WELCOME TO THE POOR DEAD BASTARDS CLUB
A last minute change of orders just as we landed on the LZ would ultimately send almost half of Alpha Wolf Company, of the 101st Infantry, to the Promised Land… whose promise and whose land is still in question to this very day. The break from the jungle and getting bunker-duty on base was exciting to a bunch of grunts on their first tour. We needed a break from the bush, we’d earned it!
As we grouped together on the LZ our sergeant came rushing toward our group of jungle-orphans from the supply area and dropped an emotional bomb on our heads. Echo Wolf Company, our reconnaissance company, had been sweeping an area surrounding the "Oil Drum Alley" and had lost almost half of the company due to enemy mines and booby-traps. We were aware of their situation due to continual radio-traffic and knew their losses were tremendous. What was so frightening, however, was the fact that they had never made enemy contact.
We moved out at dawn; what would prove to be the longest day of my life. We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when our point-man stepped on a booby-trap. A deafening explosion rang out in the fog-covered, misty morning and the battlefield cries of dying soldiers permeated the smoke and debris. “Medic, medic,” was screamed from the point. Our point-man immediately lost one leg to a huge amount of paint!
"It looked like someone had thrown a bucket of emulshon on him!" Shouted Fenrir as we scanned the horizon for na enemy ambush. Two KIA’s, and several were wounded. As I assisted one soldier torn open at the stomach by six paintballs and a paint grenade, awaiting the Medi-vacs, in his panic-stricken voice, he screamed for his “mother;” and was walked off the field by a laughing marshal.
After wrestling for another point-man, Heretic and his Black Ops team volunteered to take the point. Ultimately, we called in a dog-team to sniff out the underground devices. Still cloudy from the storm the night before we were starting to cross a series of trenches when we came under rocket fire. Fortunately, the rockets overshot our position; I felt myself aging. I recall with vivid clarity, thinking, “Thank God I wore my brown camos today.” Believe me, when rockets start blasting near by you can really feel the brown gunge run down your leg!
We eventually moved up to higher grown as paint flew and blasted round our ears. Heretics team moved right into the mist, disquising their movements and eventually took up position north of the village. Our commander seemed to be cracking-up, giving orders and almost immediately retracting them. It was clearly noticeable to us and very unsettling. When our leader became fanatical it wasn’t comforting to the soldiers “at all.” We’d lost around eight men already that day and there was a very long night ahead of us. We started to dig-in for the night. The atmosphere was charged with death and the overcast sky only attributed to our restlessness.
A former air strike had placed a few huge craters in the center of what would be our night defense perimeter. Being the grenadier for the Command Post I claimed one of the craters for my fox-hole. One of the new guys was standing a couple of feet from me when he took a direct hit from an incoming RGP. Obviously, the rocket signaled an enemy assault and our position become hell. More and more mortar fire followed soon after, the ground trembled and dust flew in the air and filled our mask vents making the air unbreathable. Paint flak hit the air above my head as I became pebble dashed in florescent yellow, a guy screamed to my right as a mortar exploded leaving only his paint ridden boots where he once stood.
Although I had both eyes covered I could hear the incoming rockets and small arms fire intensifying. The concussion from the hit above my head, was starting to subside somewhat and I could faintly recognize the explosions. I felt like I knew where the rockets were fired from and tried to tell our lieutenant but I’m sure he thought I was in shock. Finally, I heard the blessed rotor blades of the Medi Vacs as they cut through the air in bound. However, I noticed they were circling our position and wasn’t attempting to land. I screamed out at whoever was around and declared, “Why aren’t they coming in to get us?” Some voice replied, “We’re under to heavy an assault, they’re waiting on gun-ship escort.”. There was no mistaking the Cobra’s. When they arrived the enemy hid…quick. The gunship fired a twenty millimeter cannon that fired 6000 rounds of paint a minute; the sound was frightening, much like that of a chainsaw running at full throttle. A spine chilling scream soon came after as the enemy appeared over the ridge and pushed in east of the village to try and flank our defensive position. Ten minutes into the fight, Heretic followed by the black ops team charged the enemy flank forcing the enemy on the defencive. An air strike soon followed, as the sky darkened with air to ground missile fumes. The enemy flew as rockets burst on the ground around them forcing them back to the ridge. Fenrir called out his battle cry as he lifted his MP5 and charged out of his fox hole followed by the rest of the Wolf Pack. Three hours later and the mist had cleared leaving a battle torn field and a paint stricken village.
"thats my point of view... Yours is invalid!"
Monday, February 7, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Paintball Report 20-11-2010 "Operation Wolf Bait"
Operation Wolf Bait
A call had come in to headquarters just before daybreak: UNLAW team members was taking fire somewhere in the jungle and needed help. As they raced to their vehicles toward the site, the remainder of the "Wolf Pack" were excited about the prospect of engaging the enemy. They'd spent more than two months in Lisbon without a firefight and now were growling to be thrown into the fight.
They didn't know how many enemy fighters to expect. They didn't know exactly where the enemy might be. They didn't know exactly where the rest of the "Pack" were, either. They did know that they were losing the advantage of darkness, driving by dawn's early light.
Two vehicles already had taken fire while trying to park near the ridge during the previous three hours, and two UNLAW soldiers had been marked. Around 9:15 that morning, November 20th, Heretics vehicle, a camo green, 6-foot Land Rover, reached the ridge and darted left and right.
The vehicle was still about 20 feet from the war zone when a rocket-propelled paint grenade slammed into its engine, knocking it out. Enemy machine-gun fire ripped through the open windows. Paint started punching through the air vents.
The Rover shook and stopped, hard enough to send the Wolfpacks sprawling across the floor. Within seconds, four men in the vehicle were marked by headshots, and the survivors were fighting for their lives.
By day's end, a seventh soldier, an UNLAW search-and-rescue specialist, would be bleeding paint to death as Pariahs appeals for urgent evacuation were rejected by his superiors, who wanted no more daylight rescue attempts.
What became a 5-hour ordeal atop a frigid, desolate and enemy-ridden car park cost seven UNLAW Wolf members, more paintball combat deaths than any UNLAW unit had suffered in a single day since it all began, when 5 Recon and Special Operations soldiers were painted in the first half an hour in battle in Negrais, Portugal. How the operation was conducted revealed serious shortcomings in military coordination and communication. How it unfolded highlighted the extraordinary commitment of UNLAW soldiers not to leave fallen comrades behind: The entire episode spiraled out of an attempt to rescue a single UNLAW soldier, who had fallen out of the initial vehicle and was quickly shot by the enemy.
The next report is of the battle from the eyes of Pariah:
The first signs of trouble came about 8 a.m., when Fenrirs vehicle carrying the 1st UNLAW recon team a Special Operations combat controller tried to park near the jungle on the eastern side of the emboscada, on a dense jungle the UNLAW military dubbed "Hamburger Hill."
UNLAW military commanders launched Operation Wolf Bait on 20th November against members of enemy and their allied militia. It was still winter in Portugal´s forbidding eastern jungle.
Military planners had intelligence that enemy forces were concentrating in the valley south of the jungle. The plan was for friendly troops to lead an assault from the northwest, pushing the enemy fighters into UNLAW blocking positions along the eastern ridge. Instead, the friendly troops advance stalled and the eastern ridge itself was found to be teeming with enemy fighters. As UNLAW 10th Mountain Division troops tried to get into position to seal off valley exit routes in the south, they came under paint grenade mortar and machine-gun fire from around Hamburger Hill.
Elements of the 10th Mountain regrouped with plans to insert additional forces north of Hamburger Hill and move south to attack. At the same time, on the morning of 20th, UNLAW commanders sought to gather a firsthand picture by placing a reconnaissance team on the ridgetop.
As they approached the site, the wolf pack quickly found out how blind they really were. A paintball grenade knocked out three men in one short horrible explosion and enemy gunmen opened up on the remainder.
One of the forward recon gunners, fired a single burst of paint from the hill before being struck in the neck. Fenrir was hit in the right leg.
"It basically just pissed me off," Pariah said. "And I just pushed the trigger on my BT combat and started sweeping fire on the left. I didn't know where the fire was coming from, I just knew we were taking fire. I wasn't going to let that happen without shooting back."
Fenrir collapsed in a corner and used his combat belt to tie a tourniquet on his leg. He could see paint oozing from his pockets -- every time he tried to move it, the more florescent paint would gush out of his pots. He continued to fire from his position without being able to move further.
Bullets were zooming through the jungle. A round shattered onto Pariahs shoulder twisting him to the ground, another knocked off his face mask, but didn´t explode. Heretic, burst through the trees to the right and flopped onto the mud. Paintballs exploded around showering him in yellow. A paintball bounced off his thigh without bursting, two others scraped his helmet, another finally explded on his wrist. He staggered out of his position toward better cover, holding his wrist as it spurted paint.
The incoming machine-gun fire was turning the trees leaves into confetti. An RPG shot through the right, hit a tall tree and exploded covering us in more paint. "It was hell and we loved it!!!"
An hour later and it seemed that the enemy had been reinforced as more and more paint was being fired onto our position. Viper, who we had not seen for a while, came crashing out of the thick bush to our left, he was followed but what seemed like a thousand paintballs. He threw himself to the ground as they whipped over his head. He reported that the enemy where trying to flank us and it was time to move out. Instead we consentrated our fire on our left and drove the enemy from their flanking postion which compromised theirs. More paints shattered onto trees, Fenrir dragged himself slowly, firing with every inch of ground he scraped. Heretic fired one handed as the other was bandaged to his chest. Pariah and Viper flanked the enemies right driving them back and finally releaving Fenrir and Heretic in the center.
All told, five wolf members were KIA on Hamburger Hill that day and four were seriously wounded.
As for the number of enemy killed, military officials do not have an exact count. Recon figure they shot at least 10 enemy fighters during the course of the day. Other tallies, based on accounts of the firefight involving the 10th Mountain Wolves rescue team, have put the total enemy killed at as high as 40 or 50.
"It really wasn't our concern to have a good enemy body count when we left," Pariah said. "But hell, it was funny!"
Operation Wolf Bait ended inconclusively on the same day. The military disrupted the enemy on Hamburger Hill, but an unknown number of enemy fighters slipped away to regroup over the border.
In the end, UNLAW accomplished their mission. They retrieved the bodies of all Wolf members in the jungle, leaving no one behind.
"Anyway.... That´s how I saw it that day.... Didn´t you???"
They didn't know how many enemy fighters to expect. They didn't know exactly where the enemy might be. They didn't know exactly where the rest of the "Pack" were, either. They did know that they were losing the advantage of darkness, driving by dawn's early light.
Two vehicles already had taken fire while trying to park near the ridge during the previous three hours, and two UNLAW soldiers had been marked. Around 9:15 that morning, November 20th, Heretics vehicle, a camo green, 6-foot Land Rover, reached the ridge and darted left and right.
The vehicle was still about 20 feet from the war zone when a rocket-propelled paint grenade slammed into its engine, knocking it out. Enemy machine-gun fire ripped through the open windows. Paint started punching through the air vents.
The Rover shook and stopped, hard enough to send the Wolfpacks sprawling across the floor. Within seconds, four men in the vehicle were marked by headshots, and the survivors were fighting for their lives.
By day's end, a seventh soldier, an UNLAW search-and-rescue specialist, would be bleeding paint to death as Pariahs appeals for urgent evacuation were rejected by his superiors, who wanted no more daylight rescue attempts.
What became a 5-hour ordeal atop a frigid, desolate and enemy-ridden car park cost seven UNLAW Wolf members, more paintball combat deaths than any UNLAW unit had suffered in a single day since it all began, when 5 Recon and Special Operations soldiers were painted in the first half an hour in battle in Negrais, Portugal. How the operation was conducted revealed serious shortcomings in military coordination and communication. How it unfolded highlighted the extraordinary commitment of UNLAW soldiers not to leave fallen comrades behind: The entire episode spiraled out of an attempt to rescue a single UNLAW soldier, who had fallen out of the initial vehicle and was quickly shot by the enemy.
The next report is of the battle from the eyes of Pariah:
The first signs of trouble came about 8 a.m., when Fenrirs vehicle carrying the 1st UNLAW recon team a Special Operations combat controller tried to park near the jungle on the eastern side of the emboscada, on a dense jungle the UNLAW military dubbed "Hamburger Hill."
UNLAW military commanders launched Operation Wolf Bait on 20th November against members of enemy and their allied militia. It was still winter in Portugal´s forbidding eastern jungle.
Military planners had intelligence that enemy forces were concentrating in the valley south of the jungle. The plan was for friendly troops to lead an assault from the northwest, pushing the enemy fighters into UNLAW blocking positions along the eastern ridge. Instead, the friendly troops advance stalled and the eastern ridge itself was found to be teeming with enemy fighters. As UNLAW 10th Mountain Division troops tried to get into position to seal off valley exit routes in the south, they came under paint grenade mortar and machine-gun fire from around Hamburger Hill.
Elements of the 10th Mountain regrouped with plans to insert additional forces north of Hamburger Hill and move south to attack. At the same time, on the morning of 20th, UNLAW commanders sought to gather a firsthand picture by placing a reconnaissance team on the ridgetop.
As they approached the site, the wolf pack quickly found out how blind they really were. A paintball grenade knocked out three men in one short horrible explosion and enemy gunmen opened up on the remainder.
One of the forward recon gunners, fired a single burst of paint from the hill before being struck in the neck. Fenrir was hit in the right leg.
"It basically just pissed me off," Pariah said. "And I just pushed the trigger on my BT combat and started sweeping fire on the left. I didn't know where the fire was coming from, I just knew we were taking fire. I wasn't going to let that happen without shooting back."
Fenrir collapsed in a corner and used his combat belt to tie a tourniquet on his leg. He could see paint oozing from his pockets -- every time he tried to move it, the more florescent paint would gush out of his pots. He continued to fire from his position without being able to move further.
Bullets were zooming through the jungle. A round shattered onto Pariahs shoulder twisting him to the ground, another knocked off his face mask, but didn´t explode. Heretic, burst through the trees to the right and flopped onto the mud. Paintballs exploded around showering him in yellow. A paintball bounced off his thigh without bursting, two others scraped his helmet, another finally explded on his wrist. He staggered out of his position toward better cover, holding his wrist as it spurted paint.
The incoming machine-gun fire was turning the trees leaves into confetti. An RPG shot through the right, hit a tall tree and exploded covering us in more paint. "It was hell and we loved it!!!"
An hour later and it seemed that the enemy had been reinforced as more and more paint was being fired onto our position. Viper, who we had not seen for a while, came crashing out of the thick bush to our left, he was followed but what seemed like a thousand paintballs. He threw himself to the ground as they whipped over his head. He reported that the enemy where trying to flank us and it was time to move out. Instead we consentrated our fire on our left and drove the enemy from their flanking postion which compromised theirs. More paints shattered onto trees, Fenrir dragged himself slowly, firing with every inch of ground he scraped. Heretic fired one handed as the other was bandaged to his chest. Pariah and Viper flanked the enemies right driving them back and finally releaving Fenrir and Heretic in the center.
All told, five wolf members were KIA on Hamburger Hill that day and four were seriously wounded.
As for the number of enemy killed, military officials do not have an exact count. Recon figure they shot at least 10 enemy fighters during the course of the day. Other tallies, based on accounts of the firefight involving the 10th Mountain Wolves rescue team, have put the total enemy killed at as high as 40 or 50.
"It really wasn't our concern to have a good enemy body count when we left," Pariah said. "But hell, it was funny!"
Operation Wolf Bait ended inconclusively on the same day. The military disrupted the enemy on Hamburger Hill, but an unknown number of enemy fighters slipped away to regroup over the border.
In the end, UNLAW accomplished their mission. They retrieved the bodies of all Wolf members in the jungle, leaving no one behind.
"Anyway.... That´s how I saw it that day.... Didn´t you???"
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