All's Well That Ends Well

After the nasty little friendly fire incident I ran back to battalion, hopping mad, and determined to make someone pay for all the inane shelling.

I headed for the sand-bagged .88 batteries that we kept next to the hospital and came upon an artillery unit.

"God dammit- Who ordered in all that artillery?! I haven't seen a shelling that bad since Jose Lima was pitching for the Mets!" I screamed.

"What about Gallardo? The Rockies put 11 on him about a month ago." said one of the artillery men.

Well that did it- getting cute with me, and taking a shot at future staff ace Yovani Gallardo. What did Gallardo ever do anyway? I had heard enough. I grabbed the man and held my .45 to his head.

"Now you guys are going to start talking or I'm going to start wasting people! We start with the funnyman!" I yelled at the artillery unit.

The men appeared stunned, but remained quiet. I needed them to start talking.

I cocked my .45 and pressed it on the artillery man's forehead.

"I caca dao VC! I caca dao VC!" I yelled.

The situation grew more and more tense. From one of the watch-towers, Barnes and Elias looked on in disapproval.

"Stay out of this you two- this ain't your fight!" I screamed at them. Elias just shook his head and looked away. Frickin' condescending water-walker.

I was about a split-second away from pulling the trigger when a man in a French military uniform came forward from the artillery team.

"C'est moi." he said.

"You ignorant ass-hole! You killed alot of people with that fouled up fire mission!" I screamed.

I recognized this guy- he was the same guy who accidentally fired on us when were storming the Anthill outside of Boulder about a month back- we lost alot of good men up there.
Well this dog's time had come- I was going to make an example of him. I put a pair of handcuffs on him and told him that I was going to blow him away.

He didn't respond.

Then I drew my .22, and at point blank range fired. The artillery man dropped to the ground, dead.

A medic who heard the gun-shot came rushing out.

"Is everything OK he asked?"

"Yeah we're fine now- just a little flashback." I responded.

I walked back to the barracks to get some sleep. I had been up fighting the whole night- Things had gotten pretty hairy at times, but it looked like everything was fine now and I could finally just lay down and get some well deserved shut-eye.

Night Attack!

I hopped into a bunker with Procop, Pacman Jones and Commissar VanderNutz and got ready for the attack. We had modest cover- mostly just sandbags. But we could hear them out off in the distance- yelling at each other- it was the whole god damn third division of the Colorado National Guard, and they were about to swarm our positions. They started by probing our positions- they sent up a few scouts, launched a couple flares, and then there was a little small arms fire- just a cromulent distraction. This went on for about an hour or so- maybe longer.





Then around 2100 hours it got quiet- like real quiet- that's when we knew they were getting ready to make their push- one of the guardsman blew a whistle, and the soldiers poured at our positions- they were dressed in full body armor and firing hi-tech XM-8 assault rifles that even the U.S. military wasn't using- plus they a couple unmanned predator drones circling overhead directing their artillery, and dropping snake and nape on our pos. We fired up our remaining flares and the sky was lit up by tracer fire. Our perimeter was compromised almost immediately, but our concertina wire slowed them up real good and made them pretty good targets. I fired my BAR at the wire- burst after burst at those running dogs- just hoping to get some dumb sons of bitches that got swallowed up in it.





We held off their first wave, but then suddenly the bunker next to us went up like a roman candle- must have been a direct hit from a bazooka round- this freaked Pacman Jones out and the bastard ran out on us- I tried to shoot the deserter as he fled, but he dodged my pistol fire and left the battleground. I vowed to get him next time.





Our radio bunker went up next, and then two of the perimeter bunkers- slowly but surely the guardsmen were overcoming our defenses with their bloody bazooka and grenade attacks. Then they ambushed a platoon of Soviet paratroopers that were trying to relieve our position- our reinforcements- they cut the poor bastards to pieces- and that was all we had for relief.





Then, with everyone else out of the way, the guardsmen turned their attention to our bunker.
"Dude- Where'd all these fawkin guardsmen come from?" asked Commissar VanderNutz.

Beats the shit out of me. But the man in the green fatigues- a worthy adversary- was everywhere. Nevertheless, we fought on- hoping for our miracle. And that's what we got- the remaining troops rallied around our bunker and we shot the shit out of their initial assault and stopped them cold. The second wave ran right into our claymores, and sustained heavy casualties. Rather than attack again, they regrouped around the perimeter and began to retreat. It looked like they had had enough for one night. Our men crawled out of their bunkers- many badly wounded- and we started cheering and celebrating. Procop cut his thumb off in joy. It was a great time.


But then our .88 batteries opened up- someone back at battalion decided to saturate the whole perimeter in artillery rounds as a last-ditch effort to stop the guardsmens' advance- they didn't realize that we had already chased them off.

The rounds were hitting anything and everything around the perimeter - then the rounds started coming in even shorter, and some were landing in our interior fortifications- they even hit our supply wagon and elephant train. Appalled, I hopped out of the bunker and grabbed a field radio off of a dead comrade and put a call in to battalion.

"Ripper bravo six- Ripper bravo six- Check your fire! Check our fire! Enemy has retreated! You're lighting up friendlies! " I screamed.

But the message did not get through and the barrage continued for what must have been the longest 20 god damn minutes of my life- seemingly longer than the opening statement in any Sacramento misdemeanor criminal trial on record. So me, Procop, and Commissar VanderNutz buried ourselves in the bunker and hoped we didn't take a direct hit.

When the barrage was finally over, we emerged from the bunker to look at the wasteland around us- the sun was coming up- Eos rhododoctoros - and we were confronted with a landscape of scorched earth, twisted bodies, and obliterated buildings.

Battalion had sent some medics and a dog handler to look through the rubble for survivors.

One of the medics looked at me. "You all right sir? Y'konw, we're real sorry about all that artillery." he said.

"Yeah to you people it's just a game. Well it doesn't matter anyway- your apology is just too little, too late." I said, as I stormed off.

I was going to find out who at battalion gave the artillery order, and I was going to put a bullet in his head.

Una Banana Daiquiri!

We had heard some rumors bout a band of teenagers roaming around the mountains surrounding New Baumstark, attacking supply convoys in hit-and run assaults. We did not pay alot of attention at first, but then they went over the line and ambushed one of our armored columns.




Ivan was quite displeased with all this, and so he dispatched Pacman Jones, myself, Procop, and a platoon of Cubans into the mountains on a search and destroy mission. We were to locate and engage the guerrillas, and to inflict as many casualties as possible in the hopes of eliminating them as an effective fighting force.





As we proceeded up the trail I spied a large cocktail glass containing a yellow frosted fluid. There appeared to be some sort of detonator cord coming out of the back. "Una banana daiquiri!" I yelled.


But it was too late- our point man, Juan Pablo, heard my scream and tried to jump back, but at that point the daiquiri blew-up and Juan Pablo was blown in half.




We weren't going to fight our way past any more booby traps. We called in some engineers, collected Juan Pablo's remains, and walked back to town, quite dejected. As we headed back into town, Commissar VanderNutz rushed out and greeted us with a profanity-laced diatribe about how we were a bunch of wimps and he we needed to go back into the mountains and finish things off with the guerrillas. We told him we were done for the day, and he shook his head at us, cocked his AK-47, and ran into the brush to flush out the guerrillas on his own. Fool's courage.





We started to relax, but in the distance I could hear artillery fire- Some of it outgoing, and some of it was incoming. And then from the opposite end of town I saw one of our men running- he was one of the Soviet paratroopers who had been out on an ambush- he was badly wounded now, and was covered in blood and bandages.



"Get it together man!" I said, in a spot-on Mills impersonation.



The injured paratrooper did not seem amused. "The national guard- they're everywhere- they're coming right at us- they're right on my tail and they're not stopping for shit!" he screamed.

Then he grabbed a canteen and frantically hobbled off. Worthless deserter. I drew my pistol and proceeded to shoot him in the back as he tried to flee. The yellow-bellied coward dropped to the ground like a ton of bricks. You don't cut and run from a fight- not in my army anyway.



Then I got in one of our bunkers and loaded my BAR- and our troops poured out into our trenches and earthworks to defend the perimeter. I stared off in the distance as nightfall blanketed the horizon in darkness. There was going to be a long night of fighting ahead.