The young lady behind the bar, an attractive young woman, replied, “Thank you sir, but I’m only a corporal – just working here to earn a few bucks. I see that we can finally close out the pool…” The quizzical look on my face must have alerted her to my confusion.
“Sir, most of the noncoms and even a few of the officers – or so I’ve overheard – have been figuring that you were going to get overwhelmed with the job, and that our dear leader there was going to win his bet with the XO that he could drink you under the table and crack you after giving you an untenable workload for the last few months. Congratulations sir, you’ve made a lot of people very unhappy with what I’m seeing – oh, they won’t be upset with you, just pissed that you’re the superhuman that the rest of us figured. I won a hundred bucks.”
I pursed my lips and raised one eyebrow as she’d began, and then both, as she finished. “I’ll just forget that I heard about four different reasons to start a witch hunt, Corporal, provided you help me get… our dear leader… back to his office or home or quarters or whatever.”
She suppressed a laugh. “Thank you, sir, and yes sir, I’ll take care of it. If he comes out, I’ll just tell him that you tried to wake him and then needed to depart because… let’s say you got a call from one of the battalion commanders, perhaps?”
“Yes, that will be fine, corporal…”
“Jenkins, sir. Happy to be of service, sir – and glad that my new commander is everything that we’ve heard, and then some.” She was practically beaming at me, at this point. I found it a little embarrassing, but I knew how important it was for troops to believe in their leadership – so I tossed her a quick smile and, “As you were, Corporal” before I walked out.
I chuckled and shook my head as I left – using my implant for a quick message to my duty driver to meet me out front. When he arrived… “Take me to 1 Batt HQ.” That reminded me, too, at my current position, I was entitled to a driver of my own. I made a mental note to tell Skip, my RSM, that he needed to find Jenkins and reassign her as my driver – no, you sick bastard, I don’t screw my subordinates; I wanted her as my driver because she clearly had a solid grasp on when to keep her mouth shut, and when to speak up. I needed those kinds of people around me.
We didn’t have any other incidents like that, fortunately – things actually got to be pretty routine – and far, FAR easier, since the push for more damned reports out of my command “mysteriously” eased off by about 75%.
Unfortunately, funding was still an issue – and one that I was going to grow to be really disgusted with in the future.
I spent the next ten or twelve months pushing my troops through every exercise we could get funding for. I had to get a little creative – I don’t think I broke any actual laws by doing things that we did, but I’m sure I bent them in ways that were not expected. Troops were encouraged to “volunteer” as “security” at various bars, etc… on a rotating schedule. I didn’t want an entire company or god help me, battalion, all doing “security” at once, but I did want them out there getting experience in dealing with unpleasant people. Officers weren’t exempt; the deal was unofficially put out there as “go with your teams” because it gave leadership opportunities. Above the platoon level, officers and senior NCO leadership were expected to roll through – and in some cases, to play devil’s advocate (okay, I flat out told them I wanted them causing problems for other units to have to solve). It was training we could do without cost, and while it wasn’t extra jumps or more time on the range, it was a skillset that most troops don’t get in the first place.
I adjusted fairly well, getting along with my battalion leaders and their NCOs – in fact, I even bought a little place of my own outside of the base with a swimming pool and a decently sized yard. If you do the math, my paychecks were barely getting spent, and the money was just piling up, unused. The house, yard, pool, and the additions I added, made for a good way to get a bit of extra time away for my leadership team so we could get to know each other. I also made it available to the rest of the regiment’s units on a reward basis… and pretty soon, “The Colonel” was being hailed as “The best commander this unit has ever had!” Which was, I’m not ashamed to say, partly my intent. The stick works well to get results through negative reinforcement, but it’s important to mesh that with carrots of positive reinforcement from time to time as well.
Those additions? I had a small shooting range installed – only a hundred yards, but we added 3d-moving targets, plus another surprise that frankly, the NCOs thought I was an evil bastard for adding: a light voltage shock. We checked in advance, and the M34s weren’t affected by the shock, but boy, when troops had 3d targets zigging and zagging, all the while getting closer and closer… inside 50 yards, they started getting light shocks. At 25 yards, the shocks were noticeable, and at 10 yards, any soldiers that hadn’t engaged their targets were given a very strong encouragement to improve their aim.
“But wait, Wolf, that costs ammo!” Yes, it did, and I paid out the ass. It got to the point that I actually started putting limits on how many times any soldier was allowed to use it, and also started cutting it down to once every 2 weeks, then once every three. Those fuckers were trigger happy, and I was blowing through my paycheck in no time. For the first time in a long time, I again found myself actually being conscious about money and material things – because they were starting to get depleted faster than I was acquiring them.
I’d started watching the media more, as well, and that’s about the only reason why I wasn’t caught by surprise by the warning order that came down the chain of command: prepare to deploy. The islands in the Pacific had historically always been pretty great places to take “vacation” time – I had grown up with the idea that a “vacation” meant going somewhere far away to hurt people and break things, so the historical concept was one that I took a bit of adjusting to really understand.
I did get an unpleasant surprise; Skip – Regimental Sergeant Major Trickett – was transferred out, due to age. That sucked, especially since the warning order had us likely to deploy within the year. I wasn’t happy about it, but there wasn’t much I could do about it – he was too old, and he was going to a nice cushy desk job and likely retired not too long after that.
I got a pleasant surprise after that, though – my replacement Sergeant Major was that cheeky little fucker, Pangan. He showed up in my doorway one day, with Corporal Hazlitt squawking behind her, “You can’t go in there without an appointment, Sergeant Major!” and his reply along the lines of, “Shut up, toots, or I’ll paddle you like the last time I beat up this jumped-up Colonel!”
I looked up and laughed. “Beat me up? Fuck you, Pangan, get your sorry ass in here. What are you doing in the area? Suzy, it’s fine, I know this slack-ass from my last unit, he’s allowed in… this once, I suppose. Next time, though, shoot him.”
He walked in and closed the door behind him. “Brice, what the fuck are you doin’ here?”
“Well sir, I figured that since you were short a sergeant major, you were gonna need someone to hold your hand through the next deployment… That, or I got ordered to, but hey who’s keeping track of details?”
We laughed and spend the next few hours reminiscing – Team 9 had a new officer that was boring and by the book… Colonel Bradburry had finally been promoted and was Brigadier General Bradburry now, also promoted out. From what he’d described, it didn’t feel like I was so ‘out in the cold’ – it just felt like some place I’d been before that wasn’t like I remembered it. That helped, a little.
“Brice, I think you’re going to enjoy the next few months… since we have a lot of work to do in preparation for the next vacation. Have you been keeping up with the news?”
“Yes sir, I have… I always liked the idea of warm sandy beaches, especially when it was so cold at home.” I wasn’t sure what the hell he was whining about, since it was rarely ever below freezing, but then again, I didn’t know all of his history.
It occurred to me that if he’d grown up in the Philippines, maybe this place was pretty cold. I asked him and he laughed… “Fuck no, I grew up in Nawlins, sir! Still warmer than this place, but most of the bases I’ve been at have been chillier, come winter time.”
That was a good thing. Things were going to be pretty hot where we were headed, and I didn’t mean just the weather.
Chapter 31: Back in the Saddle Again
The orders came through and we did the usual six-month pre-deployment work-up at Fort Knox again. It felt strange, because I hadn’t been here as an officer, before. The last time I’d come through was with the 148th Infantry Regiment…
Wait. I should clarify – Yes, I’d been at Knox previously, as an officer. Handling paperwork and other crap as a day-in-day-out logistics officer routine is one thing; going through Knox as part of a pre-deploy workup is a totally different story.
When I was in the 148th, we did classroom training (Ethics and Values), we did mental and physical conditioning (Obstacle courses, PT – Lots and lots of PT), medical training, weapons training, and combat and crew drills.
As commander of the 501st Infantry Regiment, I got more. A lot more.
I had to review Command and Control procedures – ie, at what point was I supposed to take direct command (nearly always), and when was it better for me to step back and let the on-scene platoon, company, etc… commander do their thing, on their own (damn near never). That was bullshit. Remember the non-training training I had my troops doing? Yeah, that was for a reason. This was garbage, plain and simple. I followed along, however, since that was the game that needed to be played. Once in theater, my command was precisely that – MINE.
I also got briefings and roleplays for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance management. When you’re on the battlefield, you’ve got a lot of information coming from all sides – and you need to be able to distinguish between what’s important, and what’s fluff. Surveillance is watching…. Intelligence is information you collect from all sources, not just surveillance, and recon management is making sure you’re doing it all effectively. I won’t get into the difference between surveillance and reconnaissance, but trust me, they’re different – and as a commander, it’s critical that you understand the difference.
Fire integration and de-confliction was another topic they covered; in a homogenous unit (i.e. all infantry, or all artillery, or all any ONE thing, etc..) that doesn’t really matter. For our purposes, as blended units (We were infantry, first and foremost, but we also drew on artillery and aviation support as well), this was critical – it meant we didn’t want artillery rounds dropping on top of aircraft that were doing strafing or bombing runs.
There were other topics covered - medical evacuation (“medevac”), emergency resupply, information ops, commander’s emergency response, but the only one I want to really touch on was rules of engagement review – because that’s the one that caused me so much headache.
In a nutshell, our mission was to disarm and/or disable enemy forces, to assure the safety of American interests in the region. Remember, Hawaii and American Samoa were part of the Polynesian region, even if at a greater than ‘normally expected’ distance. As much as I hated to admit it, the problem was due to insurgent activities caused by no, or unstable, government in a number of different countries.
My, but why were the governments gone, or destabilized? I didn’t have anything to do with that. Nope, wasn’t me, and you can’t prove anything.
Okay yeah, we had done our job perfectly, and now we were having to go back and clean up the mess we’d created. The only saving grace was that we’d done it on orders from higher, not as a target of opportunity. That said, I’ve heard that ‘just following orders’ wasn’t a good enough defense for other soldiers in history; I doubted we’d get any extra leniency, if we ended up on the wrong side of history.
I was talking about rules of engagement, though – RoE, as we all called it.
We couldn’t fire unless we were the target of hostile intent. That…. Was stupid. We were invading – how the hell are we supposed to pacify the native population, if we can’t use suppressing fire? That sounded like a recipe for disaster, to me. That said, the phrasing was just enough that I already knew what my ‘out’ was.
We were told, “no excessive damage to cultural property or buildings will be tolerated, except in cases where not doing so would result in significant civilian deaths.” Apparently, it was okay for us to take horrendous casualties.
“Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target. If no PID, contact your next higher commander for decision”. Yeah, no. If someone attacks my guys? They’re a legitimate military target at that point.
I won’t go into further detail; you can see the kind of garbage our higher ups were handcuffing us with.
Let’s cut right to the chase: When push comes to shove, my mission takes precedence over the rules of engagement. Yes, there would be a large degree of restraint both expected and required of my troops, but at the same time, if a rule of engagement gets in the way of achieving a part of the mission, it’s going to get ignored.
The assault planning that I worked out with my battalion commanders was short, sweet, and to the point. The plan was to encircle each of the major cities (or an entire island, after we tackle the main objective), then squeeze the interior of that perimeter with additional troops. Accomplishing that was actually simple in theory; we were, after all, airborne infantry.
Cargo aircraft, sometimes more, sometimes less depending on the size of the island we were targeting, would do low-altitude (a thousand feet above ground level, give or take), seashore-proximate pass to permit low-altitude combat drops. This wasn’t SOP, but it was one tactical option available to us – troops would jump without a reserve chute, and the static line on each trooper’s chute would assure rapid deployment. Thank god for the genius who came up with the T-12D Design; that chute gave you a nice, slow, easy spiral downward if you used it as a static drop, giving you a great 360 degree view of what you were jumping into, without going to fast as to cause a trooper in good health to get dizzy, or induce vertigo. That wasn’t the case in heavy winds, but we planned for that and chose a day with light winds – and jumped on the lee side of the island, where there was no significant wind activity.
New Zealand was our first, and largest target – I didn’t want any leakers from smaller targets letting the word get out. The whole operation went according to plan, and we had surprisingly low casualties – then, we (What, did you think I wasn’t going to jump with my troops?!) waited for the next phase. Given the size of the island (or, to be specific, the two main islands) and only the 3200 or so effective troops I had, a full encirclement wasn’t really an option to cover the nearly fourteen thousand kilometers of coastline. That was fine; we worked on the top military bases as major subsidiary objectives, and then distributed troop allotments to other cities and regions to give us best possible cover of any outstanding military assets that could cause us frustration, later.
Ohakea. Woodbourne. Auckland. Burnham. New Plymouth. Devonport. Waiouru.
They each in turn went down like clockwork, and by the end of February, 2105, New Zealand was secured.
Then things got awkward.
For a long time, the Maori – natives of New Zealand, long before “privileged white man” came to oppress them – had had a lot of integration with the rest of the white man. After things went completely to shit during the 8-day war, they largely started distancing themselves from the rest of the white man. “But James,” you say, “the Maori are just a bunch of natives, no training, no equipment, nothing!” Yeah! No.
Seriously. Look up “maori combat demonstration” and tell me if that looks dangerous to you. I suspect the answer is a quick, “nope, not at all.” Now, take off the pretty ethnic dress, and paint those guys dark so they fade into the darkess. Then c
onsider that the spear/club things that they carry are razor sharp for actual combat.. And factor in that they have home-field advantage, and they don’t want us there. Well, I didn’t THINK they did, but I apparently was wrong.
We were well into the occupation and pacification of the island as a whole, by the end of June, 2105. I’d been handling routine reports, prepping intelligence briefs for command back state-side, when Corporal Jenkins (The bartender, remember?) came into the tent I’d had set up outside the city. Yes, tent. I wasn’t about to displace some mayor just to take over his cushy office; I didn’t want to get comfortable, and I didn’t want to make any more enemies than were necessary. It made more sense and fit well into the surroundings of Riverhead Forest, northwest of the main city of Auckland.
“Sir, I think we have a problem. I think. I’m not sure. This probably needs your attention, though.”
I got up and followed her outside, where a number of my troops were armed, standing guard around my tent, but in this case, gathered around and facing what appeared to be a contingent of Maoris.
Rage & Fury Page 31
