Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

Free Sample Chapters 345
At last, the bombardment died way, and I walked outside, through
the remains of the trees that had once shielded the battalion CP from
view. I meandered through the trees, looking at the stars and feeling life
return to a landscape that resembled the surface of the moon. Then I
went back inside and drew two cups of coffee from the perpetual urn.
As I was handing one cup to Maj Matt Caulfield, I heard an observer up
on Hill 881S announce on the battalion net, “Arty! Arty! Arty! Co Roc.”
I instinctively hunched my head into my shoulders and wondered halfaloud,
“So where’s this one going to hit?”
The next thing I knew, there was a tremendous explosion and all the
lights went out. The bunker instantly was filled with dust and there was
an immediate dead silence.
I think I was the first to speak—one of those dumb questions: “Is
everybody okay?” It was dead dark in there, so I was immensely relieved
to hear people say “Yeah, I’m okay,” and “I’m fine,” and “No sweat.”
Everyone had had his brains rattled, but no one had been hurt.
There was just the one round. Until someone got our generator going
again, there was nothing doing inside, so we all went out to see what
had hit us.
The round had come in on an angle, right between the trees, right
through the tent we had erected to camouflage the bunker. It had hit the
one-inch plywood outer shell and detonated—just the way we had hoped.
There were six feet of earth, wood, rocks, and metal between us and the
explosion, but the blast had blown off two feet of all those materials and
had taken down the three-ply blast walls we had erected around the
bunker.
Two Marines who had been exiting a tent just across the way were
saved by the blast walls, which directed the full force of the blast outward
in another direction. We found them flopping around on the ground,
stunned but unscathed except for a a few tiny shrapnel wounds, hardly
more than scratches.
We had taken a direct hit from a 152mm or 130mm round, but no
one was permanently injured. It was a miracle of foresight and faith in
our two main gods, Dirt and More Dirt.
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