Which brings me back to Grant Skiffington, the Admiral’s son. I know he is smart enough to plan a decent, imaginative attack, but he doesn’t bother. He just likes to fight and isn’t too concerned with actually winning. He doesn’t seem to care much if people get wounded (which hurts like a sonofabitch). After one skirmish I told him he was a jerk and that a lot of his people had been killed for nothing (he didn’t even take the objective). He laughed and called over one of the FOFs. “How you feeling?” he asked the guy. “Fine,” replied the soldier. Then Skiffington leaned over to me and said sotto voce, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Tuttle; he’s not really dead.” Then he laughed and walked away. I told Cookie about it and she said I should have shot him in the ass. “He feel some pain then, girlie. He most certainly will.” Cookie is ambivalent about Skiffington. She admires him for his ferocity in battle, but doesn’t like the casualties. “He’ll take the hill that needs takin’ real bad, but he might be the only one left standin’.” Sergeant Kaelin just shakes his head and asks Skiffington if he can really be that stupid. He’s not, of course.
Sergeant Kaelin still hasn’t picked me to lead the Company in any significant maneuver. Getting nervous.
Chapter 9
P.D. 948
The Recruit
At Victorian Fleet Training Facility on Aberdeen
For the next two months, Blue Company was in the field at least six days a week. There were ambushes, assaults on a fixed target, long patrols in free-fire zones, and more. Each day the Drill Instructors would pick recruits to be officers for that day’s exercise. Emily quickly discerned that they were given problems, but not taught the solution to the problem until the next training session. The first week they were given maps and a compass, and then were sent on long hikes with half a dozen way-points. They got helplessly lost, and in one case wandered so far outside the training area they did not even encounter enemy troops. They got back to the camp a day late, out of water and food and thoroughly exhausted. The next day there was a lesson in map reading and orienteering. Emily paid very close attention, noted her mistakes from the day before and vowed that whatever other screw-ups she might make; she would never be lost again.
They were run through several hairy fire fights before they were taken to a shooting range, and once there every one of them paid close attention to how to properly aim the Bull Pup. They ran out of battery packs, and learned to check out additional ones from Supply. They learned that water was too damn heavy to carry a third canteen, but to refill the two they had at every opportunity. They learned to never, never pass up an opportunity to sleep.
And they learned about each other: which recruits never complained; who always complained; who would scream and bully; who would listen quietly and take the time to think the problem through; who you could rely on.
For sheer cleverness, though, Emily’s favorite was Hiram Brill. Awkward, gangly, his slow speech masked a chess player’s sense of strategy. Blue Company’s mission was simple: hold a communications center. The building sat next to a small copse of trees in a flat field. The “enemy” was made up of Green and Gold Companies, two hundred soldiers against Blue Company’s one hundred. The jump off point for the attackers was fifteen miles away. They would have to march through hilly, wooded terrain to reach the objective.
When he got the assignment, Brill sat down with a topographical map of the area he had scrounged from the Camp library. He studied it for twenty minutes, then divided the Company into five groups of twenty each. He flipped pages in his notebook, then called out the names of fifteen men and women who had all been long-distance runners in school, and had them dump all their gear except for their rifle, two extra batteries, one field-ration bar and a bottle of water. One man was given a pair of binoculars and a radio.
“You are the rabbits,” he explained. His voice was strong, but Emily saw his face was pasty white. “Green and Gold jumped off thirty minutes ago at the base of this ridge line, fifteen miles away. You guys can run faster and longer than anybody in Blue Company. We need you to reach the enemy as far away from here as possible so that we’ll have the maximum amount of time to whittle them down before they reach this building. Move as fast as you can until you make contact with Green and Gold. Send your three best runners ahead to be scouts. Once you find the enemy, fall back to a good position to set your first ambush. Harass the hell out of them! Shoot like you’ve got all the ammo in the world! They’ll be stunned at first, then they’ll come at you hard. As soon as they do, fall back! Stay in contact, but keep falling back. I want them to chase you. If they don’t chase you, hit them again.” He marked a spot on the map. “When you reach this point, this ridge line right here, another team will take over being the rabbits. You just break contact and come all the way back. There’ll be food and water at these points. Eat a little, have some water, then go. Don’t try to carry anything, just get back here.”
The second rabbit team was to harass and fall back over three miles, then break contact while the third team took over. This way the Green and Gold troopers would continually face fresh defenders, who were traveling light and fast.
It worked like a charm. The Green and Gold companies had only marched four miles, moving slowly with full packs, when they ran into the first rabbit team. They lost ten men FOF before they could muster a counter attack, but try as they might, they could not seem to catch the fleet-footed Blue soldiers. More Green and Gold fell, but they doggedly pushed on. Sometimes the attackers caught up to the Blue soldiers, and even managed to kill a few, but they paid dearly for their meager victories. It was a hot day and soon the pace began to tell on them. The Gold commander urged the men to slow down and not get worn out, but the Green commander urged the men forward, screaming invectives each time the Blue defenders picked off another attacker. The stronger, fitter soldiers soon pushed out in front, while their slower comrades fell behind. Command and control began to break down and the attackers soon became several disorganized, individual groups rather than a cohesive force of two hundred soldiers.
Ten long, hot hours after the first shots were fired, the Green commander led the front elements of the attack force to the hill overlooking the communications center. By then the attack force had lost ninety men killed to twenty of the Blues, and the attack force was strung out over five miles. Rather than wait for the rest of his force to arrive, the Green commander (the Gold commander had twisted his ankle six miles earlier) ordered an immediate attack with the forty men he had at hand. Tired, hungry, and anxious to launch a bold attack against his objective, the Green commander did not bother to make a reconnaissance, and thus missed the last opportunity to save himself and his men.
From his spider hole, Brill watched the attackers emerge from the copse of trees. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants, then keyed his radio: “Steady, everyone. They are almost in the kill zone. Wait for my command.”
Brill’s defenders waited until the Green soldiers were fully exposed in the middle of the field, then emerged from the spider holes they had dug on either side of the Communications Center. In three brutal minutes, they annihilated the attackers. Not one attacker survived, and the field was littered with blinking orange troops.
That still left some seventy Green and Gold troops in the hills, led by the limping Gold commander. Brill got on the radio and gave an order, and the small teams he had hidden in the woods formed a line behind the stragglers. The Blue troops crept stealthily behind the attacking forces as the Gold commander led them to the copse of trees near the communications center. When they arrived, the Gold commander was mystified to see so many of the attack force FOF in the field below him, with no Blue soldiers in sight. Had they been driven off? Was the communications center his for the taking? Cautiously, wary of a trap, the attack force moved from the copse and formed a wide skirmish line. Behind them, unseen, the Blue soldiers who had been following them took up firing positions in the trees.