Which caused the amount of return fire to really taper off. I wouldn't be sticking my head up either with all that lead flying in. And no one had to shout orders that no one would have heard anyway. It worked perfectly, but never would have if Captain Z hadn't made us practice it on the range.
While the Marines were shooting I was on the radio with my Cobra. O'Brien and I each had one in direct support. We were out of range of naval gunfire. The company 60mm mortar section couldn't carry a lot of ammo, and Captain Z wanted to conserve it until we really needed them.
I'd rather have my own Cobra anyway. The two-man crew had high-powered optics and the best seat in the house.
"Grinch, are you on our tracers?" I asked into the radio. "Affirmative."
"Okay, give me a short cannon burst to confirm." Our conversation was taking place on the company net, at the same time Jack O'Brien was talking to his Cobra. While hitting the village we'd realized that using the squadron callsign and tail numbers had too much potential for lethal confusion, so we started using the pilots' personal callsigns. Living with them aboard ship made such things so much easier. The Grinch was a 1st lieutenant whose old man's face did vaguely resemble the Dr. Seuss character.
The 20mm cannon rattled from high up off to our right, and through my binos I could see the shells explode among the rocks. "Beautiful," I reported. "Now some rockets, HE and Willie Pete."
That familiar whooshing sound again, and my eye followed the black airborne arrows right into the target. White smoke spread from the sailing flecks of burning phosphorus, and I shouted into the intra-squad radio, "Go! Go!"
The squads began to fire and move, and it was beautiful. When I'd first taken over the platoon the squad leaders stationed themselves behind their Marines, screaming, "Prepare to rush! Rush!" And everything soon degenerated into chaos.
Now the squad leaders were out in front firing and moving, with their fire teams alongside them. When the leaders stopped or started or shifted left or right, so did the Marines.
Each fire team bounded forward in pairs, one Marine shooting while the other moved. Vincent and I covered each other. I was in the line near Corporal Asuego, but otherwise left it to him and Sergeant Eberhardt.
The previous night had proved to me that combat was just barely controlled chaos. Anything else was Monday morning spin from commanders who, when the dust settled, were usually amazed to discover all the strange ways everything had turned out. The idea of winning or losing resting on one or two almost random moves didn't sit well with them, or the writers and historians trying to make sense of it later. So they ended up imposing an order that didn't really exist.
The sheer noise, not to mention the dispersion necessary in the face of modern weapons, meant you could scarcely influence events farther away than you could see—about thirty feet or so, depending on the terrain. Especially since a sky full of lead made it inadvisable to raise your head more than a foot above the ground.
So you couldn't direct the troops like chess pieces once real bullets started flying. Call the main moves, yes, but otherwise you had to let the small unit leaders execute. And mine had shown me they could. The leader of a 4-man fire team was the most important man on the battlefield, even though he got the least training.
My job was complicated by the need to stay on the radio, even as Vincent and I fired and moved along with everyone else.
There was no cover except for the occasional dip in the terrain, just sand and scrub. Our fire was going to have to get us forward.
The Grinch sent two Hellfire missiles into the rocks, then peppered them with his cannon as we got closer. "I've got people bugging out in front of you," he reported.
"Don't ask me, just take 'em out," I gasped into the handset as I threw myself down yet again.
The cannon rattled, but I couldn't see what he was shooting at.
Our two machine-guns, shot from the bipods while firing and moving along with us, were literally chewing the rocks into pieces. The smaller arms weren't nearly as impressive. No matter how used I was getting to the woodpecker tapping of incoming AK-47 rounds, every vicious whine of a ricochet skipping by made every muscle in my body spasm involuntarily. Almost as bad was the visual evidence of tracers hitting ground and rock and sailing off in every direction.
Asuego's squad was closing in on the rocks. We were still taking fire. At first it scared the living shit out of you, until you realized how little of it was really effective. That is, until a machine-gun burst kicked up sand right between Vincent and I.
Pretty sure I could see where it was coming from, I shrugged the AT-4 off my shoulder and opened up the sights and handgrip. After a quick peek to check that the backblast area behind me was clear, I cocked the rocket and aimed at the space between the rocks. Letting half my breath out, I pressed the firing button.
No sensation that the rocket had fired other than seeing it leap out in front of me. It hit the rocks with a massive bang. I left the empty fiberglass tube behind in the sand.
The Grinch kept up with his cannon until we were less than 30 yards from the rocks, then he ceased fire. In peacetime an attack helicopter pilot would have shit himself at the thought of firing his cannon within 200 yards of advancing troops. But you had to risk casualties and lean into your own supporting arms, not giving the enemy any chance to get in some unhindered shooting.
We were still firing, though, approaching through the dispersing haze of white phosphorus smoke. Corporal Asuego's eyes were a foot wide, and his mouth was open. As I'm sure mine was. I pulled a grenade from my pouch and showed it to him. He took one out and showed it to his team leaders, who were all watching him.
We didn't have a firing range back at Lejeune where we could maneuver and use small arms, AT-4's, and grenades all together, so it wasn't the Marines' habit to use them. And only habit worked under stress.
I pointed to Asuego that it was his move. I rolled onto my back as I thumbed off the safety clip, then pulled the pin.
When Asuego's left his hand I pitched mine over the rocks. As they blew we went over, me pumping my hand toward the ground and yelling over the intra-squad radio, "Stay low! Stay low!" I didn't want the Marines to skyline themselves as they came over the high ground.
I scrambled between two rocks and almost stepped on a body. But the guy wasn't dead. He'd been aiming his AK between the rocks, and he tried to roll over and bring it to bear on me. My rifle hung up in the enclosed space. I had to knock the stock up over my shoulder as I fell backward to get some room. I fired about six rounds down into him, almost putting one into one of my own feet. Once I stopped hyperventilating, this prompted another order into the intra-squad radio, "Make sure these bodies are really down and not faking!"
I took the radio headset back from Vincent, telling him, "Search this guy for documents."
I smelled burned meat. Had these fuckers been barbecuing in their defensive positions? Then as I looked around I realized that what I was smelling was human flesh, cooked by white phosphorus.
The squad leaders came up on the intra-squad with ammunition and casualty reports. We didn't have any wounded. Most of the credit for that was the Cobra's, and an unfair fight was fine by me. We'd used quite a bit of ammo. Taking the extra bandoleers had been a good call.
The combination of raw fear and acrid high explosive smoke had sucked every last bit of moisture from my mouth, and I pulled hard at the drinking tube of my Camelbak.
The Grinch came up on the net to tell me he had to go refuel and rearm. "Come back with more Willie Pete," I told him. "They don't like that." The phosphorus seemed to get in between the rocks the way high explosive didn't.
Before they left they fired the rest of the rockets in their pods down the ridge. His replacement came on station and I was talking to The Reverend. Which was what he was going to be when he got out of the Corps. The quietest, most mild-mannered guy on the ground, and a wild man in the air.
If it had been training I would have continued tearing dow
n the ridge after the enemy. But the Marines had to catch their breath and reload magazines, and I wanted to get all my ducks in a row before starting again.
Scanning though my binoculars, it seemed we were taking fire from about four positions farther down the ridge. Mostly single shot and short bursts. They might be running low on ammo, and either lost their machine-guns or were keeping them under cover. I'd seen at least one Russian 7.62mm PKM and two Yemenis with ammo belts wrapped across their chests Pancho Villa fashion lying among the rocks.
The Reverend called me and said, "I need to make sure exactly where you are. Can you mark your pos?"
I didn't want to pop a smoke grenade and let everyone else know, not if I didn't have to. I dug the little survival mirror that I always used for shaving out of my accessory pouch. I held it under my eye, reflected the sun onto my outstretched finger, and flashed it at the Cobra.
"He's got your mirror, sir," Vincent said, the radio handset screwed into his ear. A headset for him and a separate handset for me would have saved us both a lot of trouble, but that's the kind of little thing grunts never get because it doesn't meet the cost-benefit test.
I took the handset back from him and began coordinating our next assault with The Reverend.
Then Captain Z broke it. "Stand fast, 2nd. We've got Harriers coming in."
We were finally close enough to the ship for the jets to put in an appearance. The aviation generals loved the Harrier because it could take off and land vertically, but that very characteristic gave it piss-poor range and load-carrying ability.
O'Brien came on the net and asked the question that was on the tip of my tongue. "Six, one. What's the ordnance?"
"Two ships inbound," Captain Z replied, "with 6 GBU-12's."
Six 500 pound laser-guided bombs. And that was all the two planes were really carrying. Just to reach us they both had to have two big auxiliary fuel tanks under their wings. And all the pay load capacity left over was two bombs and a Litening laser targeting and designation pod on one aircraft, and four bombs on the other. Pretty pathetic. I would have sent them home and stuck with the Cobras, but of course someone must have insisted they get into the show.
I heard them coming in, but otherwise had nothing to do with the process. Enlisted Special Forces guys were calling in Air Force and Navy air in Afghanistan, but the Marine pilots union had decreed that only pilots could call in close air support. Either forward air controllers (FACs) on the ground or Cobras in the air. I knew how to do it but it was a work rules issue, even more ironic because the Corps was the only one of the services that took close air support seriously.
No one even asked me about targets. I guess our FAC, who was located with Captain Z, had the same know-it-all attitude.
O'Brien's Cobra fired a white phosphorus rocket down the other ridge as a target mark. I didn't see the Harrier weapon release, but a cloud of black smoke appeared on the ridge, soundless like a silent movie. Then the noise of the blast and the pressure wave reached us a few seconds later.
When The Reverend fired a smoke rocket about 800 yards down the ridge, I told the platoon over the intra-squad radio, "Get your heads down." Of course in typical lieutenant fashion I kept looking through my binoculars.
No whistling noise or anything like that. I kept looking, expecting to see an explosion, when it went off right behind us. I went from lying on the ground to being lifted up a foot above it, then gravity slammed me back down into the sand.
Feeling physically sick, as if someone had just kicked my balls up into my body, I spoke into the intra-squad radio, "You still there, 2nd?"
The silence confirmed that my 2nd squad had just been wiped out. Then Sergeant Turner's voice, "Here, sir."
My relief was indescribable. "Any casualties?"
"Negative, but I'm looking at a frag the size of a dinner plate that almost parted my hair."
I was about to suggest he save it so we could both jam it up the pilot's ass when Captain's Z's voice in the handset said, "Come in, 2nd?"
"Still here, Six. No casualties, but it was close. We could live without any more airstrikes."
"Don't worry, I sent them home."
All that laser-guided bomb footage from Desert Storm? You only saw the ones that hit the target. And the targets were all high contrast like buildings and tanks. Low contrast ground didn't work as well.
"Six, this is two," I said into the handset. "I'm continuing my assault."
"Go ahead, it's your call."
We increased our rate of fire, and The Reverend worked over our front with rockets.
This one was like opening night compared to the dress rehearsal. The squads moved even faster; any weapon bigger than a rifle got an AT-4 fired at it, and the grenades went into the air as soon as we got close enough.
One poor fool shot an RPG-7 at us. He misjudged our rate of movement and the rocket boomed over our heads to land behind us. The Reverend saw the blue-gray smoke backblast signature and put a Hellfire right on top of him. A 100 pound, 65 inch long missile designed to take out a 50 ton main battle tank. When we reached the spot there was nothing left but scorched stones and some splatter.
Sergeant Eberhardt had one wounded, not too bad. They left him for Sergeant Turner to pick up.
We paused again to reload magazines. I cursed the cheap-ass Marine Corps for only issuing us six each. The sun was almost all the way up. The sand felt blistering hot, like a persistent fan blowing heat up at you.
The white phosphorus left a smog-like haze over the ridge. There were bodies scattered throughout the position, but not many. The staring twisted corpses with bullet holes were a relief compared to the ones torn into pieces by the rockets, or with basketball-sized wounds from 20mm cannon shells. More were splayed out farther in front of us, cut down by The Reverend as they tried to pull back.
Fire began to snap at us from the short ridge to our right front. I guess they'd been waiting until we were in range. Return fire from Sergeant Turner's squad behind us. We could have used the Harriers to deal with that, but I wasn't asking them back.
I took the handset from Vincent to give Captain Z a report. And just as I pushed the button to transmit something blew up right beside me.
I came to being dragged by the carrying strap on the back collar of my flak jacket. At first unable to figure out what the hell was going on, then aware of the bushes going by my face.
This triggered another explosion, inside me this time, and I had to roll over and throw up immediately. I hoped I wasn't in danger of dying, because for about a half a minute I wasn't capable of anything except projectile vomiting on a creosote bush. I sensed Marines rolling away from me.
Another explosion, though not as close this time, and again I was grabbed by the back of the flak jacket with the admonition, "Sorry, sir." And my ass was on a sleigh ride across the sand and rocks again.
I think my eyeballs were bouncing around more than I was—they were having trouble focusing. I'd had my bell rung before, but not like this. When my forward progress finally stopped I felt like I was still moving.
Staff Sergeant Frederick appeared in my field of view. "Sorry, sir." Everyone was apologizing.
My left ear was working fine, but the right was a little off. My Camelback was gone. I reached back for one of my canteens. I got it out, so the hand-to-eye was still working. I took a drink and didn't throw up again. "I think I'm ready to hear what happened."
"They dropped some mortars on us, sir. We had to get out of there fast."
"We got everyone?" I demanded. The platoon commander's never-ending refrain.
"Yes, sir. All accounted for."
"We lose anyone?"
"No sir. Three wounded. No emergencies."
"Am I one of them?" I noticed that my right sleeve was ripped to pieces and bloodstained, and a battle dressing was on my arm.
"Better make it four then, sir."
"Do we need to move again before they adjust onto us?"
"I don't think so, sir.
As soon as they started dropping both Cobras went after the tube."
They weren't fools. Once again they'd figured out my pattern. Waited for us to pause on the position we'd taken, and then hit us with their mortar. I'd broken a rule: always assault through and beyond an objective, just in case the enemy had mortars or artillery targeted on their own position.
I hadn't forgotten, but their positions were the only spots on the ridge with any cover. Assaulting through would have meant stopping out in the open. Well, they'd made me pay anyway. No right answers—you just had to pick one and live with it.
"Did the Cobras get the mortar?" I asked, looking around for Vincent.
"That's the bad news, sir," the Staff Sergeant informed me matter-of-factly. "We lost the radio."
"Vincent?" I said sharply, rising up on my elbows.
"He's okay, sir, but the round that landed near you tore the radio to shit. Maybe saved Vincent's ass."
And there was Vincent popping into view, showing off his perforated set. I looked it over. It was a write-off.
"You better dump that, Crazy," Staff Sergeant Frederick advised him. "No sense carrying around the dead weight."
"But I'm signed for it!" Vincent protested shrilly.
Even with rounds still passing overhead, everyone within earshot cracked up.
When he regained his composure, the Staff Sergeant said, "It's a combat loss, Crazy. No one's going to make you pay for it."
Vincent turned to me as the honest broker. "No shit, sir?"
"No shit," I said. "Lose the radio." His pack bag was also shredded, barely holding together. "The pack, too." I didn't think the Yemenis would get any intelligence benefit out of it. Even if they managed to repair it, they probably had better FM radios than we did.
William Christie 03 - The Blood We Shed Page 21
