Hey Mom
Sorry it’s been a while since my last letter, but we’ve been out in the field for longer than we anticipated. We had, on paper, a fairly simple mission this time: drive to a radio relay station at Outpost Warden, relieve a section of the defending force for a few days, then head home again. We had to stop about a click south to change a tire, which we hoped would be all the bad luck we’d face, but when we got to the top of the hill the firebase was on, we started to see bodies. Given the number of dead North Chelt the defending marines gave a hell of an account of themselves, and given the base supplies were still intact we probably scared off the surviving attackers as we drove up. Not that they stayed scared for long mind, but at least they were the ones that had to keep climbing the hill to attack us this time.
We were just starting to clear the bunkers and tents when the first attack came, but it was only sporadic, so we managed to find a bunch of supplies and checkout the damage to the radio equipment before things got too spicy. Unfortunately it had been smashed, and I couldn’t fix it with what we had with us, so we had no comms back to base. The rest of the squad worked to secure the perimeter and supplies before nightfall and neutralise the attacks the North Chelt sent. We had tried to refuel our truck as our route out, but the only fuel on base was at the helipad and had apparently been spiked with something. Still, things weren’t all bad, we had a very defendable position and lots of ammo. Just no way of telling anyone about what was happening.
I was just going to the supply bunker to grab myself an anti-tank weapon when we were attacked again and I ended up finding the mortar ammo bunker instead. That came in useful later as I’m sure you can imagine. Sarge ordered me to get the mortars running, given my experiences from last mission, but I went to go grab that anti-vehicle weapon I’d been looking for previously first. Thankfully the mortar tubes were working fine, but the ammo crates were really heavy and we couldn’t lift them. This conundrum was solved by the LT spending a long time in the ammo bunker part emptying crates and dragging them across to the firing emplacements. As a knock on, this left the sarge to handle a lot of the more tactical elements of the defence, which I think he enjoyed.
We had everything up and running by morning, but because of the base’s position I’d be firing things really close. Much closer than is usually acceptable, but needs must sometimes. Their next attack started with volleys of grenades, which we initially thought were mortars. Turns out they did have their own mortars, but we didn’t find that out until later.
While I was working out the maths for the mortars we were attacked again, this time by a vehicle from up the road. That was just where I was calculating a predesignated aiming point coincidentally, but we were trying to take it more or less intact so we could try and steal its fuel to get us out of there. Well, that was the plan, it ended up exploding, rigged to do so apparently, so probably a good thing we didn’t get it inside the perimeter. The maths got interrupted a few times to repel Chelt attacks, but eventually I got points readied for the main approach routes for the base, and the open areas immediately outside the wire.
Going into night two we were able to start using illumination rounds to help see the sporadic attacks as they came in, but we didn’t have much of that, so we mostly kept it for when we knew they were coming, rather than having rounds continuously in the air. It was also night two that we got confirmation that they had mortars too, as a ranging round exploded in camp. We didn’t know where they were, other than they were fairly close to our north though. I tried to work out their range from the time of flight of their rounds, but unfortunately the times didn’t match any of my range tables, so I couldn’t tell anything other than very close.
Their mortar fire continued into the day, but without a better idea of where they were we couldn’t do much to counter them. They followed up with an infantry assault from the north though, and I’d worked out the maths for hitting that open ground, so one of the medics was calling the adjustments I needed to make to hit the attackers, and between us we blunted several pushes, leaving just the stragglers for the rest of the squad to clean up. At one point a Chelt tried to sneak up on me while the rest of the squad were busy, but the LT was about and spotted them so that threat was averted.
The LT continued to be my Ammo Bitch, hauling crates to the tubes. That’s not the proper term,but it’s the one we use so often I can’t actually think of the real one right now, I suspect you get the meaning though. Speaking of things continuing, the Chelt kept coming. They’d send a wave, then it’d go quiet for a bit, then another push would happen. I’m not sure if they were testing us, or just sending squads up the hill as they arrived from wherever they were coming from.
We grabbed sleep when we could, but soon it was night three, and still we’d had no contact with anyone else. I’d hoped that perhaps some air would be sent to find out why there was no comms traffic, but we found out later that there’d been a big Chelt push to our south and there was now a bunch of their anti-air between us and out friendly airfields. They mortared us several times that night, which is conducive to neither sleep nor nerves, but we’ve fought through worse before, and when dawn broke we were all still standing.
The Sarge suggested taking a squad out to go find the hostile mortar position with half the squad, and the LT was just discussing it with him when we got attacked up the road by a flamethrower tank. They’re really not our friend, but someone managed to get an AT round in it to stop it, before I got one in that blew it up. Very satisfying that, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stand still for long enough to aim at it if it had still been throwing jets of fire everywhere. It killed our truck though.
It was decided that Yellow Team would go hunting, while Blue held the base, and we split the medics. Sarge took Yellow, and the LT stayed with us at the base. It started to rain, which didn’t help with things, but such is life here in the rainy season. Did I tell you about that before? It’s not like at home, here there’s a rainy season, which is roughly half the year, mid spring to mid fall, and it’s very rainy. Rest of the year it’s usually clear skies and winds. We’re in rainy season right now though, as you can probably tell.
Yellow team checked in, and were clearing a small village to the north, but had not yet found the mortars, was good to hear from them though, as it meant they were close enough for either group to call for support from the other if required. As soon as they’d checked in we were hit by more mortar fire, so I guess they weren’t in that village. After that though their radio signal became broken and much harder to hear as they moved out again, and the rain became heavier.
By nightfall of night four they were still searching, and the Chelt decided to let us know they hadn’t been found yet by unleashing another barrage on the camp. We were well versed in getting our heads down by then though, so we rode it out and instinctively moved to counter the infantry push we knew was coming immediately after. It’s not nice gun fighting in the dark, but every Chelt that was fighting us on top of the hill, wasn’t hunting Yellow Team below, so on balance it was better they were here than there.
Day five dawned with another push from the enemy, but we cleared it quickly enough. They kept pounding us with mortars though, and comms with Yellow remained broken to the point of unreadable so we went back to waiting. I filled some of the morning doing laps of the camp perimeter, checking for infiltrators, and trying to memorise as much of it as possible so I’d know on another pass if they’d cut the wire anywhere or such. I even spent some time up in one of the machine gun towers, which is usually an immediate prelude to getting shot in the head, but this time it wasn’t bullets or mortars that came our way, but flame rockets. That’s a new one for me, but I can’t really recommend them. Someone was observing for them, but we never found out where from.
As we were dealing with that, Yellow radioed in with some news about the mortar position, but I was a bit busy trying not to be on fire, and they were still very broken, so I didn’t really catch what they had to say. Thankfully Slump was on it and relayed that they’d cleared the enemy mortars and were bringing back bits of an enemy radio to try and fix ours and get word out to the Colonel that we needed support. As we played hunt the spotter another tank came at us up the road. Someone else killed it while I was still grabbing another launcher from the bunker, but it’s a good job I did as another came up behind it, which I distracted long enough for someone else to shoot it while it shot at me.
Apparently there was then a third one, but I wasn’t in any fit state to deal with it by then. We got hit pretty bad, with the limited numbers we had, and in the end we got Yeloow’s medic to sprint back uphill ahead of his squad mates to aid us. That’s not to say the others in yellow were lagging behind, but they have really big guns and you just can’t run far or fast with them. Kinda like having a heavy radio in your backpack really. I can certainly sympathise with them.
By the time I was ready to get back into the fight it was already dark, but at least there was no immediate attacks, and Bungalow, the medic who’d gone out with Yellow made it back to help Hitchcock. The rest of Yellow made it back around dawn and Blue started to organise to go hunting for the rocket spotter, but waves of Chelt attacks kept that from happening. In better news though, the radio parts the Sarge brought back were what we needed to fix the relay transmitter on the tower, and with a lack of a proper sparky that kept me busy for most of the day and into the night. They must have known what we were up to though, because the attacks kept coming, and they kept trying to break through to where I was working. We didn’t really have enough people to guard both me and the perimeter, but after having to restart repairs a few times our new auto-gunner came to sit by me so I didn’t have to stop work and frantically defend myself and the electronics every few minutes.
I’m not sure how long it took, but it was many hours as it was almost dawn by the time I finished, and managed to get though to command. That's when we found out about the enemy attack, and that we’d have to run about three kilometres south through hostile territory before it would be safe to get a helo in to pick us up.
Shortly after first light they hit us with heavier artillery and fast air, so we all raided the base stores for as much ammo as we could carry and headed out. Down the road initially, then through the trees to get us back south. Our route to the suggested LZ meant crossing a river, skirting a marshy/swampy area, crossing another big river, and then scrambling onto a flat piece of high ground. Well, it might have been the same river twice, I’m not sure if one was a tributary or not, but basically solid ground, then swim, then swamp, then swim, then solid ground .
We got almost to the first swim before things started to go poorly, but we had a lot of momentum so instead of stopping to clear everything we kept moving, with one group moving while the other fired to give them cover, then swapping to keep everyone headed in the right direction. This worked well until we came across a vehicle position that spotted us and started firing, and which point we mostly just put down covering fire and ran to the water. We tried to cross in teams, so we could cover each other, but the river was too wide for that, and the team that was initially left to cover got bounced by Chelt infantry, so we all ended up swimming at once. Not ideal, but we all ended up on the far bank, so it worked out.
Despite the AA threat, the Colonel had clearly managed to pull some strings for us as a skyhawk flew overhead and dropped something on the enemy, then shortly after I got a checking from some flyboys from a flight called Chinese Whisper who had us mark our position with smoke and they committed some violence in the vicinity as well, but it was too dense foliage to tell precisely what. We were now heading south, skirting the edge of the swamp, and by my reckoning a little more than halfway to the LZ.
It was starting to get dark though, and we heard both gunfire chasing us, and saw the impact of some molotov cocktails. While they provide lovely, if brief illumination, they’re really not your friend and set part of the woods on fire so we had to run south east to keep ahead of the flames. This delayed us a little, and as morning came so did more Chelt, but despite how tired we all were we kept pushing, despite several injuries. We had to pause briefly to the medics to do their best, but then we stepped off again as they started throwing grenades at us as well.
We hit another patch of resistance as we reached the river bank, and it turned out our swim was actually going to be two swims, as we staged to an island near the far bank, then the final swim towards the LZ. As it turns out, there were also a few Chelt on that island as well. They, it turns out, had no sense of humour, as one of them tried to shoot me after I made a particularly splendid pun, but then Hitchcock shot him for his poor etiquette in comedic criticism.
There was some sort of heavy position on the far bank, so some of us on the island distracted it with fire while others swam across, then moved to destroy it while the rest of us made the swim. I was half way across the river when I heard the incoming extraction helios, two hueys, and then a cobra gunship also appeared and dealt with the heavy emplacement. We hit an escarpment that we needed to be on top of, but fortunately we didn’t have to skirt the base of it for long before we found a way up and just followed the rotor noise to where they’d landed. The Chelt did make one final push to try and stop us from reaching them, but by that point nothing was stopping us as we scrambled aboard and headed home.
Needless to say, we welcomed our bunks shortly after than, but not before we welcomed the showers and then the chow hut. This letter is already much longer than I’d planned though, so I’ll leave it here and go see if I can get a few more hours shuteye before the Colonel finds us and gives us something else to do.
Love to you all
Morse