When Jack made it to the final RV in the early afternoon, they went through the accountability process. After a full report, it turned out that from the Company of one hundred and twenty fighters, they had lost twelve fighters killed, six VSI (very seriously injured) who were still alive and being treated, eight missing in action and thirty one with injuries of varying severity that would need some form of medical treatment..
That was not to mention that most of the fighters had minor cuts and lacerations, as well as bruised and battered bodies, from the harsh nature of the fighting.
The use of body armor and helmets had limited the number of deaths, reducing penetrating injuries to the head and torso. Most of the wounds to the limbs were treated initially with a tourniquet and then later with some minor surgical intervention. The six VSI that had survived so far were all traumatic amputations of the limbs that had been correctly treated with tourniquets to prevent death from extremity bleeding.
The Company was exhausted but jubilant. The key thing now was to reorganize, treat the casualties, and move back to the base.
Chapter Eleven
Two days later, they were back at Victor Foxtrot, licking their wounds. Those with families at Zulu, Jack included, were desperate to go and see them, but there were a multitude of things that had to be done first. They had to run a thorough debrief and after action review (AAR), learning what lessons they could from the battle. They also had to do extensive weapons and equipment cleaning and repair.
Bodies had to heal, and Megan was busy with her medical staff doing what she could. Jack had put a call out to Bill on the network for a doctor or surgeon if possible, and as many antibiotics as they could muster. The troops were exhausted, and needed to heal. It was a time of consolidation, administration, and rest.
Following the full Company AAR in the barn, Jack got up and spoke to them. He told them how proud he was, and how well they had done. It had been a victory; they had achieved the mission that they had set out to do, and had wreaked death and destruction on the Regime forces. He praised them for doing as he had asked, and remaining light on their feet, not getting sucked in to standing and slugging it out toe to toe with the Regime heavy armor and overwhelming numbers. He praised them for their initiative and their teamwork.
Once the work was done, he was able to grant ‘home leave’ in limited numbers, working in shifts. He got to head down to Zulu with the last group and see his family.
After he finished hugging Caitlin and the kids, he sat at the table in their subterranean home and felt the weight of it come crushing down on him; the loneliness and responsibility of command. When he was out there, in command, he had ‘leaders legs’ and always drove on to the goal. He was fully mission oriented, he always had been.
Sitting there now, drinking a coffee at the table with his wife, kids in his lap and Jasper at his feet, in their odd home, he felt the strangeness of the current situation and the responsibility he had taken on. He could never have envisaged that it would come to this, fighting his fellow countrymen, former comrades in arms, in full scale battles in the Shenandoah Valley.
Such was the nature of the fall of the United States, its slip into totalitarianism.
Caitlin did not push him for the details. She could see that he was exhausted and simply needed her support. She held his hand as they talked about the kids and life in Zulu. Apparently Caitlin had naturally risen to a leadership and organizational position. To free her up during the day she had taken on a sitter, the sixteen year old daughter of one of the families. Her name was Vicky and she was lovely, according to Caitlin. Kind and responsible, she took pains to provide educational activities for the kids.
Apparently Andrew was also enamored, Caitlin told him, chuckling. Not that you would know it to see him, moping around and pretending that he didn’t like the girl.
Teenagers, what could you do?
Temporarily released from the responsibility of command, Jack felt the crushing tiredness come over him like a physical weight. His eyes began to droop and he went and lay down on the cot. His head hit the pillow and he was out like a light.
The next day, Jack was back at Victor Foxtrot. As he headed over to the aid station to check on the casualties, a middle aged man walked out, wearing a white lab coat, stethoscope round his neck, and bifocals balanced on the end of his nose. Megan walked out behind him.
“Hey Jack,” she said, “let me introduce you to Dr. Chris Davis, our new surgeon.”
“Excellent, nice to meet you,” said Jack, extending his hand.
“Happy to be here,” said Dr. Davis.
“Did Bill send you?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of surgeon are you?”
“I’m a vet.”
“Great, where did you serve?”
“No Jack, I’m a veterinary surgeon.”
Jack looked at him and grinned, “Seriously?”
Megan was smiling “Jack, he’s done some excellent work with the wounded.”
“Cool,” Jack smiled, “happy to have you on board. Can I see them?”
“Sure,” said Megan as they headed inside.
Jack pulled her to the side as they were doing the rounds, “How is Jim’s concussion?”
“Oh, he’ll be all right with that thick skull,” she said, grinning.
Bill showed up himself two days later. Jack met him with Jim and Caleb. They shook hands and moved over to the operations room, where they sat around on plastic chairs drinking coffee. Bill was enthused by the ‘Battle of Harrisonburg’ as he was calling it.
“I know you guys took some casualties, and I am genuinely sorry for that. On the positive side, it was a great success, a huge blow for Regime credibility. Of course, the propaganda machine is spinning it that they won a huge battle and drove the insurgents out of Harrisonburg, but that’s not what the people on the ground are seeing. The Regime got a butt kicking, and I am putting the word out on the network, including copies of some of the footage you took.”
He went on to explain that the Apache footage had made its way as far as Texas, and people were sitting up and taking note. The Regime was not invincible, despite its overwhelming combat power.
However, word from informants in Bills network was pointing towards a consolidation of Regime efforts in the valley, as they tried to save face over such effective resistance this close to the Capital.
It appeared that Jack had been right, and Bill agreed with him. Now that the Regime was being drawn into the valley, it was their job to turn it into a crucible of destruction for the Regime forces.
“Keep your recon patrols out,” Bill stated, “I expect some permanent FOBs to be placed here in the valley, and I would not be surprised if they start combing these hills for this base. Be alert.”
Jack’s current aims were twofold. Firstly, he needed to allow time for his fighters to rest and recover. Many of the walking wounded needed time; they would mostly all recover back to duty, but it would take some longer than others. Secondly, he needed to keep his eyes out in the valley and keep the pressure on the enemy.
Jack gave orders for the IED activity to continue in the valley. It was combined surveillance and opportunistic strike missions, and he started sending out two IED teams at a time to selected sectors to continue operations. Now they had concentrated force in Harrisonburg for the big battle, it was time to remain dispersed and lay low for a while.
Jack reactivated a small training cadre to take care of the new recruits he had asked for from Bill. He needed battle casualty replacements for those that had been lost or rendered combat incapable after the battle. Victor Foxtrot needed to remain operational as a training base, on a smaller scale than before. It would also be useful to have the training cadre for continuation training to prevent skill fade.
It was also an opportunity to employ some of the better guys who had been wounded and would not be able to return fully to the fight.
He had been long concerned about the security of Zulu. Its strength was
in remaining covert, but the force protecting it was not his ‘A’ team. Now he had a fully trained company, blooded, he decided to allocate one of his maneuver platoons to defense of Zulu. One at a time, the platoons would rotate through this task, two weeks at a time, and it would be useful operational experience with training value for them.
Zulu was on the west slope of a ridge that ran roughly north-south. The trail from the southern side of Zulu’s ravine was where the trail from Victor Foxtrot joined. That trail ran in a south easterly direction up and over the ridge to the valley where Victor Foxtrot was located. There were several further ridges and terrain features to the east of Victor Foxtrot that kept it concealed and away from the main Shenandoah Valley.
Jack had originally walked in to Zulu from the north, along the trail, and that seemed to him to be the most vulnerable direction to approach, given how the terrain was in the area. The valley that Zulu was on the side of opened up further as it ran to the north, down to where they had originally accessed the parking area with the fuel truck that had been concealed off an old fire road.
Jack ordered Caleb to take his platoon on the first shift. He trusted him most out of his platoon leaders to get the place set up right. Jack explained that he wanted a triangular patrol base, dug in with foxholes and concealed, upslope of the trail that ran into Zulu, covering the trail. He wanted this defensive position to be around three hundred meters north of the bunker sentry positions that protected the trail before it ran into Zulu.
The patrol base would be triangular, with two-man foxholes, a squad on each side. This configuration would provide excellent all round defense. One side of the triangle would face west to the trail, another looking north up the valley, with the third protecting the rear. The fighters would not have to live in the foxholes, they could set up shelters behind each one covered by thermal ponchos, but the triangular formation would act like a defensive rock if assailed by a larger force on all sides.
It was not to be merely a static defensive position. It was to be a patrol base, and the platoon would send out team or squad sized patrols into the surrounding area. There would always be two squads and a headquarters element in the patrol base.
This arrangement would add depth to the defense of Zulu, while allowing patrol surveillance and short term OPs to be sent out into the surrounding area, keeping the approach routes under observation.
They would call the patrol base Zulu Delta.
Caleb was enthusiastic about the new task. He was talking with Jack after receiving the brief, “So Jack, about the militia guys in Harrisonburg.”
“Yes, what’s up?”
“Well, they called us the mountain men. That’s cool, but the guys came up with another name for the Company, for us.”
“Yea, what’s that?”
“Juggernauts. Jack’s Juggernauts. We needed something to work with ‘Jack’, so that’s it.”
“Really?”
“Yep, the Company is yours, Jack. Some of these guys think the sun shines out of your ass. They named themselves in your honor, after we smashed up the Regime in Harrisonburg - like a juggernaut.”
“Wow,” said Jack, as Caleb walked away.
Following the return of the first rotation of IED teams into the valley after the battle, Jack was alerted to changes in Regime forces activity detailed in their patrol reports. It appeared that the battle group that had attacked Harrisonburg had settled near to the town. They were building a large forward operating base (FOB) just to the north east of the town, on the other side of the I-81.
It looked like this was going to be a location of their battle group headquarters and at least an armored company. They were walling in an area around two kilometers square with dirt berms, concertina wire and HESCO bastions; these were large wire and fabric boxes that were filled with dirt; stacked two-high they stood around eight feet tall.
They were also building small HESCO protected combat outposts (COPs) up and down the route of the I-81 through the valley, in an attempt to picket the route, dominating the valley and some of the main population centers.
There was some activity going on at the Bridgewater Airpark, which was located three kilometers west of the 1-81, some six kilometers south west of Harrisonburg and ten kilometers from the location of the new main FOB.
It was curious; they seemed to be walling in a large area of the airpark with HESCO walls. It included the airport buildings, hangers and a section of the runway as it ran behind the hangers, including a sizeable area of grassy field. But the HESCO walls were cutting off the main two thirds of the runway.
So they were not using it for fixed wing aircraft then?
Jack decided that he needed to develop more information on these two large FOBs. He tasked two squads with OP missions. This would entail establishing covert OP positions, with one squad overlooking each FOB location.
The reason for the squad size per OP was to allow longevity. He was going to put each squad in for a week. The numbers would allow them to run four men up in the OP itself, rotating through the observation and recording duties and a little rest, and the other four slightly back in a covert rest area, primarily resting, administering and pulling rear security. The two teams would change over routinely, usually every twenty four hours.
He allocated each squad an area of operations that included several likely suitable OP locations. They would be responsible for finding and establishing the exact location. Due to the lack of secure communications, the OPs would not be in radio contact. Instead, they used a dead letter drop system. Every second day, the OP would drop their log and report in a concealed dead drop, at a location away from the OP, to be picked up by a courier. If Jack decided to maintain the OPs, it was through this system that a relief team could be rotated through, by meeting at the dead letter drop.
To make the dead letter drop work, they had to take in a pair of couriers with them, so they could find a drop site that was in a suitable location to wherever the OP ended up being located. The couriers would then move away, returning every second day to pick up the reports and move them back through the network. These same couriers would also be able to guide in a relief OP team when the time came.
The dead drops also allowed a limited amount of resupply, such as water, if there was no source close to the selected OPs, which tended to be on high ground. The OP parties still had to carry a lot of gear in with them to stay in place for a week: food, water, binoculars, night vision, lots of batteries and of course the thermal ponchos and camouflage netting to conceal the OP positions.
Jack still tasked IED teams to go out on mission during this OP phase, but he set boundaries, areas of operation, that kept them away from the OPs, to minimize the chance of compromise.
Thus, with the patrol base down by Zulu, the OPs out in the valley, and the IED teams back on task, the Company entered a patrol phase of limited offensive operations. It was about information gathering. Jack wanted to see what the Regime was up to with the FOBs and the COPs. Once they had gathered enough information, he would be able to use it to plan further disruption operations.
Over the next few weeks, the information started to trickle back to the tactical operations center (TOC) at Victor Foxtrot. Jack ended up replacing the OP parties and leaving them in place to keep the enemy under surveillance. The IED teams had also had a few successes, with the targeting of patrols operating out of some of the COPs strung up and down the I-81. They had refined their techniques so that they were having better success with the IED ambushes and had not been spotted by Regime ground forces or aircraft top cover.
It appeared that the Harrisonburg FOB was indeed the battle group headquarters, housing an additional armored infantry company plus multiple support assets. Jack saw from some of the surveillance photos that it was now totally ringed by HESCOs, including several inner fortified compounds, and it reminded him of any number of FOBs he had seen in Iraq or Afghanistan.
No doubt the Company assigned to the FOB spent most of their
time manning the bunkers and towers dotted along the HESCO perimeter, as well as the two entry control points. It was the usual story: cooks to feed the guards, and guards to guard the cooks.
The Bridgewater Airpark FOB was smaller. The vital point was that it appeared to be a FOB for an Apache squadron group, supporting operations up and down the valley. There was a guard force of two platoons of infantry, manning bunkers around the HESCO perimeter, with an OP on a central rooftop. They were equipped with MRAP armored vehicles, which looked like armored Humvees on growth hormones.
The Apaches had started to move in and it appeared that a squadron of eight of them was assigned to the FOB, along with their support organization. That was a significant force and it would have a huge impact on operations for the Resistance in the valley.
The strategy of the Regime forces in the valley was becoming apparent. They had placed the central FOB at Harrisonburg with the attack aviation support FOB at the Airpark. They had a series of COPs strung throughout the valley to protect the main supply route (MSR) of the I-81 and ancillary routes. They were conducting patrol operations in the valley to attempt to disrupt and dislocate insurgent attack operations onto the MSRs.
The Apaches were divided between surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the surrounding area, and top cover for convoys transiting through. They did not have the availability to permanently fly top cover on convoys, so they tended to move in and out of it, sometimes dropping in to a top cover role on the way to and from surveillance missions.
It appeared that two Apaches were always designated as an airborne response force to react to incidents of troops in contact in the valley. It was the avoidance of these Apache that was the main challenge to the IED teams, who had to prevent themselves from being picked up on the Apache surveillance systems following an attack.
It was also apparent that the Regime battle group had designated Harrisonburg as the main seat of government in the valley. They considered the ‘Battle of Harrisonburg’ as a hard won victory, not the bloody nose that it had been, and were now moving on to reconstruction operations. They were following the ‘clear, hold, build’ doctrine.
Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises Page 17
