Dear Mom
There’s a big push going on at the moment, or about to be, so we’ve been involved in doing the prep work to make sure everything is ready. I tell you, prep work is hard. I’m sure the assault when it comes will be too, but for now we’re just back and forth everywhere getting all the little things done, and then going and doing them again when the North Chelt decide to make them undone again. Take today for example. When we were doing S&R a busy day was two missions, today we did four, two of which involved climbing the same huge hill.
The first was simple enough, move north from a temporary base in the friendly held village of Binh Yen, and clear out a couple of enemy recon patrols. The only catch being that just beyond said patrols was a few North Chelt command centres, and if we got too close to them then we’d likely get shelled. I’m sure you’ve read enough of these to guess already that we did in fact get too close, and we did get shelled as the Colonel warned us we would, but that was right at the end, and we pulled back smartly enough. I even managed to spot a hostile tripwire trap -before- setting it off, so definitely improvement there. Sarge said she’d make a note of the date and time for the official unit records, but I think she might have been joking.
Anyway. Once that was all done we headed back to the village to resupply and then it was time to go hike up a hill. Not the kind of hikes we did in the Rockies mind, this hill had entrenched hostile positions at the top, so the artillery put some rounds into it while we waited behind some rocks at the bottom, to soften up the defenders a bit. It was very good of them and all, but turns out a whole load of the defenders weren’t on the top, but were in fact hiding in a series of spider holes just the other side of the rocks, so as we started our heroic charge up the slope, they all popped out and started being distinctly unfriendly.That slowed us down somewhat, and gave those a the top a bit of time to regroup before we could get to them.
Fighting was fierce at the top, and we couldn’t push beyond the trench line to clear them out as that would have put us in line of sight of a whole load of hostile artillery who would have just loved to rewrite the geography of that hilltop if they’d seen us. I was one of the last into the trenchline, having stopped on the way up to clear out a spiderhole I found (don’t tell the LT, but I think it was already empty, but I dumped a whole magazine into it just to make sure). With the rest of the squad ahead of me (mostly) I had to run up the hill, but it was easy enough to work out where they were, as that’s where the mass of gunfire and explosions were coming from.
We had what can only really be described as a torrid time taking that line. Everytime we cleared it more of them came in from one direction or another, and at one point our medic went down, along with about half the squad. Given the heavy enemy presence the Colonel had to send another squad from the base with more medics, but the fighting was intense, and while they managed to get most of the squad back up, they were both shot before they got toTylenol, so Overkill and Jump had to pick her up and carry her back down the hill while we blasted everything that moved and wasn’t us until they returned. Not our finest hour, she should have been the one they treated first, but sometimes in the chaos of battle you don’t realise things aren’t going to plan.
Some fast movers (that’s a type of air support) arrived to blunt a North Chelt assault from the east, and I had to mark our position with smoke so they wouldn’t bomb us by mistake. Of course, that also means that the enemy knows where we are, so it was a bit hairy, but then significant parts of the hill to our east blew up and set on fire, so most of the hostiles had more pressing concerns. Of course our next orders were to take that hill to the east, but with a supply drop unavailable due to anti-aircraft guns we had to yomp it back down the hill, through the spiderhole infested reeds to get back to the base again and restock there.
Then it was back up the hill, only this time the top was still held by the squad sent to support us, and the climb didn’t feature being surprised by spider holes. The LT didn’t give us much time at the top to get our breath back though and we pushed on to the east. A cry went up, from Jump I think, that she’d spotted more tripwire traps, but I never saw any. Importantly though, I didn’t set any off either, so maybe I am getting better at that after all! Progress was, of course, entirely uphill, and it wasn’t long before we met resistance. I say we, I think Tubular had dealt with the worst of it before most of us had got near it. We did however, somewhat expose ourselves to the defensive lines on the next set of hills to the north, and that cost us a lot of marine blood. There was one point when I saw that the LT and Sarge were both down and tried to creep up to them to drag them back to the medics, but whatever had got them (a tank I think), then shot me and I had a lovely little dirt nap for a while before Tylenol got round to getting us all back up on our feet.
Thankfully, by this point, friendly forces were moving up from Binh Yen to secure the hillsides we’d taken, so we headed down south to meet up with a medical resupply truck and an armoured column that was pushing east. As Tylenol filled her backpack with more supplies we took a moment to rest and make everyone aware of the plan. The push didn’t get off to an auspicious start, as one of our tanks clipped Avalanche as it started to move, but as we’d just got more medical supplies it wasn’t long before we were back into it. And by into it I mean gunfire as the North Chelt did not want us taking the crossroads we were heading for. They were using it to move supplies and heavy vehicles to our south, so we weren't particularly surprised that they weren’t pleased to see us advancing.
Having cleared out the initial infantry resistance we set about digging in at the junction itself. A task made more difficult due to the fact that it was visible to the heavy guns that had been plaguing us all day. As a result we had to dig in around it, but not to close around it, and we could only find out what was too close when a shell landed amongst us. Praise Darkon but somehow we managed it, and despite some extensive artillery hits on our positions, by the time a North Chelt convoy arrived we were well placed to hit it from multiple sides. I know Avalanche got at least one, I’d be highly surprised if Tubular didn’t get another, but they were all burning before they reached the tank that was with us at the junction. By this point of course we were being attacked from three sides, with only the route back to the west offering any form of safety, but we’re marines, and so we held until we were relieved, and then headed back to base.
And that was my day. How was yours? You and Dad get up to much?
Write again soon
Morse