William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed

by William Christie

  There was a gap while he talked to the MEU commander. I pictured them stopping to get a ruling from the lawyer. Don't laugh, that's how it was really done in these ass-covering days. I had the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team begin rigging the ammo and explosives for demolition with all our remaining explosives. They were as good at disposing of ordnance by blowing it up as they were at defusing it.

  Captain Z came back on the net. "You're clear to blow it, but make sure you give yourself enough delay, over."

  "Roger, out."

  The charges were rigged and we were finally ready to get out of there, but Captain Z had us wait. He wanted all the helos refueled and the Cobras rearmed before we made our move. They weren't all back on station yet.

  This gave me a chance to get together with the squad leaders and platoon sergeant and make sure we were straight on the plan. It also gave the Marines a chance to reload magazines from their extra bandoleers.

  We'd leave the house by bounds. First Sergeant Eberhardt and Staff Sergeant Frederick, covered by Corporal Asuego on the roof. Then Sergeant Turner with our wounded and the prisoners. Sergeant Harlin had been shot clean through the face but was still alive thanks to Doc Bob doing a tracheotomy by flashlight. Lance Corporal Bamburger had taken a round through the leg when the bad guys started firing into the ceilings. Corporal Asuego and I would bring up the rear.

  I was up on the roof with Corporal Asuego. Through our night goggles we saw the Cobras coming back and knew we'd be getting the call soon.

  The Captain Z gave the code word over the radio. The platoon commanders acknowledged in succession.

  "Go, go!" I yelled down. Sergeant Turner released the women and children down the street, pausing to strip the ID and weapons off the bodies lying out there. At the same time Sergeant Eberhardt's squad broke out in the opposite direction. By twos, on each side of the street, well spread out.

  They started taking scattered rifle fire from nearby buildings, but it was obvious the Yemenis didn't have night vision equipment.

  We did, and opened up on every muzzle flash with everything we had.

  When Sergeant Turner with the casualties and the intel team to help carry them moved out, we came down off the roof. The two EOD Marines were waiting beside their handiwork. When only one fire team was left in the house, I told the EOD Staff Sergeant, "Pull fuse."

  They pulled the rings on the two friction fuse igniters screwed onto the ends of two coils of time fuse. "Smoke," they both reported, meaning the fuses were burning properly. You always lit at least two fuses per charge. Doing only one and having it go out would be very embarrassing. I would have lit more, but we only had enough fuse cord for two 15-minute delays. We'd only anticipated using small charges on short time delays. I set my watch timer to keep track of the delay.

  While we'd been waiting to move out, the EOD guys had rigged up a couple of anti-handling booby traps in case someone got in after we left and managed to cut the fuses. As soon as anyone started rummaging around the whole thing would go up. Since their job normally entailed defusing someone else's booby traps, they were ecstatic about the shoe being on the other foot.

  Once the fuses were burning I sent them along. Then Lance Corporal Vincent and I left with the last fire team.

  Fortunately we weren't taking fire other than a few random rounds here and there. The Yemenis seemed cowed by the Cobras beating overhead, and confused about where we were and what we were doing. We were within two blocks of linking up with Milburn's platoon.

  I didn't even hear it. I just saw the whole street ahead lit up in blooming flashes, and Sergeant Eberhardt's squad go down under fire.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I grabbed the radio handset from Vincent. "Break, break, break, Two in contact, over." That cut through all the chatter. The Cobra pair shadowing my move through their thermal sights came up to request that we mark our front.

  I had to break through the chaos of the intra-squad net to tell Staff Sergeant Frederick to throw some infrared chemlights out in front of him.

  He did, and the two Cobras popped up high to get a clear shot between the buildings. We needed them badly. We were in two files going up either side of a street. There was practically no way to employ more than a few weapons to our front, and no cover other than doorways and front steps.

  We were taking only automatic rifle fire. They hadn't dug their machine-guns or RPG's out of their hope chests yet.

  The 3-barrel 20mm gatling guns in the Cobras' noses sounded like metal zippers being drawn up. The armor piercing rounds in their ammo mix threw up showers of sparks as they hit the masonry.

  I ran up the street under the cover of the cannon fire, pulling Vincent behind me with the handset cord like a leash. On my way I grabbed the two machine-gun teams and the two SMAW rocket launcher teams.

  I kept hollering over the radio to the Cobras, "Keep it up! Keep it up!"

  Staff Sergeant Frederick was right up front directing fire. Third squad had been ambushed crossing the intersection of two streets. My stomach clenched up again when I saw two Marines lying motionless out in the road. Wounded were being dragged into doorways.

  Some Marines were huddled under cover. Enough weren't. Lance Corporals Conahey and Westgate were putting out fire with their Squad Automatic Weapons, standing tall even though they were dangerously exposed. Lance Corporal Hiller was pumping out M-203 grenades one after the other, putting them right through the windows of the houses across the street. Until his grenade launcher broke like the plastic piece of shit it was, and he went back to his rifle. The noise was incredible.

  "Smoke?" Staff Sergeant Frederick shouted to me, meaning to use it to screen the street and recover the bodies.

  "They'll fire through it!" I shouted back. They probably had their weapons zeroed on the two Marines, just waiting for us to come and get them. Smoke would only signal our move.

  Then I remembered reading about the battle of Hue City in Vietnam. Smoke hadn't worked then, but something else had.

  I told him my plan. He rushed off to get ahold of everyone in 3rd squad carrying an AT-4. I positioned the SMAW's and machine-guns, all the while on the radio imploring the Cobras to keep firing. They were running low on ammo, and everyone and everything was moving so agonizingly slowly.

  It was then I noticed Lance Corporal Vincent shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. "You okay?" I yelled.

  "Do you know how much fire we're taking, sir!" he shouted back at me.

  I won't pretend I wasn't scared. But at that moment I happened to be more scared of losing control of the situation and presiding over disaster than getting killed. Just a small difference in focus between Vincent and I. There were rounds cracking all around, but none close enough to pin us down. What stuck in my mind was that even in that situation he was still using proper military courtesy.

  The noise was so overpowering the intra-squad radio was next to useless. The difference between a platoon shooting blanks and a firefight with live ammunition was the difference between listening to an acoustic guitar in a coffeehouse and standing directly in front of the speakers at a rock concert. I signaled the nearest AT-4 gunner to fire.

  The two SMAW and three AT-4 gunners fired their rockets into the buildings across the road. The world rocked under the impacts, and the road filled with dust and smoke. Four Marines rushed out into the road and dragged the two bodies back to us. They all made it. Everyone firing at us who hadn't been knocked off their pins by the impacts of the rockets had certainly ducked for cover.

  Now we had to break contact and get out of there. All I could think of was Somalia. If we sat still too long they'd start boxing us in on all sides and we'd be trapped. I sent Staff Sergeant Frederick back to Corporal Asuego. We'd turn the whole show around, the rear becoming the new point. They would cut over three streets and then head back up. We had to hurry. It would take us back in the direction of a house full of explosives that would be detonating in just a few minutes.

  They began moving
out. The SMAW teams reloaded. The 83mm rocket was pre-packed in a sealed fiberglass tube that screwed right onto the rear of the launcher, the whole thing looking very much like the old bazooka.

  The SMAW's would fire; everyone in Sergeant Eberhardt's squad who still had one would throw a frag grenade, and we'd all turn tail and run back down the street. Everyone signaled that they were ready, and I gave the signal to fire again.

  The SMAW team across the street from me had fired late the last time, and now I knew why. The SMAW had a 9mm spotting rifle attached to the tube, just a naked barrel and a simple action. A magazine of six 9mm tracers came with each rocket. The spotting rifle showed the gunner exactly where the rocket would be going, allowing him to adjust his aim in the telescopic sight. In training the gunners were told to fire all six spotting rounds so they wouldn't have to turn in any live cartridges.

  And now my gunner was squeezing off tracers slowly and carefully, as if he was back on the range at Lejeune. Wrong training becoming habit, and habit taking over in combat.

  "Fire the SMAW!" I shouted into the radio. Because of the rocket backblast the gunner had to stand relatively exposed. And while tracers told you where a round was going, they also told everyone else where the round had come from. It was like watching an auto accident you knew was going to happen but couldn't do anything about.

  Bullet strikes blossomed in the stone wall all around the SMAW team, and they both crumpled to the ground.

  "Everyone freeze!" I yelled into the radio, into the air at the top of my lungs, and using a hand signal. Then into the other handset, talking to the Cobras, "I need Hellfires, one at a time, at my command, over."

  "What's the target?" the Cobra leader replied.

  "I'm using all tracers. Fire on my impacts. My radioman will give the command. This is going to be closer than danger close, but don't argue with me."

  Then some moron came up on the net with a routine message, and the Cobras and I had to shout him off. Finally the Cobra leader came back with, "Standing by, Two."

  I could see the Cobras climbing higher so the laser beam that would guide the Hellfire missiles into the target would be unobstructed.

  I know, I was going to do the same thing that had gotten the SMAW team nailed, but I couldn't think of anything else.

  I told Vincent and Sergeant Eberhardt to move back the hell away from me. "Raise your hand to tell me if they've got the target," I said to Vincent. "When I drop mine, that's fire one." To Sergeant Eberhardt, "When the Hellfire hits we go grab the SMAW team. Then I'll call for another one. When that hits we get the hell out of here."

  They both gave me thumbs up. When they'd moved away I raised my rifle and scooted as far back into the doorway I was hiding behind as I could. I started squeezing off tracers into the most troublesome building across the street. The best thing would have been to ignore the fact that everyone in the world was shooting at me. Easier said than done, especially with a sound all around my head like a big pot of popcorn popping at high speed. All the incoming rounds that hadn't hit me. Yet. I looked back. Vincent's hand was up. I raised and dropped mine.

  A few seconds later came loud clicking and a violent whoosh. The Hellfire hit the building and knocked me clean off my feet. I got up fast and ran across the street to the SMAW team, joined by most of 3rd squad.

  Everyone grabbed an arm or leg, and I dropped my arm again. The air was full of suspended dust.

  We crouched over the wounded until the next Hellfire hit. Something hot jabbed me in the back of the arm, but I wasn't about to stop and look. We were up and moving. I picked up the SMAW launcher. As soon as we were out of effective small arms range of that damned intersection we halted for first aid.

  In the dark, even with night vision goggles, you had to feel all over a casualty's body for holes. If you missed even something small they could bleed to death in a very short time. The assistant gunner had taken rounds in the shoulder and both legs. His vest had stopped one in the chest area. He was screaming from the pain, but as soon as we controlled the bleeding and hit him with a morphine syrette he'd be all right.

  The gunner had caught a round in the side as he was poised to fire, and it seemed to have gone into his chest. He was out of it, limp and unresponsive, his eyes rolling around. It didn't look good, but all we could do was get a battle dressing on the entrance wound.

  Linked back up with Vincent, I talked with the Cobras. "Great shooting. You saved our asses. Can you get eyes out in front of my lead squad, over?"

  "Affirmative."

  I stepped out into the street, checked behind me, yelled, "Fire in the hole!" and fired the SMAW back at the intersection. It wasn't bravado. The SMAW was another flimsy piece of shit weapon. It had a habit of not firing when you pulled the trigger, and it wasn't unknown for it to go off when the trigger wasn't pulled. An Israeli design rammed up our ass by their whores in Congress and never adopted by the Israeli Army, who preferred captured Russian RPG-7's that worked. I didn't want a rocket firing by accident while I was carrying it, and definitely didn't want to lug the full thirty pounds of loaded launcher if I didn't have to.

  Then someone fired an RPG back at me. The rocket hit in the middle of the street with a blinding flash magnified by my night goggle. A Marine went down yelling, "Corpsman!"

  Doc Bob and I ran up at the same time. PFC Cerullo was peppered with fragments, and my little Doc, who had turned into quite the tiger, kicked him hard in the ass, shouting, "Get up and walk, goddammit! You ain't hurt bad enough to carry." Cerullo sheepishly got to his feet and limped down the street.

  "Move out," I radioed Staff Sergeant Frederick.

  No more RPG's, though I didn't know the reason why until later. The weapon gave off a huge backblast when it was fired. You couldn't shoot an RPG from inside a room or the blast would bounce back off the walls and take out the operator. They had to be fired from a roof, a balcony, or a street. And as soon as anyone did that the Cobras pounced.

  Sergeant Eberhardt got his people ready to go, but the column in front of us wasn't moving. I couldn't get a straight answer on the radio, so I ran up ahead to see what was happening, poor Vincent loping along behind me.

  "What's going on!" I shouted as I reached Sergeant Turner's squad.

  "That little fucking coward Peterson flipped out, sir," a Marine called from a darkened doorway.

  There was a knot of Marines a little farther up the street. Lance Corporal Peterson had his arms and legs wrapped around an iron fence grate, screaming and crying hysterically. Three Marines were trying to pry him off.

  "We can't get him loose, sir," Sergeant Turner shouted to me.

  The three Marines were beating and kicking at Peterson, to no avail. You have no idea how amazingly strong someone in the grip of hysteria can be.

  "You've got to," I shouted back. "We can't lose contact with 1st squad, and the house is going to blow in...," I looked at my watch, "four minutes. You've got to get moving now."

  I ran up ahead to make sure we were still connected to 1st squad, yelping over the radio to the Staff Sergeant at the same time. We still had contact. On my way back I ran into Sergeant Turner with Peterson draped over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

  "Move out," I radioed the Staff Sergeant again.

  Once we got going I went down the column counting heads, making sure no one hadn't got the word or been left behind in a doorway.

  During the Mayaguez rescue operation of 1975, a 3-man machine gun team was left behind as Marines pulled back onto helicopters at night and under heavy fire after assaulting Koh Tang Island. The team presumably disappeared into the killing fields of Cambodia.

  The thought of this happening to anyone under my command made me a fanatic on the subject. So whatever we did, the team leaders physically counted every head. They reported to the squad leaders, who reported to me. "Have we got everyone?" was my never-ending refrain. The words "I think so," were banned from everyone's vocabulary.

  We were moving, but the adren
aline drain combined with the over 6,000 foot altitude was wiping us out. We seemed to be crawling.

  I kept one eye on my watch. Less than a minute left on the fuses.

  We cut back on our original direction. I stayed on the radio, making sure we didn't end up in a firefight with Milburn's platoon. Trying to link up like that, in contact and under fire, was incredibly dangerous. If we started shooting at each other we could do a lot more damage than the Yemenis had been able to.

  Corporal Asuego's point fire team snapped infrared chemlights in their helmet bands. We took it very slow. Milburn's Marines saw it and let him know on their intra-squad radio. Milburn told me over the company net, and I passed it down on my intra-squad radio.

  Sergeant Eberhardt's squad was being pursued by a few die-hards. Third squad had to have one fire team set up and shooting while the others moved, rotating positions as they made their way down the street.

  As the last man came in one of Milburn's machine-gun teams, positioned and ready, opened up and sprayed down the street. Even the die-hards weren't up for that. I made another head count—we had everyone.

  Just as we linked up the house blew. A flash that washed out our night vision gear again, then a shock wave that felt like an earthquake and knocked us off our feet again. Everyone took what cover they could as big pieces of debris began to rain down.

  The village must have thought they'd been nuked, because that was it—they'd had enough. All the firing just shut off.

  As soon as pieces of the house stopped falling Milburn's Marines lent a hand with our wounded, and we moved a lot faster.

  We passed through a hole in the stone village wall O'Brien had blown with two 20-pound satchel charges of plastic explosive. It said something about my night that I'd never even heard them go off.

  As I brought up the rear into the landing zone perimeter, there was Staff Sergeant Frederick counting us all in.

  "Have we got everyone?" I asked him.

  "Yes, sir. Including the prisoners."

  I clapped him on the shoulder and ran up to Sergeant Turner to help him get Peterson off his back. Peterson's neck was all wet where I grabbed him. There was blood on my hand. I felt a wound on the back of Peterson's neck just below the helmet, and either an entry or an exit wound in his face. Another pair of dead eyes stared back at me. Sergeant Turner and I just looked at each other. I didn't know what to say. All I could think to do was walk off to the command post to report in.