Translate

Monday, May 1, 2017

They Called Me "Flint Eastwood"




I think we can all agree that war is not good, and that we all desperately long for a world without armies and tanks,attack helicopters,missiles and bombs. That is, however, simply not realistic at this point in history, nor has it been possible at any time in all of human history to date. That day will surely come, but it's just plain not here yet, and we have to face that fact or be conquered. 

A man named William Ralph Inge, who was among other things an English author and animal rights advocate, said something very wise in his book "Outspoken Essays" way back in the year 1919.


"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."


The fact is that we have no other choice but to maintain an army and soldiers and weapons until the day arrives in which the wolves change their attitude and no longer pose a threat to us.

I was crouched down in a
thick forest, trying to make myself invisible. I could hear feet trying to move as soundlessly as possible on the crisply frozen snow that covered the trail, which lay approximately ten meters to the west. The forest was enveloped in silence. The kind of utter stillness that is companion to a world in deep-freeze at 21 degrees below zero. Dusk was falling, and I needed to get back to my men as soon as possible. The enemy had attacked every evening around dusk for the past five days and I needed to be with my men when they came again tonight. We'd managed to repel them up to that point, but we'd lost men doing it and our numbers were slowly dwindling. Sooner or later there wouldn't be enough of us left to ward them off anymore. The thing was, the enemy wasn't attacking in force as you'd expect him to when mounting an offensive against an entire company of forty men, as we were; or rather had been only a few short days ago. Instead, they were coming in small squads of maybe ten men, nipping at our heels, thinning our ranks slowly but surely, whittling us down until there were too few of us left to withstand them. 

They were smart, they were. Their incursions were strategic artworks designed to maximize their fire power against a larger force. They had attacked the warm-up tent yesterday evening, for example, and the execution of their well-planned offensive was gruesomely precise. They had crept up behind the warm-up tent like ghosts, one man each taking up positions at the back and on each side of the tent. The other seven soldiers had hidden themselves at positions in the woods across from the entrance to the tent. Positions which would allow them to cover the entrance of the tent from all angles. At a predetermined moment all three of the soldiers behind and beside the tent slit it with their combat knives and threw CS-gas grenades inside! Shouts of alarm were raised from within and chaos ensued! Those inside came tumbling out the front in blind panic! And yep, you guessed it: those hidden opposite the tent opened fire. Our boys never had a chance. Then the attackers faded away into the forest and simply were not there anymore. They would be making their way back to their base by now, satisfied that their meticulously planned and efficiently executed incursion had been a devastating success. Several more of us were gone...





I tried to huddle even closer to the ground, the bitter cold slowly seeping its way through the many layers of US Army issue cold weather gear I was wearing. I was scared...really scared. I was a couple of hundred meters from our camp, and I was alone. No help would come. The sounds I was hearing could only be a squad of enemy soldiers advancing for another dusk incursion. If they saw me I was a dead man, or even worse than that, a prisoner. We'd all heard stories about how they treated their prisoners... 

The point man suddenly appeared on the trail some distance away, coming at me from the northwest. The rest of the squad soon followed. They were half crouching as they gingerly moved forward in a tight row, their faces covered with white camouflage grease. They were going to walk right by me about ten meters away, and they were bunched up tight.  "Maybe the enemy isn't quite as smart as we thought he was", I said to myself. They were making a big mistake by walking in such a tight line. They were much too close together and every soldier knows that you have to spread out on the trail, otherwise the whole squad could be taken out all at once. How often had the drill sergeants told us that in basic training? It began to dawn on me that I might actually be able to take them down when they walked by me on that trail, all lined up so nice and pretty as they were. They were like ducks in a shooting gallery.

I prepared myself to go into Rambo mode...





M16A2 Rifle
The rifle I had with me was an M16A2, US Army standard issue at the time.


The rifle's safety switch is on the left side of the weapon where you see the man's left thumb in the photo. The left position is safe, the middle position is semi- auto, and the right position is full-auto. 




Those enemy soldiers were getting closer and closer,
and finally reached my position. I was perfectly calm inside but ready to jump into action at just the right moment. Unfortunately, my rifle was set on safety. If I switched over to full-auto now they would hear it, so I had to wait until the very last moment to switch over. When the right moment arrived I calmly stood up, switching over to full-auto as I did, and wasted the whole squad in a matter of seconds!










It took those boys a few seconds to process what had happened to them. They stopped in their tracks, frozen in time, half crouched, with their weapons out in front of them. Their faces went from surprise to pure shock as they turned their heads towards me and realized what had just happened. They just couldn't believe it...

I stepped out with my weapon over my shoulder and said, "If you would please follow me gentlemen", turned on my heel and led the way to the captain's tent. Once there I called out, asking for permission to enter the tent, and got the
captain's ok. I stepped in and went to attention. "I've eliminated the enemy's attack squad for this evening sir", I announced as the captain reached for the tally book in which each soldier's kills were recorded. Captain Jordan asked, "Is that what all that shooting was about a few minutes ago?" "Yes sir, that was me." "Well, bring 'him' in so I can take a look at 'him'", ordered the Captain. He obviously hadn't understood me when I'd said "The attack squad" The look on the captain's face was priceless when I pulled the flap of the tent back and the whole attack squad filed in! They lined up before him red faced, heads bowed in shame. Captain Jordan was confused at first. He looked first at me, then the enemy soldiers, then at me again, his face mirroring the confusion he felt. "You killed them all?" "Yes sir!" I replied. "All by yourself???" "Yes sir!" I answered once again. I gave an account of how the whole thing had gone down while he tallied my kills in the book, his face beaming with pride at how deadly his soldiers were. Of course I didn't mention that I'd been out in the woods relieving myself when they just happened along. It wouldn't hurt my career if the man thought I was a strategic genius. As soon as he had finished tallying he turned his attention to those enemy soldiers. He chewed those boys up and spit them out, telling them what bad soldiers they were and how they'd all be dead if this were a real war instead of a training exercise. "You should be ashamed of yourselves," he told them, "all ten of you wiped out by a single man!"   
The story of what I'd done spread like wildfire through the company, and soon all of my fellow soldiers knew about the incident. Later, in the chow line, one of them looked at me as I approached and said, "Look! Here comes Flint Eastwood!" They all patted me on the back and told me how proud they were to serve with me. Later, in the warm-up tent Sgt. Little walked up and stood next to me and said, "Flint, if we ever have to go to war for real I want you next to me!"

That nickname, "Flint Eastwood", stuck with me for the rest of my time in that unit...
















No comments:

Post a Comment