Operation Oblong Cartoon

Whilst providing CAS, Tweaker successfully suppressed/destroyed motorised enemy forces moving into the AO reducing the effectiveness of the pursuit of EGR as they extracted pilots from the area and limiting the speed at which wthe enemy could react to their movements.

Whilst under increasingly heavy direct fire and with an enemy armed san-pan in the river between him and the shore Morris swam to an exposed rock, recovered a downed pilot after their crew mate had already been extracted, then ensured the pilots safety as they escorted them to land. Through it all Morris was under fire from enemy overlooking the extraction point, across the river and from a rapidly closing squad making for the bank he was trying to get to with the second pilot.

Good eyes, or local knowledge, either way, he spotted the crash site from teh back of the Jolly Green before any of the fixed wing types did.

Whilst under direct fire, the marine located the crew of a downed aircraft, swam to an exposed rock, recovered a downed pilot then ensured the pilots safety as they escorted them to land. Through it all Pyron was under plunging fire from enemy overlooking the extraction point.

When faced with overwhelming Chelt forces during a CSAR mission, Lt Havercruft held his unit together and succesfully broke contact under very difficult circumstances; hugely outnumbered, with numerous casualties, on a reverse slope while under air attack and artillery fire, extracting Endgame Red with no casualties and rescue of both objective pilots.

I think Havercruft will do very well once he beds in.

Not bad for a FNG. Scored a good hit on a hostile sampan with that danger pipe of his too. He can stay.

Calmly dealing with casualties, arranging LZs, artillery, and air support, all while also wrangling a squad of blue team reprobates, without Cpl Morse we wouldn't have made it out alive.

Hey Mom

We’ve moved again, although this time back into what you might call civilisation. We’re at Khe San air base, and while I wouldn’t describe the area as being in the plains, it’s at least a bit flatter than Da Nong. The scenery isn’t as nice though. I quite like hills, so long as I don’t have to climb them. With the move we’re also back on S&R work, which is definitely better than slogging through the jungle. We’ve a new LT, and a new Sarge, so it’ll be interesting to see how they approach things, feels very much like the start of a new phase for the squad.

Our first shout today was for a skyraider that had crashed near Lang Voi. Turns out that’s near a couple of big, hostile flak sights, so might be the reason he crashed. We stationed in the vicinity for a while, as air had trouble finding the crash site, and in the end it was our ‘terp Morris who spotted the black smoke out of the back of our helo and we vectored them in as best we could, then put down in a field a little way to the south west and were just setting off when I saw that one of our airsupport was on fire and going down due north, so we went that way instead. After a bit of coordinating with Mr Scatter Sir our exfil helo went for our pilot to the north, and we turned east to go for the original crash site and the parajumper that had gone to find him. Obviously, at this point, we found a village with some hostiles in it, but not too many, so they didn’t delay us long.

There was a bit of confusion about which smoking hillside was the crash site, and which was the flak site that air was dropping bombs on, but we sorted it out before it got deadly, and met up with Mr Kent, but not yet the downed pilot. We also got confirmation that our Jolly Green had gone north to pick up our downed pilot and that he was safe and on the way back to base. When we finally got to the top of the hill with the crash site we took contact from hostile forces to the north and turned to counter them while Kent looked for the pilot. We ended up going a bit further north than planned, then started taking fire from the flak site, but thankfully by this time we had a location on the pilot and so turned south to go meet up with them.

It wasn’t a comfortable run out, and we got chased by ground forces as we made out way south, not helped by the fact that there was some confusion as to where the Jolly Green was going to land to pick us up. I thought it was headed for where it dropped us off, but it landed closer than that as we were getting bounced by hostile vehicles and it all got a bit messy and confused. Most of the squad made it to the helo, but it started being close assaulted, so it took off while I was with the last two of the ground team. The LT decided to play hero and jumped out as well, which I’ve yelled at him for, and we thought the helo was going down so got on the radio frantically. Thankfully though it wasn’t as badly damaged as we thought and it was able to land a little distance away to pick us up.

We didn’t have long back at base though, as another plane, this time we were headed north east to the town of Hinlap, where two pilots had gone down. Turns out their chutes had landed on a rock in the middle of the river, and a large force of Chelt with armoured vehicles and mobile SAM launches was on the way. Both of these things complicated matters somewhat. On the other hand though, the Jolly Green dropped us near the top of a hill and we then went DOWN. I know, I was as shocked as I’m sure you are now.

Air started hitting the vehicles to the north as we advanced, but sadly our skyraider was taken out and crashed. Our pilot managed to crash it on the river bank near where we were headed to though, so now our number to rescue was 3. We could see the plume of smoke from his crash site though, so we headed towards that. We were nearly there, just cresting a small rise before the last downhill section, when we saw Mr Scatter Sir’s plane on fire and flying into a hillside, but moments later we saw his parachute in the air and ended up sending Sandy to go for a swim to meet up with him, while we focused on the two on the rock.

When we got to the water’s edge, Yellow team went to go grab the pilots from the rock, while the rest of us stayed on the river bank to cover them where we could, and to keep hidden by the reeds so the forces on the hills to the north couldn’t see us. At some point to small boats appeared from the south west, with our FNG Blunderbuss taking one out with a rocket, and possibly the second too, I’m not sure. The LT asked for some artillery, but the firebase wouldn’t fire without higher authorisation so we ended up repelling a wave of hostiles ourselves as yellow continued trying to get the pilots down.

Mr Scatter Sir then got me to call in Tac-Air, which is very much his job, but since his radio had burnt up with his plane there wasn’t much choice. We got one plane, but due to the surface to air threat he just did one run along the target road and dropped everything he had. I’m sure it looked very impressive, but we were being mortarted at the time, so I didn’t get a chance to look. It sounded very impressive though, as I was giving CPR to someone behind a rock. We did then workout how to get authority for artillery, so called some of that in too as we headed south along the river. Watching the first artillery barrage was nice to see, but we were too far away to confirm that the SAMs were all taken out so the Jolly Green didn’t want to lift to pick us up. I can see their thinking, but if we’d gone up the hill to meet them then we’d’ve been seen by every Chelt between here and Gloucester.


We managed to convince them to stay low and head south though, and, after initially landing on the wrong river bank, we did manage to meet up with them and got everyone loaded up for the trip back home. Not before I had to call in more artillery, but sadly this time I think we must have move too far down the river because I couldn’t see where it fell, I could hear it though. As I’d had to stop to watch for it I was now what we call Last Man, although only briefly as I found Yellow Squad and bounded past them as they formed a hard point. From then on it was a case of making sure we got everyone to the helo, dodging the last few tricks the Chelt tried to throw at us, and at one point, calling the helo back across the river from the opposite bank where it had landed in error.

All in all a pretty successful day, and the squad seems to be in reasonable spirits once more.

Love you Mom

Morse