Just got up and saw your tweets. What happened, briefly?
We were crossing over a new area, and guess the mutts caught us by drone or eyes and we walked right into an ambush. Luckily we were in a low area in a treeline, or they would have wiped us out. It took two ground and one airburst artillery rounds to stop the fires coming in. Carlos got nailed right off, and Chris and I got the collateral of the air burst right over the trees behind their berm. But, cheap price to pay. The two HE (high explosive–ed.) rounds made them group up and move back, and the airburst exploded the trees and and ripped them into pieces. Some got away, but they were wounded. We just hung around long enough to get pics and rifle them for docs, then we had to walk out with three wounded.
Thanks, glad you’re ok, that satisfies my selfish curiosity.
Will write it up as best I can.
Rest up and I’ll catch you later.
Thanks. Just got a bit uglier, but no structural damage other than a fucked-up ear and a bare skull on the side.
Worst part is ear… looks like a bunch of red wine grapes, and is very sore. Doc says that will all go away, just will be left with a hole unless I see a decorative surgeon. Screw that.
We confirmed 7 dead, and counted 3 blood trails. They knew what they were doing, and would have had us if we wouldn’t have been able to roll-in accurate artillery very quickly. At the time C— thought they were Spetsnaz, but we confirmed they were not. Think I have to get permission to say who they were.
This may be disjointed and confusing, but best I can do right now.
Was sent out to check infiltration routes in our normal AO and extending north and NE, which meant moving into a new area that we were not familiar with. So we went as far as we could by vehicle on muddy roads, then transitioned to foot and ended-up pot holing in on-and-off knee-deep mud for several (kilometers).
Pot holing is slow, for obvious reasons, but you also have to take into account noise when the suction breaks on your foot, and, it is easy to lose a boot. At some point Chris came up to me and whispered, “is there quicksand around here?”
“Oh hell yeah, the shit is all over the place.”
“I fucking hate that shit.” Truth is, I have no idea if there is quicksand here.
Luckily we knew the majority of this area pretty well, and of course GPS is invaluable. However, there is often location accuracy degradation from trees (less than in summer, since most leaves are off), and we also have to assume possible jamming, so I do the map and pacing routine just to be safe. Running in varied levels of mud tends to screw this up, and it would be better if a shorter person did it, since their steps are higher frequency thus more consistent in length in varied terrain.
Once we moved out of the known AO we started moving very slow, trying to stick with thin tree lines. We were able to stay with higher ground, so the mud had eased off. We were moving on the higher edge of a gully in a strip of trees about 50 meters wide when we got hit.
Immediately Carlos yelled “hit.” I went face down in the mud and rolled over and moved up the slope and tried to get an eye on the fires source, but every time I raised my head of rifle rounds would scream by. The rounds seemed to be coming in a wide arc, so they were either trying to flank us, or they were a large force.
I moved over and was laying on my side in the mud and had piled up dead underbrush over my rifle barrel, and was now firing blindly toward them. I could not stay here long, someone would get a fix on me. And, once you have to lower your head below line of sight to avoid fires you are useless.
Suddenly Chris let out one of his loud two-finger whistles, then he started thrusting his hands out……move to a wider front. Yeah, we had no choice. I rolled deeper into the gully and started belly crawling. Every few feet I would lift my rifle and fire in their direction to keep them from moving toward us, we all did the same thing.
Chris moved up to me, snake crawling through the mud and brush. “We need support.”
“They are awful fucking close for artillery.”
“What fucking choice do we have Goddamit?’
“None at this point, but I hope you have your plot picked-out.” No smile.
“On the ground right on their position.”
“Ok, nice knowing you champ.” Now a smile.
“We are too old and mean to die this way.” I got busy on the phone, getting an awake response, then called in the pin, azimuth and range, while still trying to add to the ammo going downrange. “We need it now, fucking now. We are surrounded on three points from the pin. Two rounds, impact fuze, we are low, but will be run out of here in minutes.”
I whistled at Chris, gave a downward opening of my fingers and pointed toward the Mutts, he thought for a second, then gave me a thumbs-up. ‘Ok, add an airburst on the azimuth 75 meters from our pin same azimuth. Confirm firing 10 after impact rounds.” Then I went back to work.
Now Chris and the others were spread out and firing in an arc toward the west into the berm. The mutts had a soldiers line just below the summit of the berm. They could fire wildly over it, or get a head up and guess where to fire. I kept slowly moving rounds out and watching from behind my brush screen for heads to pop-up, no other tactic was available at this point except to move east, which would put us into the open. I shot at a rifle that popped-up, missed, then at a helmet, missed again.
“Fires incoming.” I yelled. Then a head came up and started moving. I snap fired and hit the top of the berm, spraying dirt over the top. The helmet went down, probably a miss. Then I heard a scream in Russian….”head wound! doctor!” I got the fucker.
Then the shells started rolling in. They slammed into the trees on the far side of the berm, launching dirt and wood splinters. I was face down in the mud trying to be as small as possible, chanting: “fuck, fuck fuck…” I counted to 10, then yelled “AIRBURST!”
Nothing. I had lost track of time….then the whole world was flying shrapnel, swirling smoke and noise, something hit me in the side of the head and knocked me down. It felt like somebody had drove a screwdriver through my skull. I reached up and came away with blood and crumbs of wood. Something was stuck in my ear and hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
Then I heard yelling, so looked up and saw a guy staggering on the berm, then he rolled off toward us. We all instinctively fired, bullets ripping his helmet and head to shreds. Then it was quiet.
I looked over and saw Chris trying to crawl toward me, he fell over and then got up and tried again. I crawled to him. “You ok?” “I feel like shit,” he moaned.
I rolled him over, he had a stunned look on his face and his helmet was gone. His helmet was lying off to the side, and it had a huge dent in the side of it.
“Where are you?”
“What?”
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Ukraine.”
“Where in Ukraine.” He stared at me and then shook his head. “You have a concussion, asshole.” I took his helmet and stuck it back on his head and laid him on his side so if the started puking he wouldn’t choke to death.
I whistled the guys in, who were still firing individual shots at the berm. As they crawled-in, I called back a fires result. Then we laid there in the mud, face to face. “Carlos, where are you hit?”
He smiled, – painfully – “they got me in the ass gramps, a few more inches to the side it would have taken away Mama’s toy box.” JC had already bandaged his ass, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of blood. Of course sometimes that means internal bleeding. But, he seemed to be ok.
No fire was coming from the berm. “I can hear people over there, I think a lot of them are fucked really bad.” JC said.
“I saw only about a dozen muzzle flashes, so I don’t think it is a large group,” Carlos added.
“Ok, Chris is off in another world right now, so what we need to do is get on their edges and see if we can work over and flank them. We need to do it now while they are fucked-up. Don’t do anything stupid, and bug-out if you get fired on. Two go that way, two go this way, and crawl in and get a look. If you need cover fire give me whistle. two whistles if I can move forward.”
JC pointed to my head, “you know you have piece of wood stuck in your head.”
“Yeah, man, you are bleeding like hell.” I reached around …I had wood splinter stuck through the upper part of my ear. It was also stuck in my head behind my ear. Suddenly I felt a moment of queasiness, my head went on a bit of a dizzying role.
I took a few deep breaths…no time to be a wimp. Carlos is shot through the ass and Chris has brain damage, and we still have to get out of here. It took about 30 minutes to move across the clearing. Carlos and I covered them from the top of the gully, although the real danger was certainly behind it. Then they whistled all clear. “Carlos, stay with Chris and keep his gun away from him. Don’t let him wander off or do anything stupid.” “Will do, Boss.”
I walked across the clearing and climbed over the berm. It was like something Bosch might have painted after a bout with the shits and a handful of reds. I swallowed a few times to keep my digestion moving the right direction.
The exploding trees from the air burst had been launched against the berm, literally shredding the mutts to pieces. The overpressure had done its work as well. Nobody was alive…nobody was in one complete piece. Heads had burst, guts had burst, and shell and wood shrapnel had been the topping on the meat cake.
“Got three blood trails heading off, dark blood, so bad, you want us to go after them?” I shook my head….”No, fuck ’em. lets see if we can find anything of value here, anybody who doesn’t want to can cover us.”
We put on surgical gloves and went to work…..picking through guts laid out like giant worms, jackets covered with brain matter, and blood….blood everywhere. We came away with nothing, except proof they were not Spetsnaz as Chris had thought. But, they were pretty good, if not for quick and accurate artillery, they would have handed us our asses.
When we were done, we went back to the gully and did some quick planning. “Do a 360 degree check at 50 meters, then come back here, two go clock and two counter. Then we have to move, and fast. Carlos, can you walk?”
‘Right now I can run like hell if I need to, but not sure about later.”
“Ok, we will deal with that when the time comes. JC and I will try to walk Chris out, we may end up having to carry him. The rest will do point and drag, and we need to work our edges and loop around every few hundred meters. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for drones.”
“Hey, before we go, you want me to pull that stick out?” JC asked. “Is it in my skull?”
He got up close and looked. “No, just under the scalp, but it has your ear stretched up, the skin might break, then you will have a split Spock thing going on.”
“Fuck it, just leave it for now, if it gets unbearable we may have to do that.” Then we left, headed back the same way we came (not the best plan), and we stayed with trees as much as we could.
It took us two days to get to where we could be picked-up. By this time Carlos had to have help walking. Chris could walk, but he had to be held back from wandering off. He was rambling nonsense, singing, and then cussing. At one point I threatened to gag him. My head was bursting and had dried blood crusted all over it, and…I had a stick in it that limited my head movement. We were very vulnerable, but had to still try to stay quiet and be smart about our movements.
We burned a lot of luck surviving that ambush, and even more getting out without being hit again. I know everybody except Chris was cognizant of that, and I guess it weighed on them like it did me. I guess I have said the rest, except later today the quack noticed my left thumb was dislocated. Too busy thinking about my head and getting the fuck out of Dodge to notice, I guess.
Wow. Putting it mildly.
No problem following it.
So later today, found out I had a dislocated left thumb. Guess I was too busy to notice. They popped it back in place and put a splint on it. The sneaky fuck said, “let me look at it, then he quickly jerked on it. I called him some choice things at the top of my voice, and if I would have had my Ka-Bar I would have plunged it in his eye socket.
Its lights out now, but I notice they have some Christmasy shit hanging around. My Christmas gland ballooned-up and burst about 40 years ago.
Best I can do on short notice:
No rum ration in this joint, but JC sneaked-in a bottle of Khor vodka. Not supposed to drink with these meds, but what the hell, they always tell you that.
4:30 AM and am still wide awake. And, first time I have been in a bed of sorts in a very long time. Too excited to sleep, I guess. This thing has sheets and a pillow. Is too short for me, but not gonna bitch about that.
Don’t get soft now!
I kinda like this shit.
Did they give you anything for the stitches?
They put me under. I wanted a local, but the guy said, “you don’t want to stay awake for this.” At that time I still had a tree in my head. Lol! He gave me close stitches, so I could “maintain my natural beauty.”
I can’t imagine what those guys have seen.
Meds see some bad stuff, but, at least it is specimens that have a bit of a chance to keep fogging a mirror.
He kept explaining shit as I fogged-out. Then my mind drifted off to having these long conversations with people about stupid stuff.
I was talking to (ex-wife #2), and she was mad about something, and made a comment about “going to bed with the Devil.” She always thought I looked like the classical rendition of Satan.
That sounds like an opinion she formed when she wasn’t mad.
Yes, it is a common opinion. Now I got one ear to match. But, Ian McShane looks more demonic than I do.
Ian McShane is one of my favorite actors. I would spend two hours watching him read a phone book…well, if we could find one.
Yeah, he is pretty good.
Had another hazy talk with Mac, in Vietnam….not sure if it was going under or coming out, but he was telling that I always had a look on my face like I was wondering if I had turned the stove off.
“That is fear, Mac, pure yellow-bellied terror.”
“Some pencil neck can do a study on quizzical terror, you might become famous.”
“Screaming like a teenage girl with a mouse popping-out of her cleavage.”
Anesthesia is a very weird thing.
Those mutts who took the brunt of an air burst in the trees…don’t think an anatomist could have found enough shit to put back together one viable facsimile of a human..Lol! Would be an interesting result, though.
Now I am fucking hungry. I have not ate in forever it seems. I am thinking fried ham, a bit of bacon, three eggs over medium, biscuits and gravy, a grapefruit, fried potatoes and chocolate milk. That should just about do it.
Well I have to hide this bottle and at least try to get to sleep before the med types start doing their rounds. If they don’t have any decent food, I am getting out of here. Later.
Well, guess somebody needs to get this bag off, I will get yelled at if I do it, and I know I need some antibiotics, although I have taken enough of those lately to kill-off even any bugs with low-hangers that might be lurking around. Later.
Ukraine Volunteer Transcripts 