GWOT V - F'n Legs
Jul. 25th, 2022 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT V - F'n Legs
So now I had two additional chores before I could go to bed - other than checking under the folding cot for grenades.
I dreaded both.
My E-mail had a direction to call South Ops and speak to the ALO - Air Liasion Officer -
"any time day or night, as soon as possible."
That in my experience is not how California chooses to communicate good news.
I also owed some E-mails to people. A man who was freshly missing a leg, and four families freshly missing their loved ones. He would adapt to losing the leg. They might or might not adapt to losing their beloveds.
So I started drafting the first set of E-mails so that I would be in the proper frame of mind to talk to the ALO.
The missing leg was easy. I told him he'd saved our lives (true) and that we'd miss him (false) and that he'd served his nation (kind of mixed).
I called South Ops. They put me through to the ALO. Some Major so-and-so.
I'm a Captain.
But the difference in ranks doesn't make me the Major's ass bitch, I explained in as many words.
"Your son died with valor and dignity..."
As a Sector commander, I would keep calling for air support. Whenever and however I might need it. And if that cost the Republic of California avgas, and strain on systems, and munitions, and even the lives of pilots and ground personnel.
"By now you must have been informed in person of the death of your daughter..."
We were California's lives to lose. That was the mission. So if I was calling for night air strikes and designating parts of my Sector a free fire zone, I might have really good reasons. Like a not very combat effective unit that demonstrably had no business doing night ops at all.
"He died in the highest traditions of the emergency medical services, so that others might live..."
I was not going to throttle back my requests. The Major, if he liked, could reduce or refuse my requests based on his operational tempo, his needs and capabilities, and the letters he could fucking write to the fucking families of the pilots.
"She bravely held her own under intense enemy fire. One of her compatriots credits his survival to her decision to use a smoke grenade, which helped protected them from intense and closely directed fires..."
She'd stood to throw it. And it had fallen out of her hand, in the position, when she'd been ripped apart from the side, under the armpit where armor does not protect.
She could have tossed it from out of sight. She didn't think to do so. She tossed it exactly as they'd drilled her to in Basic training.
And stood up into machine gun fire.
"He not only used the first aid kits of the casualties, but his own first aid kit, to stop the bleeding of two other soldiers."
Then when he'd needed a dressing, he hadn't had one. He'd tried to improv with a sleeve. And he had failed, lost consciousness, and bled out.
No, Major, you're not my rating officer. We may have whatever personal opinions of each other's honor, dignity, personal integrity and personal cleanliness we wish, but professionally, my task is to request mession support and your task is to provide it or take responsibility for your inability to do so.
"By now you must have been informed in person by the death of your spouse. Words cannot possibly express the pain and grief you are going through right now. I can only offer the cold comfort that he chose to die in the service of the California Republic.... it is my duty to return to you his personal effects."
I'd made a decision, working with the soldiers and the bodies. We were NOT going to follow the usual process of redacting a fallen soldier's personal effects of items that might tend to be embarrassing. That meant not stripping out the porn, the sex toys, the stuffed animals, the letters to multiple lovers, or anything damn else that might carry someone through this Operation Other Than War. We would bag it and ship it.
The nature of that particular soldier's effects made it clear that their spouse was also male.
Listen, Major, you have your commanding officer call my commanding officer. Perhaps they can take a shower together or something. Meanwhile, what you save in aviation fuels is what I have to spend in blood. One flight tonight, fine. Zero flights tomorrow, not fine. Do something. Do an unarmed overflight. Drop a few flares if you really are that short on munitions. I need a couple days to sort out who can go out on night killing missions with me.
Yes. With me. I'm personally going out there. And I promise I'll only call for air cav support during the day, until we get IR glowsticks or glow paint so you can distinguish the Californios from the Mexicants.
"By now you must have been informed of the death of your sister..."
I had to redact that letter carefully. She had multiple knife wounds. She had contact burns from being shot at point blank.
My doctor had conducted a cursory autopsy. We'd agreed that the findings were no one's business.
Especially because her final wound was a through-and-through GSW that started just above the throat and ended through the top of her skull, in a position difficult for a person to do to themselves and nearly impossible for anyone else to do to a resisting victim.
In other words, she'd committed suicide to avoid capture.
Against the Cartels that was a good idea.
Major, let's trade. You run a Sector, I'll run air operations. I'll do munitions spreadsheets, you can sit in puddles of shit and piss and wall to wall counsel an NCO with a prohibited law enforcement technique.
The line had disconnected. Hopefully before I'd said that. But oh well.
I reviewed the letters. Blinked back tears.
Send. Send. Send. Send. Send. Send.
At least there would be no need to send a letter to anyone else about me.
God, I miss you, Betty.
Bear Force had not sent a letter to me about her. Just a postcard. Clunk.
And I missed Brooke nearly as much. Even though she and I had never slept together, we'd been so tight that we'd never needed to. It would have been a let down from an intimacy so frightening that neither words nor Homeland torture could even touch it.
No letter for her either. She'd been the commanding officer when she'd sacrificed her guerilla cell to stop a Homeland reaction convoy.
She'd coldly sacrificed Betty. But Betty had survived.
She'd coldly sacrificed Sarah.
Sarah had put paid to every man who'd ever touched her, with rings on every finger and a crowd of would-be Homeland rapists to absorb the grenade fragments.
I'd been the last man to touch Sarah in kindness. I'd talked her down from killing herself after prostituting herself to get weapons. Then I'd talked her down again when she'd gotten the diagnosis.
In her case, there had no one to write a letter _to_. Even if I'd had the details at the time, which I hadn't.
Sigh.
I faced the worst memory in my lexicon of dead women I'd cared about.
The woman I thought of even now, as the VP of HR, with her head missing sitting at her desk. A boot pressing my face against the tile of the corridor as the fountain sprayed out of her neck.
She had a family. They were well behind American lines, and a letter from Echo 18 would either be an embarrassment, or deadly. Homeland had a long reach and a long memory. This inspired Bear Force, and their war continued in all North American nations, and even worldwide from time to time.
God this was depressing.
On paper I should seek out drugs for self-medication. Or a woman. Or (shudder) a man. There were sex workers west and east of my Sector and at Campos Nation, and that was a morale issue I needed to consider.
But not now.
I moused over to the unit Psyche's calendar.
Made a commanding officer's appointment.
I hated the entire Psyche program. But it was my duty to keep myself fit for duty as best I could.
So I didn't call a Major the part of his momma's customer that dripped out of her asshole to the stained mattress she called a working bed, and she wiped off and forgot to flush.
And so I didn't have to write any more fucking "By now you must have been informed..." letters.
Force protection. Unless we were invaded.
Then it would be a Mexican officer writing a LOT of letters.
He'd have to use mail merge with a spreadsheet.
I'd make sure of it.
So now I had two additional chores before I could go to bed - other than checking under the folding cot for grenades.
I dreaded both.
My E-mail had a direction to call South Ops and speak to the ALO - Air Liasion Officer -
"any time day or night, as soon as possible."
That in my experience is not how California chooses to communicate good news.
I also owed some E-mails to people. A man who was freshly missing a leg, and four families freshly missing their loved ones. He would adapt to losing the leg. They might or might not adapt to losing their beloveds.
So I started drafting the first set of E-mails so that I would be in the proper frame of mind to talk to the ALO.
The missing leg was easy. I told him he'd saved our lives (true) and that we'd miss him (false) and that he'd served his nation (kind of mixed).
I called South Ops. They put me through to the ALO. Some Major so-and-so.
I'm a Captain.
But the difference in ranks doesn't make me the Major's ass bitch, I explained in as many words.
"Your son died with valor and dignity..."
As a Sector commander, I would keep calling for air support. Whenever and however I might need it. And if that cost the Republic of California avgas, and strain on systems, and munitions, and even the lives of pilots and ground personnel.
"By now you must have been informed in person of the death of your daughter..."
We were California's lives to lose. That was the mission. So if I was calling for night air strikes and designating parts of my Sector a free fire zone, I might have really good reasons. Like a not very combat effective unit that demonstrably had no business doing night ops at all.
"He died in the highest traditions of the emergency medical services, so that others might live..."
I was not going to throttle back my requests. The Major, if he liked, could reduce or refuse my requests based on his operational tempo, his needs and capabilities, and the letters he could fucking write to the fucking families of the pilots.
"She bravely held her own under intense enemy fire. One of her compatriots credits his survival to her decision to use a smoke grenade, which helped protected them from intense and closely directed fires..."
She'd stood to throw it. And it had fallen out of her hand, in the position, when she'd been ripped apart from the side, under the armpit where armor does not protect.
She could have tossed it from out of sight. She didn't think to do so. She tossed it exactly as they'd drilled her to in Basic training.
And stood up into machine gun fire.
"He not only used the first aid kits of the casualties, but his own first aid kit, to stop the bleeding of two other soldiers."
Then when he'd needed a dressing, he hadn't had one. He'd tried to improv with a sleeve. And he had failed, lost consciousness, and bled out.
No, Major, you're not my rating officer. We may have whatever personal opinions of each other's honor, dignity, personal integrity and personal cleanliness we wish, but professionally, my task is to request mession support and your task is to provide it or take responsibility for your inability to do so.
"By now you must have been informed in person by the death of your spouse. Words cannot possibly express the pain and grief you are going through right now. I can only offer the cold comfort that he chose to die in the service of the California Republic.... it is my duty to return to you his personal effects."
I'd made a decision, working with the soldiers and the bodies. We were NOT going to follow the usual process of redacting a fallen soldier's personal effects of items that might tend to be embarrassing. That meant not stripping out the porn, the sex toys, the stuffed animals, the letters to multiple lovers, or anything damn else that might carry someone through this Operation Other Than War. We would bag it and ship it.
The nature of that particular soldier's effects made it clear that their spouse was also male.
Listen, Major, you have your commanding officer call my commanding officer. Perhaps they can take a shower together or something. Meanwhile, what you save in aviation fuels is what I have to spend in blood. One flight tonight, fine. Zero flights tomorrow, not fine. Do something. Do an unarmed overflight. Drop a few flares if you really are that short on munitions. I need a couple days to sort out who can go out on night killing missions with me.
Yes. With me. I'm personally going out there. And I promise I'll only call for air cav support during the day, until we get IR glowsticks or glow paint so you can distinguish the Californios from the Mexicants.
"By now you must have been informed of the death of your sister..."
I had to redact that letter carefully. She had multiple knife wounds. She had contact burns from being shot at point blank.
My doctor had conducted a cursory autopsy. We'd agreed that the findings were no one's business.
Especially because her final wound was a through-and-through GSW that started just above the throat and ended through the top of her skull, in a position difficult for a person to do to themselves and nearly impossible for anyone else to do to a resisting victim.
In other words, she'd committed suicide to avoid capture.
Against the Cartels that was a good idea.
Major, let's trade. You run a Sector, I'll run air operations. I'll do munitions spreadsheets, you can sit in puddles of shit and piss and wall to wall counsel an NCO with a prohibited law enforcement technique.
The line had disconnected. Hopefully before I'd said that. But oh well.
I reviewed the letters. Blinked back tears.
Send. Send. Send. Send. Send. Send.
At least there would be no need to send a letter to anyone else about me.
God, I miss you, Betty.
Bear Force had not sent a letter to me about her. Just a postcard. Clunk.
And I missed Brooke nearly as much. Even though she and I had never slept together, we'd been so tight that we'd never needed to. It would have been a let down from an intimacy so frightening that neither words nor Homeland torture could even touch it.
No letter for her either. She'd been the commanding officer when she'd sacrificed her guerilla cell to stop a Homeland reaction convoy.
She'd coldly sacrificed Betty. But Betty had survived.
She'd coldly sacrificed Sarah.
Sarah had put paid to every man who'd ever touched her, with rings on every finger and a crowd of would-be Homeland rapists to absorb the grenade fragments.
I'd been the last man to touch Sarah in kindness. I'd talked her down from killing herself after prostituting herself to get weapons. Then I'd talked her down again when she'd gotten the diagnosis.
In her case, there had no one to write a letter _to_. Even if I'd had the details at the time, which I hadn't.
Sigh.
I faced the worst memory in my lexicon of dead women I'd cared about.
The woman I thought of even now, as the VP of HR, with her head missing sitting at her desk. A boot pressing my face against the tile of the corridor as the fountain sprayed out of her neck.
She had a family. They were well behind American lines, and a letter from Echo 18 would either be an embarrassment, or deadly. Homeland had a long reach and a long memory. This inspired Bear Force, and their war continued in all North American nations, and even worldwide from time to time.
God this was depressing.
On paper I should seek out drugs for self-medication. Or a woman. Or (shudder) a man. There were sex workers west and east of my Sector and at Campos Nation, and that was a morale issue I needed to consider.
But not now.
I moused over to the unit Psyche's calendar.
Made a commanding officer's appointment.
I hated the entire Psyche program. But it was my duty to keep myself fit for duty as best I could.
So I didn't call a Major the part of his momma's customer that dripped out of her asshole to the stained mattress she called a working bed, and she wiped off and forgot to flush.
And so I didn't have to write any more fucking "By now you must have been informed..." letters.
Force protection. Unless we were invaded.
Then it would be a Mexican officer writing a LOT of letters.
He'd have to use mail merge with a spreadsheet.
I'd make sure of it.
