GWOT VI: Bringing It Home
Feb. 8th, 2020 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI: Bringing It Home
"Few tactical activities require more teamwork than a hip-shoot. Everyone must know his job (drivers, gunners, computers, RATELOs) and do it automatically. If success depends on a leader shouting commands and directives to untrained personnel, the mission will fail." -- US Army FM [Field Manual] 7-90, "Tactical Employment of Mortars"
Two pickup trucks.
Both flying huge California Republic flags.
Neither towing a trailer - and just about every piece of California rolling stock has a trailer behind it.
The truck beds carefully leveled. Hydraulic jacks bolted to all four corners.
In the truck bed, carefully and lovingly placed, on a swivel mount.
A big long pipe, suitable for installation as a stove flue.
In every spare space, in the cabs of the trucks and the corners of the beds, and a bush rack fastened behind the hitch... hundreds of shells.
Multiple GPS and GLONASS units in the cab. Multiple tablets and laptops, and a satcom link. But also optical rangefinders and paper maps, for when the electronics fail or EMCON does not permit their use.
The driver has a tablet mount hooked up to a GPS receiver and a list of locations to drive to, much like a rideshare driver before the Firecracker.
But she's not sharing rides.
She's sharing love, and the whole squad with her.
She pulls up to the coordinates and parks. The crew, including her, jumps out.
They exchange few words.
About a hundred yards away - close enough to support each other, far enough for safety - the other mortar squad is doing the same things.
Jacking down the contact points. Setting up the aiming stakes. Verifying location. Setting range, bearing and charge. Verifying round.
A soldier glances a second time to be sure, reaches behind himself blind, takes the round that is placed into his hand, and "hangs" it. Drops it down the tube.
*CRUMP*
From there, it is just like an exercise. Hang, *CRUMP*, hang, *CRUMP*.
Each mortar truck fires ten rounds. Then, four of the five team members quickly take up the jacks and the aiming stakes, secure the mortar, and mount up.
The corporal, sitting in the front passenger side ("shotgun") is last to get on board. He is watching the target through binoculars.
Observation of the fall of shot, in the antiseptic terms of war.
###
A peaceful Sunday morning.
A sudden falling whistle.
And all the windows on the tiny town's Main Street shatter at once, spraying fragments. Few people are hurt, but those who are, are hurt badly. And in post-Firecracker Iowa where hospitals are few and transport times long, to be hurt badly is to die slowly.
The explosions keep tolling, one after another, with the ponderous inevitability of fate.
In three minutes:
-- The town's only gas station is on fire, having been gifted with over a third of the mortar barrage. The fuel clerk would not have been hurt if he had not run outside, thinking there had been a pump problem and that he needed to reach the emergency shut off. He was correct -- yet, he never did. No one did.
-- City Hall is also burning. It is empty but the town's records are destroyed, aside from electronic copies in town officials' homes and microfiche at the state capitol.
-- There is a huge but otherwise harmless hole in the lawn outside the County Courthouse. The mortar round, instead of hitting the building, inexplicably hit a statue instead.
-- The owner and two of his employees are desperately trying to put out the multiple fires in the hardware store. A fourth employee, who had been opening the register, is dead in a spreading pool of her own blood. The town's volunteer fire department rushes to help in time to save the store, but not most of the stock.
-- Both church buses have been destroyed.
-- Three of the four town school buses are inoperable due to shrapnel damage to hoses, tanks and tires, although they do not burn. The fourth has all but one tire flat. By the next day, Church militia has salvaged tires from all over town and gotten it into use, after a fashion.
But the mortar trucks are already rolling.
They have many towns to visit today.
###
The town has a small paper.
The photographer is in time to take pictures.
He has an eye for detail. And a scene full of horrors to capture.
The pictures he takes are uploaded to what is still called the AP news wire.
And flashed to the world.
###
"Sir, operational message."
I look at it briefly. In the language of military bureaucracy, it asks me what the fuck I think I'm doing.
"Hand me that."
I type four words and hit SEND.
###
"Lawful operations of war."
"What the fuck does he mean by lawful operations of war?" rages the duty officer.
"Sir, they've posted the BDA over the datalink."
"So fast?"
He pulls it up and reads. It is linked to the original mission and fire order.
The Battle Damage Assessment, BDA, is antiseptic. But the duty officer can read between the lines.
He reads the fire order. "Shake and bake", a mix of high explosive and incendiary shells.
Then he reads the mission statement, the commander's intent.
He shakes his head.
"Get me the Commanding General, California Expeditionary Forces."
Either way, this is well above his own pay grade.
Someone else will have to decide whether to give Major 18 a medal, or shoot him.
Or maybe both.
"Few tactical activities require more teamwork than a hip-shoot. Everyone must know his job (drivers, gunners, computers, RATELOs) and do it automatically. If success depends on a leader shouting commands and directives to untrained personnel, the mission will fail." -- US Army FM [Field Manual] 7-90, "Tactical Employment of Mortars"
Two pickup trucks.
Both flying huge California Republic flags.
Neither towing a trailer - and just about every piece of California rolling stock has a trailer behind it.
The truck beds carefully leveled. Hydraulic jacks bolted to all four corners.
In the truck bed, carefully and lovingly placed, on a swivel mount.
A big long pipe, suitable for installation as a stove flue.
In every spare space, in the cabs of the trucks and the corners of the beds, and a bush rack fastened behind the hitch... hundreds of shells.
Multiple GPS and GLONASS units in the cab. Multiple tablets and laptops, and a satcom link. But also optical rangefinders and paper maps, for when the electronics fail or EMCON does not permit their use.
The driver has a tablet mount hooked up to a GPS receiver and a list of locations to drive to, much like a rideshare driver before the Firecracker.
But she's not sharing rides.
She's sharing love, and the whole squad with her.
She pulls up to the coordinates and parks. The crew, including her, jumps out.
They exchange few words.
About a hundred yards away - close enough to support each other, far enough for safety - the other mortar squad is doing the same things.
Jacking down the contact points. Setting up the aiming stakes. Verifying location. Setting range, bearing and charge. Verifying round.
A soldier glances a second time to be sure, reaches behind himself blind, takes the round that is placed into his hand, and "hangs" it. Drops it down the tube.
*CRUMP*
From there, it is just like an exercise. Hang, *CRUMP*, hang, *CRUMP*.
Each mortar truck fires ten rounds. Then, four of the five team members quickly take up the jacks and the aiming stakes, secure the mortar, and mount up.
The corporal, sitting in the front passenger side ("shotgun") is last to get on board. He is watching the target through binoculars.
Observation of the fall of shot, in the antiseptic terms of war.
###
A peaceful Sunday morning.
A sudden falling whistle.
And all the windows on the tiny town's Main Street shatter at once, spraying fragments. Few people are hurt, but those who are, are hurt badly. And in post-Firecracker Iowa where hospitals are few and transport times long, to be hurt badly is to die slowly.
The explosions keep tolling, one after another, with the ponderous inevitability of fate.
In three minutes:
-- The town's only gas station is on fire, having been gifted with over a third of the mortar barrage. The fuel clerk would not have been hurt if he had not run outside, thinking there had been a pump problem and that he needed to reach the emergency shut off. He was correct -- yet, he never did. No one did.
-- City Hall is also burning. It is empty but the town's records are destroyed, aside from electronic copies in town officials' homes and microfiche at the state capitol.
-- There is a huge but otherwise harmless hole in the lawn outside the County Courthouse. The mortar round, instead of hitting the building, inexplicably hit a statue instead.
-- The owner and two of his employees are desperately trying to put out the multiple fires in the hardware store. A fourth employee, who had been opening the register, is dead in a spreading pool of her own blood. The town's volunteer fire department rushes to help in time to save the store, but not most of the stock.
-- Both church buses have been destroyed.
-- Three of the four town school buses are inoperable due to shrapnel damage to hoses, tanks and tires, although they do not burn. The fourth has all but one tire flat. By the next day, Church militia has salvaged tires from all over town and gotten it into use, after a fashion.
But the mortar trucks are already rolling.
They have many towns to visit today.
###
The town has a small paper.
The photographer is in time to take pictures.
He has an eye for detail. And a scene full of horrors to capture.
The pictures he takes are uploaded to what is still called the AP news wire.
And flashed to the world.
###
"Sir, operational message."
I look at it briefly. In the language of military bureaucracy, it asks me what the fuck I think I'm doing.
"Hand me that."
I type four words and hit SEND.
###
"Lawful operations of war."
"What the fuck does he mean by lawful operations of war?" rages the duty officer.
"Sir, they've posted the BDA over the datalink."
"So fast?"
He pulls it up and reads. It is linked to the original mission and fire order.
The Battle Damage Assessment, BDA, is antiseptic. But the duty officer can read between the lines.
He reads the fire order. "Shake and bake", a mix of high explosive and incendiary shells.
Then he reads the mission statement, the commander's intent.
He shakes his head.
"Get me the Commanding General, California Expeditionary Forces."
Either way, this is well above his own pay grade.
Someone else will have to decide whether to give Major 18 a medal, or shoot him.
Or maybe both.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-09 05:42 am (UTC)International Humanitarian Law, Rule Eight
"Rule 8. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial or total destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage."
As discussed at https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule8
"A military objective remains a military objective even if civilian persons are in it. The civilian persons within such an objective or its immediate surroundings share the danger to which it is exposed.” - International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, 1987