the moment. Despite these repeated attempts to either usurp her command authority, or simply ignore her and spread confusion in the squad, SA RDX displayed commendable focus when having to swap plans on the fly due to the unpredicable, disjointed, and dangerous actions of several of the marines present.

Mom

Sorry, it’s been a while. The mission that interrupted my last letter was to Cu Chi, where we had to go rescue some pilots who were hiding out in some tunnels. Things didn’t go great, and our air cover had to pull back to base as it got too dark for them, leaving us to hold out through the night. I hate to have to tell you, but I got shot a bit, and managed to land an R&R break to recuperate. I had a couple of choices as to where to go, but I remember the stories Uncle Theo had from when he was stationed on Tanoa in ‘44, so I chose there. Trust me Mom, if you get the chance you have to go. It’s stunningly beautiful, the locals are so friendly, and I felt so spiritually cleansed and invigorated.

Anyway, I’m back in the jungles of Chelt now, and back with my squad. First mission back we got to borrow some little navy boats to go snatch a political officer from a small island. They had some fighters with them, and a few armed fishing boats, but the navy’s boats had much bigger guns, and bigger engines. It did get a bit ‘spicy’ as we like to say, but we had an aircraft carrier and some destroyers (or cruisers?) nearby we could call on for fire support if needed. After we hit the beach it was, predictably, an uphill hike to get to his bunker, and then a downhill fight to get back to the boat, but we managed it eventually, then took him up river to Pleiku for the MPs to question.

In reward for that job well done, we then got handed another one.

Apparently Mr Political Officer had some information on some supply caches NE of the city of Hue, so we loaded up into a couple of trucks and headed out to go find them. Well, we tried to anyway, there were two trucks, and as we were loading supplies into the second one the first one drove off without us. As soon as we finished loading we set off to follow them, and drove straight into an ambush that we in no way had enough people to deal with. Fortunately RDX managed to bail out the truck and get behind a tree from where she could call them back, but it really wasn’t a pleasant few minutes. Sadly, my buddy Bagpipe, didn’t make it out of the truck as it got hosed with machine gun fire, and by the time the medics got there there was nothing they could do.

We didn’t have time to dwell on it though, as we loaded up into a pair of M113s and headed north. The lead vehicle had a flame thrower, and the rest of us in the second vehicle had a couple of machine guns. It started out as a reasonable drive. Myself and this airforce puke called Wilbour, who has attached himself to us, were navigating along the main road. We made good progress, then as we were approaching a crossroads our local interpreter (or ‘terp, as we call them), suggested taking a slightly shorter route along a smaller road. Figuring he was local and knew the area we were taking the turn as we got ambushed. Turns out the small village just up the road was swarming with hostile Chelts, just sat there waiting for us. I was a bit upset about the loss of Bagpipe, so I might have been a little less careful than I should have been, but I took out a machine gun operator and some of his buddies. It took some mopping up, but eventually we were abc in the road again, keeping to the main road as initially planned.

Shortly after we drove past FOB Phu Bai, a rock on the right hand side of the road opened fire on us, meaning it was full of tunnels and Chelt. The flame thrower M113 opened up at some of the holes in the rock, while the rest of us formed up to storm it. Or, that’s how it was supposed to go anyway. I know I’ve said before that we aren't good with rocks, but our SAR work has left us rusty and out of practice. People were going in and getting shot, then those who went in to get them out were shot, and things got messy regarding who exactly should have been giving orders. Half of us thought we were pulling back, the new sarge thought we were pushing in... I’m sure you can imagine the mess we made of it. Somehow though, somehow we cleared the rock and managed to pull back to the FOB to regather. We made enough of a hash of it that the Colonel personally showed up to explain things to us in very small words, but at least we made it out.

I think we’ll be on the shit list for a while, but we’ll dig ourselves out.

Give my love to Uncle Theo, and tell him I look forward to swapping stories with him when I get home.

Morse