Day 13
The trucks are loaded up. All extra equipment is stored in the ural truck. We only hold on ourselves weapons and ammo. We don’t know what to expect at the airfield so we are rolling in with weapons hot. Marsden and Jock where bugging Morton this morning about pain in their respective wounds. They both got a shot of morphine. With that and some adrenaline, Marsden could move his wrist and Jock could walk. We are ready for combat. As we head to the airfield we see wrecked cars and houses on fire. We realize that we will be hitting a different kind of trouble here. We begin to pull up to the checkpoint where we are going to store our cars for the coming battle. As we park the cars we hear a strange grinding noise. The noise sounded familiar, I remembered it from Camp Pendleton. We would do PT while there where LAV drills practiced in the distance. They made a grinding noise as they drove.... this same noise was heard today as we parked the trucks. I silenced everyone and got them into the tree line as we saw the M2 Bradley drive past. It was armed with a 25mm gun and a .50 cal mounted gun. I could see one man on the side of it and one on the mounted gun. I signal Marsden to load in his armor piercing rounds for his M107. He loads them up but the M2 stops 100 meters to our north east. The man jumps off the side and the .50 cal is scanning. I urge Marsden to fire on the LAV while the rest of us suppress it. Before I can tell everyone I see 1stSgt. Stone rush from the trees carrying his M1014 and two M67 frag grenades. I tell Marsden to fire and he rips the head off the .50 cal gunner. Stone peppers the man on the ground with slug rounds and climbs on the LAV. I watch as our new leader pops two frags and drops them down the hatch of the LAV. As he runs towards us the grenades go off and the LAV explodes and sends Stone into the dirt. Morton and I rush out and take him back to the tree line. We then moved the trucks further into the forest and decided that we would have to plan a better attack now that we know that Object Thunder is guarded by armor. We must take that airfield!
Edited by Ret. T. Brown