Operation Spoiling Ghost

A+ cat herding

A+ cat herding

PFC showed great leadership potential when the squad was out of contact with Staff and Sarge. His map reading skills and initiative meant the squad moved out of potentially hazardus area back into contact with the SNCOs. E4 material right there.

Evening Mom

Hopefully a shorter one this time! We just got back from a trip to Monkey Mountain, which is the comms station we talk to if we need to call in air support. It was really cool to see their equipment, and I’m having some definite radio envy, but sadly we didn’t have time to have a proper look round. That’s because our mission was, in military parlance, to ‘Red Team’ the base, meaning we pretended to be North Chelt forces and tried to attack and seize it. The defenders put up a hell of a fight, but we made it! Not sure they really wanted us to hang around much after that, but maybe if we leave it a bit for egos to soothe I can get a proper tour at some point.

We had to turn in our usual gear and uniforms for North Chelt ones, but we got to keep our usual helmets and such, I assume so that the defenders knew we weren’t actually hostile and wouldn’t switch back to live ammunition. Then, starting at the village of Ban Hoang, we set off to the east (our target itself was more north east) but there’s hills, rivers, and indeed a small city in the way. Incidentally, the route north and then east looked like it would be clear of more of those obstacles, but east and then north got us cover of the banks of a decent sized river, so we went that way.

Things started well, and upon being bounced by an armoured car we took it out quickly, and also the machine gun jeep that arrived as QRF (Quick Reaction Force). A spotter helo was then heard overhead, who dropped a smoke grenade on our position then crashed, giving us time to keep moving east and away from where the defenders last had contact with us. At some point in this move the squad got split, but by a mix of Gucci’s map reading, and triangulating radio signals, we all rallied back up and pushed on.

By this point we were also under fire again, so be ‘rallied back up’ I mean take out more defenders, pick up our own wounded, cross the river again to get our wounded from that side, and about a hundred other things as well.

Pushing up the river bank we used the reeds for cover and the slope to hide ourselves, and made it much further than I thought we would before we hit emplaced machine gun positions on the western bank. We engaged briefly, then decided to disengage to the east, into more machine guns. Not our finest move, but we muddled through, taking out the emplaced defenders and getting our wounded up as the QRF team appeared round the rock we were using for shelter. Sgt Mattock got us moving in plenty of time though, and we pulled back a little way down the river before crossing to clear the initial overwatch positions that had opened up on us.

Turns out those on the western bank, that we were now attacking, was the outskirts of Da Nang, and those we’d just manoeuvred away from was the garrison of Da Nang Base. Sadly, the river hadn’t provided as much cover as we’d hoped, but in operational terms we were sure giving them all a test of their observation and operational skills!

The fight through Da Nang was hard. We pushed into the southern part near the river and I moved to the western end of the unit to cover that way, then we came under fire from the east so I moved that way to support, then we moved north west and I was back to where I started. This is sometimes the way of war though, and things never work out as planned. My fireteam were ordered to push up while the others covered us, and we made it across an open area to take cover against a wall surrounding a compound. There was a gap in the wall by us, and Beltfed took out a few hostiles while I provided security, but then the rest of the squad breached further east and we had to move again. By the time we got into the compound from this new breach the fighting was already intense, with some of our squad already trying to establish overwatch from the large multistorey building within. The counter-attack was brutal, and involved another armoured vehicle, but somehow, and I think only Darkon knows how, we managed to repel it, then pushed on quickly before we got caught again.

Moving east now through the more built up areas of the city we made it across a large open market and through a few more city blocks while taking sporadic fire from the north. Upon reaching the edge of the city we saw the bridge across to the island our target was on and prepared to make our push across. Unsurprisingly there were armoured positions on both sides and while we took out most of the initial defenders from range, they were already remanning the positions as we started to swim, using the bridge supports for shelter.

Capturing a machine gun bunker at the other side of the bridge gave us enough covering fire to all scramble up off the river bank and into cover behind various buildings and such. Our target was now within sight, and the defence was now really hot. Someone called for grenades into the reeds in front of our position, so both I and Bloodbath attempted to oblige, and both of us misjudged how differently a molotov flies through the air and promptly bounced them back onto ourselves. Good job it was only a training exercise!

It felt like it took an age for us to regroup, heal up, and prepare ourselves for the final push, but likely it was only a few minutes. Then, we were off. One last push and we were into the final defence lines and bunkers. The fighting was unbelievably hard, with marines and air force pukes pouring out of the bases’ huts and popping up from areas we thought were clear. It got so chaotic I can’t even begin to describe it, but eventually the squad forged a gap in the lines and I managed to sprint up the last bit of hill to our target building.

Not that I think we actually knew that was our specific target mind, but the officers running the exercise triggered the base siren as I got there and started calling ‘Endex!’ That is the military way of saying ‘End of Exercise’, meaning we’d done it. That’s why I’m not sure if they’ll give me a proper tour any time soon, but I figure if I give it enough time they’ll have forgotten which unit we were, and that they definitely won’t remember it was me on top of that hill!.

It’s definitely time for a few more beers now though, to celebrate the victory.

Morse