Hey Mom
Still in the jungle, still fighting the good fight against those dastardly North Chelt, although, having said that, it was a bit of an odd one last mission. Do you remember when I first signed up and they mixed up my ASVAB score with someone else and I ended up in artillery training until they noticed I was doing the maths -before- eating the crayon and transferred me to signals? Well, turns out that makes me the most qualified in the unit at indirect fires, and so I spent most of the time out in the field behind a mortar tube, desperately trying to remember how to do the combat maths, while also running the radio comms, and yelling numbers to Bungalow and Tubular who took turns on the other tube. It was crazy, I have no idea what the rest of the squad were doing, but every time I looked up from the tube they were reloading and the pile of dead hostiles outside the perimeter kept getting bigger, so I guess they were working really hard to have my back!
I’ll start at the beginning though. The brief was simple enough. We would get instructions over the radio telling us where support would be needed next, and then go find ourselves somewhere to set up the tubes that was close enough to fire from but far enough away that we wouldn’t get embroiled. I like that word, embroiled, not sure where I heard it from, but I think I’m going to try and use it more in future. Embroiled. Just rolls nicely off the tongue doesn’t it? Do you think it comes from cooking lobsters?
First up was some infantry (thinking back it was always infantry) who were assaulting a set of hills with a village nestled at the foot of the closest. We had to drive quite close to get to our assigned firing grid, and as we approached where we wanted to set up our little convoy was attacked. Just past a really nice looking old palace. I hope it survives the war, there really are some beautiful parts of Cheltnam, just as shame about a bunch of the locals. Not all though, some are lovely, just not the ones who smell of cheese. Thinking on that, maybe we should train some of the MP’s K9s (that’s their dogs) to sniff out cheese? I think I’ll run that past theLT, or Mr Scatter Sir before taking it to the Colonel, see if they can see any flaws.
We were at the back of the convoy, we being Blue team, me, Tubular, and Potshot. That meant we had time to park our jeep in cover and then move towards the enemy on foot, thus keeping the vehicle safe for extraction and because it had our supplies in. Good thing we did too really, because the additional time it took us to get back to the road from where we parked meant we saw a bunch of hostels trying to attack the rest of the unit from behind. We dealt with them though, and after patching up Tubular and Potshot we rejoined the rest of the squad. The delay had caused the colonel to get worried we wouldn’t be in position in time to support the infantry push though, so we hurried to find a suitable location.
Turns out finding the location was easy enough, what was hard was working out how to assemble the mortars. They’re packed away in two parts you see, the tube, and the bipod, but we got there in the end, or Chaos did and the rest of us just followed his lead. It was me and Bungalow on the tubes for this one, and I’m not proud of my initial performance. It took me a while to realise I’d forgotten one of the fundamental parts of the maths, but I can at least take solace in knowing that the shots I got wrong were wrong in the direction away from our troops, so I wasn’t putting them in danger. I just wasn’t putting the hostile Chelt in danger either. It clocked eventually though, and it wasn’t long after that that we got the call on the radio to say we’d completed the mission. We’d used more shells than ideal though, so we had to go find a nearby resupply dump and reload before setting out to assignment number two.
I should note here, that the supply dumb had a very clear path to it marked by very obvious yellow flags, so while Tubular, who was driving the blue team vehicle, followed this and got us to the ammo crates safely, others in the squad took a more freestyle approach, and set off a load of the defensive mines. I think if the Colonel had been there he’d’ve despaired of us, but thankfully he was back at base and never needs to find out.
What he does need to find out about though, is that after leaving the supply point, we were ambushed by North Chelt infantry that were backed up by an armoured vehicle. While Tubular drove our jeep into cover and we moved forward on foot to engage, our armoured scout car exploded at the same time as, and in close proximity to, the enemy vehicle. I’m not sure if they collided, or if they took each other out, but by the time we got to their burning wrecks we couldn’t save the Sarge and Tylenol who were inside.
Fire mission 2 was supporting a team trying to take a river crossing. We set up in an old fire base which gave us plenty of cover to stop me and Tubular (he took the second tube this time) from being shot, but with the benefit of hindsight the fact that the area was pitted with craters might have been an indication that the North Chelt had an artillery firing solution on it already. We got our rounds on target pretty quickly though, as I’d had the practice of the first fire mission, and all was going well until we started taking heavy inbound fire. Throwing the mortars into the jeeps we looked around for a new spot, and ended up in a small clearing amongst some reeds.
Not all our ammo got unloaded but the team that we’d just supported had now taken the river crossing and needed us to put rounds down on another defensive line to their west, so we went with what we had to hand and called for the rest of the team to bring us the other crates as we needed them. The dark was making it hard to see the map by this point, and hard for the FOO to see our fall of shot, but being marines we found a way, and soon we’d taken out 30 to 40 hostile Chelt, enough for the infantry to make their final push.
Turns out while I’d been doing that, the rest of the squad had had a hell of a time. Some had run so short on ammo they’d resorted to having to take on the attacking enemy with their knives. That’s USMC grit for you there. They didn’t escape unhurt though, as we had to carry them back to the chopper that the Colonel kindly sent when I relayed to him that only one of our jeeps was still functioning. I don’t want to be graphic, but there were quite a few bleeders in that chopper, but we got them patched up and handed over to the medics back at base, so we had no further casualties.
As for what’s next? I have no idea, but I suspect it’ll involve more jungle, and more hills. I quite enjoyed playing with the artillery again, although I’m going to need better earplugs if I’m going to do it again and still do radio work. Those things are loud! Almost as loud as the LT’s snoring..
Love you, and promise I’ll write again soon
Morse