Evening Mom
We’ve been moved again, we’re somewhere up in the Cheltnam highlands, but I’m not sure where. It’s a long way to the sea though, that I know. We’re now at a place called Dak Pek Camp, which has a bunch of different people. There’s us, some Auzzies, some locals, and even some air force pukes! I’ve not seen our air force lot yet, so I don’t know if they’ll be joining us or not, but then they’ve all made camp on the far side of the runway, so who knows.
Today we had to take some supplies to another base, Outpost Planck, that was to our south west. Everything else around here is hostile, and there’s only one road, so we were expecting trouble. The Colonel gave us two gun trucks as escort vehicles, which are nice in terms of firepower, but not very well armoured. Better than the supply truck though. I ended up in the rear truck, babysitting our new LT. He’s got a habit of running off into the middle of things, but we’ve had worse.
As predicted, we met with resistance pretty quickly after we left base. We couldn’t just do what we call a ‘thunder run’ to Planck as the supply truck had issues above 40, so we had to stop and deal with every hostile Chelt we found. The first had a machine gun, and a few of us got shot up, but since we were so close to base a helo came to pick us up to use the bases’ medical station, then took us back to the trucks once we were done. Which was nice of them. The rest of the squad had cleared things up while we were away, so we set off again. I was once again at the back with the LT, but Sarge was up front so I figured we’d do okay.
It was uneventful for a while, but then the lead truck spotted an improvised roadblock, with some mines in front of it, so we had to stop. Obviously, Chelty had set up gunners on either side of the road to ambush us once we slowed down, but we dealt with the initial waves pretty quickly. There was a lot of fog though, which made spotting the ones across the river hard, and while RDX was clearing the mines, another force moved in through the reeds on the other side of the road. I got a couple of them as they were charging towards the trucks, but one got through and managed to get into the supply truck. We gave chase of course, with our gun truck scouting the road ahead, and the other stopping to ask any locals we passed if they’d seen it turn off anywhere. We actually made it most of the way to Planck, but it turns out the others had more luck as it had indeed turned, so we headed back to help them recover it. They had things in hand, and we helped cover RDX as she disabled the mines they’d placed around the truck,then we were off again.
The Sarge wanted a few of us to cross the river and clear some heights overlooking the road, so we headed for a small footbridge and found a bunch of aid workers on the other side. We were about to cross and ask them if they’d seen anything when the trucks got bounced, so we had to turn back. We sent them packing though, then abandoned the plan to cross the river, mounted up, and headed through the village, only to find more hostiles on the other side. Someone let the LT loose with a minigun, which sadly gave our position away to an RPG gunner and things got a little spicy for a while, but we’re Marines and we quickly made it not a problem anymore. We lost that gun truck though, so we got cozy in the other one for a while.
We then drove for a bit, firing across at the opposite bank of the river as Chelt fired back at us, but the only thing that slowed us down was the speed required for the supply truck, and the sodding hills. Still at least we weren’t climbing them on foot. It was also still raining, but once you’re soaked though you can’t really get much wetter, so I didn’t really notice after a while. Thankfully, what the driver did notice, was a satchel charge on the side of the road, so we stopped again. It was just before a bend, so RDX went to deal with them while the rest of us presumed there was something round the bend and went to pre-emptively deal with it. Turns out it was two Chelt machine gun vehicles hiding behind a rock, and some others in spider holes, but Yellow Squad happened to them and we went back to clear out the few who had snuck around to hit the trucks.
I suspect you’re starting to get the idea now. They force us to stop, we engage them, they sneak round, we deal with the sneaky ones, we move on. Rinse and repeat as they say. The only real spicy one after that was by a small bridge. There was something blocking the centre of the span, and as soon as the gun truck slowed down a bunch of Chelt with RPGs started taking shots. Fortunately the river was shallow enough for the truck to get across the stream bed, and as we dismounted to clear the hill side the gun truck crossed as well. A few hostile vehicles came at us from the far side, but they got dealt with as they approached the bridge. I was last man on the initial side, and as I was covering the last of the others a truck came down the road on my side of the river, but while I had to hide behind a tree from it’s machine gunner, my fellow marines blew it up and I ran to join them on the far side.
Oh! I almost forgot. We were also attacked as we entered a village called Dak Brot, before the bridge I mentioned, but it also had a bridge. We thought we’d cleared the contact, but then realised that our machine gunner, Goat, wasn’t with us, so we ran back to find him. Overkill found him first, and as I got to within feet of him he got shot too, so I hit the dirt pronto! I threw a smoke grenade for cover first, then a frag once I knew where the shooting was coming from. With the LT backing me up I cleared the bastards out, then had to go back to help him as he’d been bleeding for ages and not bandaged himself. Or he’d just got shot then and there, one of the two. Either way, we got him, Goat, and Overkill back and then set off for the other bridge I mentioned above.
After that though, it was what Sarge termed a Thunder Bimble to Planck, and we got there just as it was getting dark. Great timing really, no one likes being outside the wire after dark. Well, except perhaps [REDACTED BY CENSOR], but the less said about him the better.
Hope you’re all keeping well
Morse