Mom
Had a bad day today Mom. A really bad day. One of our worst in country.
We lost four people. Four, and a fifth hurt bad enough that he’s going home. The Captain, all three of the other members of my squad, and our machine gunner.
Pointer
Target
Torrent
Tribeca
Wilbur
I don’t really want to talk about it, and the mood in camo is pretty sombre, but I suspect writing it down will help. Having said that though, I think some of the details of the mission itself are going to end up classified, if they’re not already, so please forgive me if I’m a bit vague at times. Or indeed, don’t be too worried if some of this gets blacked out by the higher-ups before it gets to you.
No helicopter ride this time, but instead we got a few armoured vehicles and set off for the town of Ta Lieng, which is up the main road to LZ Savage. Somewhere in the hills to the north of there we’d heard reports of people doing bad things to cheeses, people we’d encountered before at various times, so we got sent to go flush them out. We didn’t know where exactly they were, but there was a friendly lookout post in the AO, and we got some information from a traveller passing through, so we headed up to confirm the information with the ARVN at the lookout.
Being a lookout it was obviously at the very top of a tall hill, but the paths were good, and as half the squad went the final haul to the summit, I took my squad round the base of a rocky outcrop just below the top so check out other routes up to the camp, and to flank any hostels who might be waiting there. Turns out it's a good thing we did, because our allies were all dead and we were very quickly attacked with artillery and then from the north, where I’d stationed Blue Squad. We took the brunt of the initial infantry assault but we held them off and gave those at the summit time to recover from the strike before they came to join us. It took us a while to get things under control, as they kept sending troops, and various shells, but we finally managed to get effective control of the immediate vicinity and then pushed north to find where they’d been coming from.
First thing we found was trip mines across the path, pushing us out into the wooded areas, slowing our advance. We took contact on the way that we had to clear out, but then found an abandoned camp. Luckily for us, whoever had been there had left behind some of their notes including the order for them to try and draw us north as a distraction from their main bases. Needless to say,we turned south for a bit, then went east to investigate a hilltop that would be a very useful strongpoint to build a base on.
From here on is where I can’t really talk about some stuff, but I’ll just say that things got weird. We got hit with gas shells, and the next thing I remember clearly was after we’d taken the base. It looked like it’d been a hell of a fight, and that’s where we lost Torrent, but everything is fuzzy. If you see Jacques though, can you ask him if the phrase “Mon aéroglisseur est plein d’anguilles“ means anything to him? I can’t explain why, but about the only other thing I remember from that part of the Op was that. We called for a supply drop, and I tried my new method for trying to ensure we don’t have to hike too far into the jungle to find the crates, but a Chelt we must have missed throw a molotov which set the jungle on fire, so we couldn’t wait for the crate and had to run north, then west to keep clear of the flames.
The fire was catching really badly as we pushed west, but thankfully it then began to rain, leaving the hillside we’d been fighting on a scorched mess, which would have been great to get another supply drop into, as it wasn’t green anymore, but sadly we had to keep moving as the LT was worried about being so exposed with other hills in the vicinity. Pushing south we started climbing again, to another hill that ran almost as a ridge east-west, with a rocky outcropping at the far western end. Our suspicions were that there was a hostile outpost on that west end, as with the hill we’d just taken, but without having been able to resupply we were starting to run low on bullets.
We managed to get most of the way up, and could see the bottom of the rocky protrusion before they fired on us. We had momentum on our side though and the push kept moving onwards. AT the top, the end of the ridge had a line of bamboo spikes across the approach front he west, and then the hostile camp was in the area directly on top of the rocks. It wasn’t easy to fight across, and it turns out that at the far western end was a fortified bunker with some serious weaponry stationed there. Myself and our new medic, Benzo (did I tell you that Patches got reassigned? End of an ear there, but she gets to go home and kick some hospital ship into shape and I can’t say I blame her for getting out of the country) ended up storming the bunker and killing the last few hostiles, but sadly it seems those orchestrating the whole affair had escaped. We then got attacked by waves of Chelt Cong as we tried to patch up our wounded and it was those unrelenting waves that did the most damage, Both our medics went down, and I called artillery onto the wrong hillside because I didn’t double check the coordinates. I didn’t do the check because I was trying to stop Benzo from bleeding to death, but I should still have taken the time, it would have been a matter of seconds and could have stopped the assault.
It’s probably a good thing that we exfilled back to camp from there, Mom, cos I was about ready to just storm the next hostile camp I found to prove I’m not a bad marine. I’ve never had all of my squad killed on a mission before, and sometimes I wonder if they deserved a better NCO. They were just kids, new in theatre too, and it was my job to look out for them, and keep them alive. Not sure if I’m going to go get very drunk, or just try and find somewhere quiet and go to sleep.
I hate this country
Morse
PS. apologies for the slightly smeared ink, it’s raining inside my tent