GWOT VI: Almost Too Late
Feb. 8th, 2020 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Almost Too Late
Our painstaking recon work in the days leading up to Midland had identified thirty seven distinct refugee sites.
About thirty of them were guarded, at least nominally, by UN forces.
Some were so far away that I couldn't reasonably get troops to them.
They were lost and would have to be avenged.
Others were close enough that we could get them moving before the Churches could get to them.
The ones in the middle were a toss up.
I'd violated just about every rule of the United Nations with my approach.
Send them cadre and weapons. Arm the refugees. Stand and fight.
I was no longer peacekeeping. I was making a new political force.
At the end of the day, a politician is some person in a suit who will give orders to a certain number of "rough men" and know that they will be obeyed.
But one camp will haunt me until the end of my days.
###
The Sergeant took one look through his binoculars and started barking out orders.
"Meeting engagement! They got there first! They're killing the refugees right now! Get it stuck the fuck in! VIVA CALIFORNIA!"
###
"Follow me!" he screamed to the refugee with the baseball bat, who had just finished beating an armed Xtian's head in.
The fighting was close and vicious. The California vehicles had driven into the middle of the killing field, dismounted and started shooting.
In a crowd of people, if you miss, the bullet has to go somewhere.
And he knew that California bullets had killed refugees too, as an inevitable result.
But if they'd staged to go in, long ranged enemy fire would have destroyed their soft skinned vehicles in minutes.
There was no other way to do this, except the hard way.
###
A sudden lull, in the swirling smoke and crying and screaming.
The attackers had counted on the advantage that armed, organized men have over the disorganized and disarmed.
California's arrival had negated half that advantage.
Two men seized the instant.
One blew a whistle over and over again, croaked, took a sip of water from his hydration bag's tube and then shouted.
"I AM A CALIFORNIA PARAMEDIC. IF YOU CAN HEAR MY VOICE, GO OVER THERE TOWARDS THE BURNING GUN TRUCK. TO MY LEFT. IF YOU CAN MOVE, GO OVER THERE NOW."
Anyone who moved, he immediately dismissed from his mind.
Then he started going from body to body, starting where he stood, with rolls of colored flagging tape on a loop.
Ten seconds and he tied a red loop around the man's one surviving arm. Put a piece of red tape in his lower BDU thigh pocket. Used the man's belt, grabbed someone stumbling past, had them hold direct pressure on the stump.
Guarded by the baseball-bat wielding refugee, he kept it moving. Quick and quick and quick. No marks for the dead, he just turned them face down in what had been dirt, but now was blood-mud.
It took him twenty minutes to complete the first circuit.
By then, three California soldiers had been freed up to help him.
The first set up all the medical supplies next to a red tarp.
The second helped people with yellow tape sit near the traffic cone, the best they could do for a "Delayed Treatment Area"
The third started drafting people to help with first aid.
This freed up the paramedic to spread out his little pieces of ripped tape in rough handfuls.
He changed frequencies and keyed his radio.
"One Seven Dash Mercy, California Control."
"This is California Control. One Seven Dash Mercy, is One Seven available?"
"One Seven is dead. Urgent medical traffic, lifesaving priority. Are you clear to copy?"
"Clear to copy."
"Level Six Mass Casualty Incident at my location, repeat Level Six. Approximate numbers. One hundred thirty Immediates. Over one hundred Delayeds. Over one hundred walking wounded. Requesting any medical resources available. Copy back."
"California copies Level Six repeat Six MCI, your location, plus one hundred thirty immediates, over one hundred each delayed and walking. Regret no medical resources available. Have One Seven Actual contact us as soon as possible. Number of souls, your location?"
The medic looked around, did a rough field count.
"Over five hundred souls."
"California Control out."
He technically shouldn't have been on that net at all. He wasn't supposed to be a combatant. But his traffic had been medical in nature.
Not that these Xtian genocidal murderers were likely to care.
He rinsed his mouth with a precious swallow's worth of water, spat it out on his gloves to clear some of the blood, changed gloves, and started looking around for something to use as a surgical table.
His hands would be the only help these people got today.
###
The corporal cursed and closed his sergeant's eyes with a hand.
Then he, reluctantly, stole his sergeant's jacket and Velcro rank tabs and gave himself a battlefield promotion.
This was a enough of a cluster fuck as it was. He didn't want to confuse people.
First he posted sentries, California soldiers who would use binoculars and optics to watch for further enemy approach.
Then they laid the California bodies out neatly by the gun truck, and posted a guard. Living wounded to the medical area, which was the primary sign of activity in the overrun encampment.
Then he started collecting up refugees with arms, to conduct a sweep.
Mop up.
###
"General."
He read the situation reports, paging past, paging past, then stopped and read one again.
"Two attacks... stopped?"
"Yes, General."
And the second had been in battalion strength.
"That's where the enemy main force is. We concentrate and destroy them."
He had his RTO get in contact with who he needed to speak to.
"We need you. Your faith needs you. Be there."
###
The National Guard Captain pressed the END button on his burner phone.
They had explicit orders to stay put.
But his men were gearing up to fight.
And he knew that if he tried to order anything different, his XO would merely shoot him and take over.
That really left him with only the one option.
He went outside the armory, climbed up the side of the trailer, and got into the turret of his tank, still chained down to the lowboy. He paused for a moment just before climbing inside, fixing the location of the other vehicles nearby in his mind.
No one else was in the fighting compartment.
He didn't have a driver.
That meant the tank wasn't going anywhere, even if it hadn't been thoughtfully chained down to the lowboy trailer that would carry it closer to the battle.
He laughed to himself, briefly.
This was going to be the ugliest, most diffcult thing he'd ever done in his life.
But he had no interest in seeing his thirteen tanks used to drive over innocent people, even if they weren't Christian.
This wasn't the movies. He couldn't magically pull computer chips out of each of the other tanks to disable them. He couldn't give a rousing speech to his men, selling them on truth and goodness and the American way.
He slid down from the TC station, opened the shell storage drawer, pulled out a SABOT round - so called silver bullet - and loaded the main gun.
He climbed back up to the TC position.
This was the point at which someone might realize that something was wrong. He closed and dogged the hatch.
He couldn't see much through the vision blocks.
He powered up the turret.
Once someone heard the whine of the motors, the gig would be up for sure.
Certainly once he started turning the gun.
He activated the TC override for the gunner position, and lined up the one shot he would get, at the XO's tank fifty yards away.
He saw men starting to run.
He pressed MAIN GUN FIRE.
*WHAM!*
Then, grimly, he selected COAX OVERRIDE and started moving the turret from left to right.
The machine gun mounted in line with the main barrel started spitting.
Killing his own men, as they ran to their own tanks to kill the traitor in their midst.
And there was a LOT of ammunition hooked up to the co-ax.
But no way at all for him to stop shooting, go back down to the loader position and get another round up the spout.
He was almost glad when finally, another tank powered up and laid its gun dead on.
At least he would die the way a tanker should. And at least two fewer tanks would be going to the massacre.
###
"He did *WHAT*?!? How long until you'll be mobile? This is war, Lieutenant, and the Church needs your tanks!"
The General got his answer and slammed the phone down.
"Maybe tomorrow."
There was nothing, NOTHING more precious in war than time.
###
"Seventeen Actual, Out."
California Control had been ... unhelpful. Taken his situation report. Had nothing for him but bad news.
At least three militia task forces headed for his position, the smallest over a hundred fighters.
A possibility of armor, too.
###
At last the paramedic had worked his way through the immediates. Some had died while waiting.
He then started triaging the delayed a different way.
Could they walk?
If they could, he instructed first aid staff to sling their arm(s) and get them moving.
A few cases among the walking wounded needed quick consultation. A flying splinter, which he studied for a moment and violated procedures by yanking out. A displaced eyeball, for which nothing could be done except to bandage it in the right spot for a surgeon to remove later. If there was a later for any of them. A heart attack, for which there would be no treatment beyond two asprin and the suggestion to lie quietly and wait to live or die. Probably die.
This left him with about a hundred and fifty hurt people who basically couldn't move under their own power.
The corporal, wearing the sergeant's jacket for some reason, came to talk to him.
"We will try to hold here. But we're likely to be overrun. I don't see trying to evacuate even if we didn't have all these wounded. I don't trust these Christians. I need you to be ready to get out on your motorcycle if it looks like we're going to be overrun. I forbid you to stay with these wounded. There will be other wounded, and other lives to save. But not for you here."
"Geneva says I should stay with them and become a POW."
"You don't get to make that choice. I am making it for you."
Unspoken: these Christians apparently don't take prisoners.
Speaking of which...
###
The corporal finished tying the noose in the rope.
The handful of Christian militia prisoners eyed him like turkeys in a slaughterhouse.
"I have questions. You have answers," he began.
###
When he finished, he left the last prisoner's body dangling in midair, by the neck, tied off to the limb of the tree, blood still dripping from his pre-capture and post-capture wounds.
He wanted the Christians to see it, when they overran this position.
Viciousness is a two way street.
Some of the refugees were willing to fight. But they didn't have time for registration, and the armbands had burned up with the gun truck.
He remembered something from somewhere.
"Strip the bodies. Look for dark cloth. Every refugee fighter ties a strip of dark cloth around their right upper arm."
It would have to do.
He wasn't looking at three task forces and a thousand men.
He was looking at six, and five thousand men.
But the logic of the situation was inescapable, with just the one working vehicle, and the fact that defenders in a fixed position were seven times stronger than attackers.
Something told him it was time.
He went over to the paramedic.
"Load the truck with injured children. Get your bike. Take both the California walking wounded with you, have them in the cab to keep the refugee driver honest. Go as soon as you're loaded."
Their eyes met.
Improperly, as they were both NCOs, the paramedic saluted, then turned to his task, of salvaging a little from this wreck.
The corporal turned to his own task, salvaging something else.
He wasn't eloquent. But he was fervent.
Casualties meant enough shovels to go around, and the emergency refugee militia started digging with a will.
Nothing fancy. A square of trenches, with the start of bunkers at the corners. The two remaining California machine guns at the corners facing the enemy line of advance.
He sent someone to hang the California flag from the tree. Next to the corpse, and the other corpses hapazardly piled below from where they had been dumped, after each had hung in turn.
He gave another order. One of the refugees went around collecting pistols, and pistol ammunition. The collection was brought to the area where the wounded had been placed.
As happens, someone had appointed themselves a care provider in the departed paramedic's place. Her face was locked in a wide stare, but she blinked when he gave her a pistol.
And a lot of matching magazines and loose rounds.
She nodded grimly, and tucked the pistol under her skirt, and got for herself three more.
He did not put it past his enemy to torture the wounded, and he knew only one sure way to prevent it.
###
"Task Force Seventeen, consisting of eighteen California soldiers under an MP sergeant, discovered a massacre in progress when they arrived at their objective. With great disregard for their own safety, the members of the Task Force immediately attacked and overcame the genocidal forces, taking several casualties including the MP sergeant in so doing.
"The paramedic and two wounded soldiers were directly ordered to leave the combat area in the one surviving vehicle, transporting with them seventeen injured children, twelve of whom survived the first trip to be further evacuated.
"The diminished California force attempted to carry out their original mission of rallying the refugees to defend themselves. Over the next two days, they resisted repeated dismounted attacks by Christian militia in platoon, company and ultimately battalion strength.
"Finally they were overrun and destroyed. Their bodies were found on site by forensic teams one month later. No California Republic bodies showed evidence of torture, strongly implying that all had been killed in action.
"Life abandoned these soldiers before courage.
"The Bear Cross is hereby awarded to all members of Task Force Seventeen, living and deceased."
Our painstaking recon work in the days leading up to Midland had identified thirty seven distinct refugee sites.
About thirty of them were guarded, at least nominally, by UN forces.
Some were so far away that I couldn't reasonably get troops to them.
They were lost and would have to be avenged.
Others were close enough that we could get them moving before the Churches could get to them.
The ones in the middle were a toss up.
I'd violated just about every rule of the United Nations with my approach.
Send them cadre and weapons. Arm the refugees. Stand and fight.
I was no longer peacekeeping. I was making a new political force.
At the end of the day, a politician is some person in a suit who will give orders to a certain number of "rough men" and know that they will be obeyed.
But one camp will haunt me until the end of my days.
###
The Sergeant took one look through his binoculars and started barking out orders.
"Meeting engagement! They got there first! They're killing the refugees right now! Get it stuck the fuck in! VIVA CALIFORNIA!"
###
"Follow me!" he screamed to the refugee with the baseball bat, who had just finished beating an armed Xtian's head in.
The fighting was close and vicious. The California vehicles had driven into the middle of the killing field, dismounted and started shooting.
In a crowd of people, if you miss, the bullet has to go somewhere.
And he knew that California bullets had killed refugees too, as an inevitable result.
But if they'd staged to go in, long ranged enemy fire would have destroyed their soft skinned vehicles in minutes.
There was no other way to do this, except the hard way.
###
A sudden lull, in the swirling smoke and crying and screaming.
The attackers had counted on the advantage that armed, organized men have over the disorganized and disarmed.
California's arrival had negated half that advantage.
Two men seized the instant.
One blew a whistle over and over again, croaked, took a sip of water from his hydration bag's tube and then shouted.
"I AM A CALIFORNIA PARAMEDIC. IF YOU CAN HEAR MY VOICE, GO OVER THERE TOWARDS THE BURNING GUN TRUCK. TO MY LEFT. IF YOU CAN MOVE, GO OVER THERE NOW."
Anyone who moved, he immediately dismissed from his mind.
Then he started going from body to body, starting where he stood, with rolls of colored flagging tape on a loop.
Ten seconds and he tied a red loop around the man's one surviving arm. Put a piece of red tape in his lower BDU thigh pocket. Used the man's belt, grabbed someone stumbling past, had them hold direct pressure on the stump.
Guarded by the baseball-bat wielding refugee, he kept it moving. Quick and quick and quick. No marks for the dead, he just turned them face down in what had been dirt, but now was blood-mud.
It took him twenty minutes to complete the first circuit.
By then, three California soldiers had been freed up to help him.
The first set up all the medical supplies next to a red tarp.
The second helped people with yellow tape sit near the traffic cone, the best they could do for a "Delayed Treatment Area"
The third started drafting people to help with first aid.
This freed up the paramedic to spread out his little pieces of ripped tape in rough handfuls.
He changed frequencies and keyed his radio.
"One Seven Dash Mercy, California Control."
"This is California Control. One Seven Dash Mercy, is One Seven available?"
"One Seven is dead. Urgent medical traffic, lifesaving priority. Are you clear to copy?"
"Clear to copy."
"Level Six Mass Casualty Incident at my location, repeat Level Six. Approximate numbers. One hundred thirty Immediates. Over one hundred Delayeds. Over one hundred walking wounded. Requesting any medical resources available. Copy back."
"California copies Level Six repeat Six MCI, your location, plus one hundred thirty immediates, over one hundred each delayed and walking. Regret no medical resources available. Have One Seven Actual contact us as soon as possible. Number of souls, your location?"
The medic looked around, did a rough field count.
"Over five hundred souls."
"California Control out."
He technically shouldn't have been on that net at all. He wasn't supposed to be a combatant. But his traffic had been medical in nature.
Not that these Xtian genocidal murderers were likely to care.
He rinsed his mouth with a precious swallow's worth of water, spat it out on his gloves to clear some of the blood, changed gloves, and started looking around for something to use as a surgical table.
His hands would be the only help these people got today.
###
The corporal cursed and closed his sergeant's eyes with a hand.
Then he, reluctantly, stole his sergeant's jacket and Velcro rank tabs and gave himself a battlefield promotion.
This was a enough of a cluster fuck as it was. He didn't want to confuse people.
First he posted sentries, California soldiers who would use binoculars and optics to watch for further enemy approach.
Then they laid the California bodies out neatly by the gun truck, and posted a guard. Living wounded to the medical area, which was the primary sign of activity in the overrun encampment.
Then he started collecting up refugees with arms, to conduct a sweep.
Mop up.
###
"General."
He read the situation reports, paging past, paging past, then stopped and read one again.
"Two attacks... stopped?"
"Yes, General."
And the second had been in battalion strength.
"That's where the enemy main force is. We concentrate and destroy them."
He had his RTO get in contact with who he needed to speak to.
"We need you. Your faith needs you. Be there."
###
The National Guard Captain pressed the END button on his burner phone.
They had explicit orders to stay put.
But his men were gearing up to fight.
And he knew that if he tried to order anything different, his XO would merely shoot him and take over.
That really left him with only the one option.
He went outside the armory, climbed up the side of the trailer, and got into the turret of his tank, still chained down to the lowboy. He paused for a moment just before climbing inside, fixing the location of the other vehicles nearby in his mind.
No one else was in the fighting compartment.
He didn't have a driver.
That meant the tank wasn't going anywhere, even if it hadn't been thoughtfully chained down to the lowboy trailer that would carry it closer to the battle.
He laughed to himself, briefly.
This was going to be the ugliest, most diffcult thing he'd ever done in his life.
But he had no interest in seeing his thirteen tanks used to drive over innocent people, even if they weren't Christian.
This wasn't the movies. He couldn't magically pull computer chips out of each of the other tanks to disable them. He couldn't give a rousing speech to his men, selling them on truth and goodness and the American way.
He slid down from the TC station, opened the shell storage drawer, pulled out a SABOT round - so called silver bullet - and loaded the main gun.
He climbed back up to the TC position.
This was the point at which someone might realize that something was wrong. He closed and dogged the hatch.
He couldn't see much through the vision blocks.
He powered up the turret.
Once someone heard the whine of the motors, the gig would be up for sure.
Certainly once he started turning the gun.
He activated the TC override for the gunner position, and lined up the one shot he would get, at the XO's tank fifty yards away.
He saw men starting to run.
He pressed MAIN GUN FIRE.
*WHAM!*
Then, grimly, he selected COAX OVERRIDE and started moving the turret from left to right.
The machine gun mounted in line with the main barrel started spitting.
Killing his own men, as they ran to their own tanks to kill the traitor in their midst.
And there was a LOT of ammunition hooked up to the co-ax.
But no way at all for him to stop shooting, go back down to the loader position and get another round up the spout.
He was almost glad when finally, another tank powered up and laid its gun dead on.
At least he would die the way a tanker should. And at least two fewer tanks would be going to the massacre.
###
"He did *WHAT*?!? How long until you'll be mobile? This is war, Lieutenant, and the Church needs your tanks!"
The General got his answer and slammed the phone down.
"Maybe tomorrow."
There was nothing, NOTHING more precious in war than time.
###
"Seventeen Actual, Out."
California Control had been ... unhelpful. Taken his situation report. Had nothing for him but bad news.
At least three militia task forces headed for his position, the smallest over a hundred fighters.
A possibility of armor, too.
###
At last the paramedic had worked his way through the immediates. Some had died while waiting.
He then started triaging the delayed a different way.
Could they walk?
If they could, he instructed first aid staff to sling their arm(s) and get them moving.
A few cases among the walking wounded needed quick consultation. A flying splinter, which he studied for a moment and violated procedures by yanking out. A displaced eyeball, for which nothing could be done except to bandage it in the right spot for a surgeon to remove later. If there was a later for any of them. A heart attack, for which there would be no treatment beyond two asprin and the suggestion to lie quietly and wait to live or die. Probably die.
This left him with about a hundred and fifty hurt people who basically couldn't move under their own power.
The corporal, wearing the sergeant's jacket for some reason, came to talk to him.
"We will try to hold here. But we're likely to be overrun. I don't see trying to evacuate even if we didn't have all these wounded. I don't trust these Christians. I need you to be ready to get out on your motorcycle if it looks like we're going to be overrun. I forbid you to stay with these wounded. There will be other wounded, and other lives to save. But not for you here."
"Geneva says I should stay with them and become a POW."
"You don't get to make that choice. I am making it for you."
Unspoken: these Christians apparently don't take prisoners.
Speaking of which...
###
The corporal finished tying the noose in the rope.
The handful of Christian militia prisoners eyed him like turkeys in a slaughterhouse.
"I have questions. You have answers," he began.
###
When he finished, he left the last prisoner's body dangling in midair, by the neck, tied off to the limb of the tree, blood still dripping from his pre-capture and post-capture wounds.
He wanted the Christians to see it, when they overran this position.
Viciousness is a two way street.
Some of the refugees were willing to fight. But they didn't have time for registration, and the armbands had burned up with the gun truck.
He remembered something from somewhere.
"Strip the bodies. Look for dark cloth. Every refugee fighter ties a strip of dark cloth around their right upper arm."
It would have to do.
He wasn't looking at three task forces and a thousand men.
He was looking at six, and five thousand men.
But the logic of the situation was inescapable, with just the one working vehicle, and the fact that defenders in a fixed position were seven times stronger than attackers.
Something told him it was time.
He went over to the paramedic.
"Load the truck with injured children. Get your bike. Take both the California walking wounded with you, have them in the cab to keep the refugee driver honest. Go as soon as you're loaded."
Their eyes met.
Improperly, as they were both NCOs, the paramedic saluted, then turned to his task, of salvaging a little from this wreck.
The corporal turned to his own task, salvaging something else.
He wasn't eloquent. But he was fervent.
Casualties meant enough shovels to go around, and the emergency refugee militia started digging with a will.
Nothing fancy. A square of trenches, with the start of bunkers at the corners. The two remaining California machine guns at the corners facing the enemy line of advance.
He sent someone to hang the California flag from the tree. Next to the corpse, and the other corpses hapazardly piled below from where they had been dumped, after each had hung in turn.
He gave another order. One of the refugees went around collecting pistols, and pistol ammunition. The collection was brought to the area where the wounded had been placed.
As happens, someone had appointed themselves a care provider in the departed paramedic's place. Her face was locked in a wide stare, but she blinked when he gave her a pistol.
And a lot of matching magazines and loose rounds.
She nodded grimly, and tucked the pistol under her skirt, and got for herself three more.
He did not put it past his enemy to torture the wounded, and he knew only one sure way to prevent it.
###
"Task Force Seventeen, consisting of eighteen California soldiers under an MP sergeant, discovered a massacre in progress when they arrived at their objective. With great disregard for their own safety, the members of the Task Force immediately attacked and overcame the genocidal forces, taking several casualties including the MP sergeant in so doing.
"The paramedic and two wounded soldiers were directly ordered to leave the combat area in the one surviving vehicle, transporting with them seventeen injured children, twelve of whom survived the first trip to be further evacuated.
"The diminished California force attempted to carry out their original mission of rallying the refugees to defend themselves. Over the next two days, they resisted repeated dismounted attacks by Christian militia in platoon, company and ultimately battalion strength.
"Finally they were overrun and destroyed. Their bodies were found on site by forensic teams one month later. No California Republic bodies showed evidence of torture, strongly implying that all had been killed in action.
"Life abandoned these soldiers before courage.
"The Bear Cross is hereby awarded to all members of Task Force Seventeen, living and deceased."
