Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

Free Sample Chapters 455
ordered the jeep to get clear, and hunk-ered down next to Soifert to see
if he could help.
Lieutenant Nanna took charge, forcing his way onto the bat-talion
tac net with a report on his arrival and Soifert’s injuries. The radioman
on the other end of the conversation was infuriat-ingly dense, getting
the message completely fouled up three or four times. Dennis Allston’s
simmering frustration grew to overt ire, and he yelled at Nanna to “stop
playing word games” with the idiot radioman and order up some help.
Nanna requested that corpsmen be dispatched with an ambulance jeep.
Second Lieutenant Mike Murphy, the MSSG-24 communica-tor, was
incensed by the events unfolding on his tactical net. An extremely
motivated young officer who had, perhaps, grown frustrated with his
indoor duties while fellow Marines had been engaged in combat for a
month, Murphy volunteered to lead the rescue. He was turned down,
but he could not be kept down.
HMC B. C. Miller and HM3 Ken Boyer were on duty at the MSSG
aid station when a runner arrived to announce that a member of the
MSSG had been shot on the outer perimeter road. Miller and Boyer
grabbed their Unit-1 medical kits and headed upstairs to get the platoon
ambulance. They discovered that it was on a run elsewhere. The two
corpsmen next headed for the BLT motor pool, intent upon borrowing
the battalion aid station ambulance jeep. Their request was turned down.
Boyer and Miller cursed up a storm, applied a liberal dose of guilt, and
won the day. As Boyer started the engine, he and Miller were joined by
HN Gary Cooper and 2dLt Mike Murphy.
The roadway was blocked at a Marine checkpoint by a dump truck,
perhaps the one that had earlier been hit by militia gunfire. As the
corpsmen and Lieutenant Murphy fretted, the driver and the sentry
chattered away. Murphy yelled “Hey, Ma-rine!” several times before
the truck driver looked up. When Murphy identified himself, the dump
truck pulled out of the way, but the sentry moved to bar the road. “Hey!
We got sniper fire down there.”
“Yeah,” Boyer called as he passed, “we’re going to pick up the guy
who got shot.”