Just Cause H-Hour (1)

There was a crackle on the radio. Everybody stopped drinking whichever of the three obligatory Red-White-And-Blue beers they had in their hands and somebody, the RTO, I think, said, “It’s just Redcon 3 man…might wanna’ finish off your beers, in case it changes.” The enlisted men in the platoon were in a long, low, rickety building made of eighty year old, paint peeled plywood. Holes and torn screens and screen doors allowed excellent starting points for the many types of vermin that infested these billets on Empire Range, in Panama, late December, 1989. There were about thirty cots in the dwelling. It was wide enough to allow two men to walk abreast down its center, with those cots head to toe pointing towards that center aisle. About fifteen cots on either side. I was the new guy here. Sure, until two months ago, I was stationed here in Panama, right over the Canal at Fort Clayton. Then, I PCS’d to Fort Polk, Louisiana and got turned around and sent right back. I was kinda’ nervous about that, about being seen here again by some people in my old unit, but that’s another story. I wasn’t getting’ a lot of credit from the guys in this platoon yet. They didn’t know me, and I’d been “light Infantry” my last three years; this was a Mech unit. Big guns and tracked vehicles. I had no idea how they worked. I was used to bein’ on-the ground. Sure, some things always stay the same, but some things require a little thought, even when you know what you’re doin’. I’d been here two days. I already didn’t like the Section Sergeant, Sergeant Samuals. A big, black blowhard who was extensively overweight and shouldn’t even be in the Army, not with that great Buddha belly. Not in my last unit. He was just too fat to lead; yes, there is such a thing. The first sergeant, also a black-hispanic man, would have given him one shot to lose the weight and then chaptered him out when he failed. It’s not entirely heartless, I did it. I lost 50 pounds to stay in the Army. But, he was strong, I’ll give him that. Just not able to run a hundred yards without havin’ a heart attack. He was also a coward, which I’ll illustrate later. And because I can do that, he hated me ever afterward. A guy leaned over to me from his cot and said, “Dude, you need to suck down those beers before the Redcon goes to 2, or you’re gonna’ lose ‘em.” “I gotcha’…I’m just tryin’ to put together my gear, man.” I said, and I was doing just that. I’d just gotten my personal equipment just hours before and was thrust into this platoon this very day. I knew no one. No one knew me. A Newbie, even if I was a Specialist and had an Air Assault Badge. Just a newbie.

The guy who gave me the advice was wearing his PT uniform and had a bandage wrapped around his right upper thigh. Apparently, he had been chucking his bayonet into the wooden ceiling, just above his bunk, and forgotten about it after a beer or two, the day prior. The bayonet wiggled loose and, end-over-end, described a perfectly executed Olympic dive into his leg when he’d passed out that evening…thuck! Coulda’ been his nuts; close call. His screams woke up the entire encampment. I heard about it on the ride over here from their Battalion Headquarters. Now, all bayonets were taken away from the lower enlisted and put into the arms room. I didn’t even have magazines for my weapon yet. No ammo, either…that was on the tracks, though. My rifle was little better than a club, for all practical purposes. “Yeah, you know we have to take all that shit with us on a ‘sandflea’ if they call it.” He said. A “sandflea” was a practice alert status. We’d all get our shit, jump on our vehicles and move out to staging areas designated by whatever the battle plan happened to be. They hadn’t gone to Redcon 1 but once, several weeks before, and they’d rolled around the whole area, tryin’ to feel out the lay of the land. The unit had been here a few months. They’d relieved another Battalion from the same Brigade on Polk at that time. A buddy of mine had been with that unit; I’d seen him while I was still stationed here and he’d rotated through. Now, it was 4/6 Infantry, 5th Infantry Division. I half-heartedly took a swig of my open beer and the radioman yelled, “Redcon 2! Redcon 2!” And everybody seemed to freeze in place. I started to gather my equipment up in a rush. The guy next to me, Crawford, the self-stabber, said, “Don’t worry about it, man. We go to 2 all-the-time.” And the radioman said, “Redcon 1! Redcon 1!” and everyone started to move. Everybody grabbed their equipment and ran out the door, towards the gun-tracks. I was the last man out with all my shit still half put together. I had no idea who I was supposed to report to. I wasn’t even assigned a squad, yet. I found the heavy SSG Samuals and asked him, “Hey Sergeant? Where do I go? Who do I report to?” He looked at me as if I was a tree sloth and said, “Newbie. You throw your shit in the back of my HMMV and ride with us.” And he turned to give something else his attention. There was a lot of movement in the dark there. I felt pretty useless without any ammunition, not even a bayonet! And here we were, apparently rollin’ into action. Jesus Christ, I said to myself, I’ll die without even bein’ able to shoot back! I watched as vehicle crews rushed to load whatever last minute supplies they needed. I watched as the leaders of those vehicles ordered their people to attend to critical tasks. I

watched as the movement of an entire Battalion Task Force began to gain momentum, like a huge, ponderous machine that has thousands of tiny moving parts. And I had no job yet. SSG Samual noticed me, again. He said, angrily, “Specialist, get in the back of the vehicle.” I did. I had my equipment on and waited. What began to run through my mind were all the possible ambush areas along the route out of this range complex, where I’d trained for three years, and how these guys knew nothing about where they were heading. Hell, I’d been on both sides of ambushes on the road out of here dozens of times. There’s only one road. I hoped everything really was a surprise to the Guads. Even a bunch of jokers like the Guads, La Guardia, Noriega’s paramilitary police force, could set up a decent ambush. The vehicle started. Another soldier hopped into the back, right over the closed tailgate. He rolled and sat down on the bench seat across from me. It was the radioman from the billets, Specialist Craig. In a very southern drawl, he said, “Hey States. Looks like it might be for-real this time!” I said, “Cool, but I need some ammo, man. You got any you can spare?” “Nope.” He said. That statement forever tainted my opinion of Craig. I just looked at him. Here I was, likely the best shot in this fucking company, and I had no ammo. I shook my head, looked to the front of the HMMV and asked the Section Sergeant, Samuals, “Sergeant, can I get some ammo?” He looked disturbed by my talking to him at all and said, “You’ll get some when we get to the staging area, now shut the fuck up.” That statement soured me to Samuals even more than his huge, out-of-regs, fat-ass. I was a Specialist, though, so I shut up. We drove behind a convoy of tracks and HMMVs and trucks to a location somewhere safe, I believe near Albrook AFB, for the Order. When the vehicles pulled into the Assembly

Area, I didn’t really recognize it, it still being dark and having ridden in a covered HMMV, in the bed of the truck. But as soon as we hit the ground there, SSG Samuals was gone. He left no instructions, so I went to the various Mortar Gun Tracks and started begging for ammo. I was finally in luck and got seven 30 round magazines from a few different guys. I was so relieved. You’ll never know. I was just happy we hadn’t been hit enroute. These guys…this platoon, wasn’t really that well trained. There are a lot of things they just didn’t do, that I’d seen done before and couldn’t understand. For one thing, they didn’t tell the lower enlisted guys anything. The sergeants were all inthe-know, but the soldiers knew next to nothing. That’s not good. I think the sergeants thought that knowledge was power…something like that. What they didn’t seem to know was that the real power was in sharing knowledge, not in hiding it. In this assembly area, what should have been happening was an orders process and the information should have gone to every man in the platoon. That didn’t happen at all. The Platoon Sergeant, SFC Fedd, seemed to think that something should get to the soldiers, but what he told us was not informative, it was kinda’ a pep talk. In it, he told us that a lot of men were probably gonna’ die that night, and he didn’t say much else. So the entire H-hour sequence was known only to the Squad Leaders and for the majority of the platoon, it was gonna be “discovery learning.” I wasn’t happy with this kind of unit at all. But, you gotta’ work with what you got. Find the best there, and pull them in to make something better. Everybody was on a track, including me. At least I had a home now. My squad consisted of three guys who were cross-leveled from a Tanker Battalion, and me as the “ammo bearer”, since I had no idea of what I was doing on a mechanized, 4.2 Inch Mortar system. But I could do the ammo-bearer shit. It’s the least job in the squad, but necessary. Aside from providing local security to the gun track, the ammo-bearer cuts changes (determines and emplaces nitroglycerin propellant charges on each mortar round) and runs poles on occupations (runs out and sticks aiming poles in the ground for the gun site to have a reference point to aim from). I could do all that. That doesn’t change much between systems. Too easy. My Squad leader was a forgettable sergeant named Simpson. There was a driver, Forrester, a tall, lanky, slow talkin’ Gary Cooper type. There was a Hispanic dude named Vasquez, he was the gunner.

The best man there was Forrester, and aside from me, he had the least say in what went on in that track. We started moving. It was still very dark, very late at night. I started to recognize where we were going and felt a little better. There was a back gate to Fort Clayton and the adjoining Air Force Base, Albrook. They were two different installations, but their back gates were only a few hundred meters apart. We were heading up that road, but entered a side gate to a school that bordered Albrook Airfield. We entered the school property by crashing the 14 ton lead guntrack through the chained gates of the school. As we entered the grounds and shot to the fence line that separated the airfield from the school grounds, a group of vehicles, trucks full of other troops mostly, and some APCs, continued on that roadway towards those back gates of Clayton and Albrook. I discovered, this being the first time I ever rode in a guntrack, that I didn’t like it at all. I felt like a huge target and all those HE (high explosive) rounds in the track didn’t make me feel any better. Sure, I’d carried the rounds on my back when I was “light”, but not being in control of where I was going, and not being able to depend on myself for personal survival skills…that disconcerted me a bit. Sure, riding was better than walking, but living was better than dying, too. The vehicles, our vehicles, now took up a sort of rough semi-circle and the Platoon Leader, LT Manausa, and the Platoon Sergeant and some of the FDC personnel dismounted and began talking in earnest in the middle of the formation. From where I stood, in the back of my gun track, I could see the Airfield beyond the fence. There was another fence a few hundred meters Northwest, in much better repair. That was the proper border of the Airfield. Between that and the property of the school, was a large open area. Past that and the airfield, were the buildings and housing on that airbase. I got off my gun track and sidled up as close as I could get to where the leaders were talking about the upcoming mission. It was dark, but I could still make out a few worried expressions on the men clustered around the map they shared. The Platoon Sergeant was saying, “I’m just saying that we’re gonna’ have to do it fast, if they have RPGs, one hit and we’ll lose at least two tracks. It looks to be about a half mile. That’s a long way to be tracked by these motherfuckers if they’re ready for us. I don’t like it.” The Platoon Leader said, “Yeah, but we don’t have any other way to get there. We gotta’ just go balls-to-the-wall and hope for the best. I don’t like it either, but I don’t see any other way.” Apparently, our firing position, to cover the battalion, was on the other side of the airfield.

One of the Squad leaders walked away from the others, clearly concerned. He walked to his gun and started talking to his troops. “They said there’s enemy teams already out there, waiting. I just don’t know where, exactly. This sucks.” said SFC Fedd. Manausa said, “We move in 20 minutes, any way you cut it. That’s the orders.” “Sir?” I said. He and SFC Fedd both looked at me, tiredly. “Sir…if you want to get on the far side of that airfield, there’s another way.” I said. “It’s the new guy.” Said SFC Fedd. I spoke quickly, “Sergeant, I was stationed here the last three years. If we take the road we just came in on about two miles up further, there’s a gate , a back gate onto the post. We can hook a left onto it and be on the other side of that airfield. I’ve been there.” “States? That’s it, right? Show me.” And he offered me the map. I showed him the back gate and the road we were just on. I pointed on the map, “I’m tellin’ you, sir, there’s a gate right there. No bullshit.” And he said, “You’re sure?” “Sir, I can point it out to you. We can go there right now.” And we did.

LT Manausa said, “Let’s go.” And he turned around to SFC Fedd and said, “Get them ready to move and I’ll be on the radio…should only be a few minutes.” I got into his HMMV along with him and his driver. We tore out of the playground he’d been parked in and flew out the gate. We took a left outside and onto the paved single lane road and accelerated North. I’d never been in a HMMV moving that fast before, the engine screamed. In no time we were approaching the back gates of Fort Clayton and Albrook. I pointed left and yelled at the LT, “Sir, that’s it right there!” There was a sign that said, “Albrook” and a set of security gates chained together. Beyond that, there was a road clearly going in the right direction. The LT grabbed the hand mike of the vehicle mounted radio and called the Platoon, “Boomer 4 this is Boomer 6 actual,

initiate movement. I will be stationed parallel to the entrance…” and he began to describe the situation to the Platoon Sergeant. “Roger, Boomer 6, we’re enroute.” said SFC Fedd. “Alright States…after we get in there, which way do we go?” Asked the LT. “Sir, just follow the road about a mile and you’ll come out with the Air force housing area on your right and the airfield on your left. Past that, I don’t know where you want to set up.” I said. He grabbed the hand mike again and called the platoon, “Boomer 4, this is Boomer 6 actual, when you get to my location, halt the lead vehicle next to my location, over.” “Boomer 6, roger, out.” said the platoon sergeant. I could hear the tracks coming. Then I could feel them. They’re only 14 ton vehicles, but that’s a lot for here…for this roadway. They came around the heavily wooded…or jungled…corner and stopped dead next to the HMMV. The LT jumped out of the vehicle and talked to the Squad Leader, gesturing wildly at the gate and jumped back into the HMMV. The gun track pivoted and accelerated through the gate, taking the right side gate and framework with it. It drove about fifty meters inside the entryway and stopped. The LTs driver gunned the vehicle and we chased and passed the lead gun track as the others began to follow. We pulled well ahead as the LT scanned everything he could in front of us and checking out his lensatic compass every few seconds.. Everything that just happened, from the time I talked to the LT back in the schoolyard until this moment might have taken 15 minutes. We were on-track, is all I could think. But he still seemed to be in one hell of a hurry. I don’t blame him. It would take a few minutes to get the platoon ‘set’ once he found a firing position. That is, for us to take missions, we’d have to occupy a firing position; that takes at least 4 minutes, at least, for a hip-shot. An emergency mission. The road had dense jungle lining both sides, but now, after a minute, it opened up and before us, on the left, was the airfield. On the right, airmen’s housing. The road was sitting on a fill, that is, the airfield was down slope on one side, the housing downslope, on the other. The LT was looking at his compass in the direction of the airfield. He saw a path leading down towards the housing side and told his driver to stop the vehicle. He directed him just past that path, a double tracked access way, it looked like…maybe for maintenance personnel. We parked and the LT jumped out of the HMMV as we just began to hear the approaching whine of gun-track engines.

The guns broke out of the woodline and the LT started waving them to him. The first guntrack slowed as it approached him and he gestured down on the housing side of the berm that the road was on. He also directed towards Panama City and the airfield, both the same direction, indicating the guns general direction-of-fire. The squad leader of number 1 gun shot down the slope. The other guns followed. It was a good choice in a firing point, I thought. There was defilade and the gun line was hidden from the bad guy’s business side. Of course, they might just have seen us drive in. I think they did. Six 107mm Mortar gun-tracks rolled into that location and all pivoted so that their ass-end faced the direction of fire. They were all on-line. They were only, maybe, twenty meters apart. Far too close, tactically. Ideally, the platoon should have been spread across about 350 meters from one-gun to six gun, with the others in-between. Or they should have been staggered, like a great big “W”. There’s a lot of ways of emplacing guns that aren’t always used, because of what seems like the necessity of the moment. But, the LT and the platoon only had scant minutes before missions might start coming. He wanted the platoon “up”. SSG Samuals lumbered out of his HMMV and began walking up the side of the slope to a central location where all the guns could sight him so they could all be “laid in”; set in the precise, nonnegotiable Direction of fire. He stood at the top of the rise now. This is something he didn’t have to do, either. The gunners on each track could have “slipped their scales” and sighted in on him elsewhere. So that he wasn’t exposed, and the ammo-bearers weren’t exposed, to the enemy’s line of sight. But he didn’t. It’s a technique used by troops that have been in or prepared for combat and a lot of guys are scared to do it, for fear of fucking up their readings and shooting “out-ofthe-box”. It honestly just takes practice. Anyway, there we were. If you stood on the road, aligned center to the platoon, were it parallel to you below, you’d see… SSG Samuals in the middle of the grass, not far from you, with an aiming circle (it looks like a surveyor’s tripod) sighting in on each gun’s sights and him yelling gun data to each gun. The crews then are working to align the guns to the correct direction, to within one mil, or 1/6400th or a circle. There are men parallel to the gun line, one man per gun (the ammo bearer) on line with SSG Samuals, waiting for the guns to sight on them, after Samuals is complete, and they

must stick two aiming poles, 100 meters and 50 meters, on line with the gun sight, as the gunner looks through the sight and guides him on where they belong. The gun cannot shoot otherwise, not an adjusting round, anyway. Wouldn’t be legal, or prudent. Probably kill the wrong people on that second round. So, at least seven men are standing around while the rest are in their tracks preparing to fire, once they’re set. This all takes only a very few minutes and is practiced all the time. Once the second pole is stuck, the ammo bearer runs back to the track and helps the crew prepare for missions. They’re waiting, though, for SSG Samuals to give the guns their deflections (data). It’s dark, but then, as soon as I grabbed my poles, the explosions started to happen. And tracers started flying in our direction, just above our heads, which were considerably higher up than the rest of the platoon, which was several feet below us, down the small hill. I couldn’t really see much except the outlines of the tracks, a hundred meters away. I could barely make out the Aiming Circle’s location. I had been keeping my eyes on my gun track, because the gunner should have been signaling me for several minutes, with instructions to stick, cant and move forward with the close-pole. But nothing was happening. So I’m still standing out there. The explosions are getting closer; I can hear them on the airfield. The tracers are getting lower and on-line with my platoon’s position. If I reached my hand up high, a round would possibly pierce it. And they get lower still. I begin to crouch, waiting for my gunner to signal me. I’ve been maintaining “noise discipline” until now, but the rounds are falling ever closer, so I yell at my track and flash my red lens at them. No response. I stick my pole and run to where SSG Samuals is with the Aiming Circle, to find out the deal. I don’t see him. I see the Aiming Circle. It’s about four feet tall on top of a tripod. The cover isn’t on it, so I know the section isn’t “laid” or ready to fire. The tracers are getting even closer, now. I crouch as I continue toward the Circle.

And I finally see SSG Samuals. He’s laying on the ground, under the Aiming Circle, with his hands covering his head. “Sergeant Samuals!” I yell. “Sergeant Samuals! Is the section ‘up’? What’s the deal? I’ve been standing out here for-like-fifteen minutes?” He mumbles something into the ground. “What?’ I said. “I ain’t getting’ my head shot off!” I heard him say. “Shit.” I said. “Shit.” And I realized that I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know how to operate an Aiming Circle. That’s usually the section Sergeant’s job and they held that stuff close to the vest. “Damn.” I said. “I’m goin’ to my track, Sergeant.” “Go.” He mumbled into the dirt. I ran down to my gun track. I reach for the door, and it’s locked. Locked. Bullets start to ricochet near me. I have no idea where they’re comin’ from. I crouch and look around and bang my rifle against the back hatch of the track. “Hey!” I yell, “Hey, open up! It’s States!” This is what I hear from the over side of the door, as bullets ricochet around me; Vasquez yells back, “No way, man! I ain’t openin’ that door. I only got a month ‘til I ETS and I’m outa’ here!” “Shit!” I say. More bullets whiz past me. I still can’t see where they’re comin’ from. I look down, I know they’re comin’ from behind me, so I figure I’ll just get on the other side of the track. I crawl under the back of the vehicle, which is pretty good cover from small arms fire, by the way, and I come out the front of vehicle. I look up and see Forrester sitting there, eating an apple, back to the front of the track. He looks at me and smiles. He says, in his low, friendly drawl, “Guess they locked you out, too.”

“Jesus Christ!” I said, “What kinda’ bullshit is that? What kind of unit is this?” I looked around. I was now squatting next to Specialist Forrester on the front side of the track. We were number 3 gun, halfway in the “sheaf” or line of guns. In front of the line of tracks, which were only about twenty meters apart, was a group of modest homes, usually inhabited by Airmen of one kind or other. Base housing. The first house was only about 75 meters away. As I looked toward those houses, to my left were two more gun tracks, the furthest being about 50 meters away. To my right were three more, the far one, “6 gun”, was about 80 to a hundred meters away. All of them looked locked up tight. Even the FDC track looked closed for business, and their ramp was usually down. I could see an occasional soldier around some of the tracks, but I was thinking about security. No one was watching out for bad guys. Nobody. I looked at Forrester. I said, “you know, they locked us out because we’re takin’ a little fire, but they aren’t even watchin’ out to see if anybody creeps up on us? I mean, I would, if I were a Guad.” “They ain’t thinkin’ very far, but they’re fucked up. What do you expect?” said, Forrester. I wasn’t too surprised he was a little disenchanted with his platoon right now. There wasn’t a single “leader” in sight. “OK…then we have to look, man.” I said, “Stay put, I’ll be back.” I ran down the gun line, first, to the right, to six gun. I didn’t find anybody there. I turned around and hit five-gun and found a soldier sittin’ on the side of the track. I motioned for him to follow me, and he did. I hit all the guns and found three more troops and brought them all back to Forrester. There were occasional tracers flying overhead and some ricochets, but none of it seemed well aimed. It seemed kinda’ random to me. “This is what we need to do, guys. Until these people get their shit together, we need to keep an eye on things. I’m gonna’ go up to that tree there…” and I pointed to a tree at the top of the slope, on the far right side of the gun line, about 150 or 200 meters away. “…and I’m gonna’ look and see what’s goin’ on out in the airfield. When I get back, we gotta’ set up some security.” I finished and nodded. They all nodded back. I ran straight across the slope, crouching lower and lower as my head got closer to being on-line with the top of the rise. I could hear explosions and small arms fire, tat-tat-tatting at a distance. I could hear the deeper, slower use of .50 cals, too. But it was all elsewhere, not right here, which was kinda’ a relief.

The last twenty meters, I was level with the top of the rise and got down on the ground and high-crawled to the tree. I scooted myself up to it’s base and along it’s left side, My legs and feet pointed away from the tree and down toward the platoon, a good six-to-ten feet lower in altitude than I was. I still couldn’t see where the rounds comin’ in to our location could be coming from. I looked out at the airfield. I wish I’d had binos or some kind of night vision device, but I could see some of what was going on. The tree was at the top of the hillside, like I said, but it was also just on the border of that single lane road that came in through the back gate. The blacktop was only about 15 feet wide and then there was grass, cut short (thank God the Airforce leaders were such anal retentive area-beautification fags) and I could see the tops of a couple hanger-like structures and that famous airfield. The tops of those buildings were only a couple hundred meters away. The airfield began just beyond them. I could see tracers lancing across the field, parallel to our gun line. I could see some seemingly random fires burning, not crazy fires, small ones. I saw an explosion about 500 meters away, maybe a mortar round, I don’t know. And in the distance, I could see what I figured was Panama City’s general area; there was a lot of flashing, gauzy lighting going on there. There must be a good fight happening there. I saw one of our gunships shooting 20mm down towards the city. The light tracing of that gunfire seemed to go on forever. I wouldn’t want to be a bad guy out there. Except for the automatic fire happening on that Airfield, I didn’t see anything crazy coming our way, but I couldn’t even tell if the guys shooting were ours, or Guads. Daylight should be coming soon, maybe in another hour or two. I very deliberately visually inspected everything, making my eyes take a prepared course, so I could report what I saw, if I needed to. Left flank to right, and back again. I turned over onto my back and looked back towards the platoon, and five soldiers were all in the prone, unmoving, nearly at my feet. I was immediately annoyed. I scooted down the few feet to be amongst them and said, “Guys! One fucking grenade! One, and all the guys who’re out watchin’ for this platoon are fucking dead.” They looked at each other and started to spread out. “No.” I said. “You.” And I pointed at one kid and motioned him forward, next to me. I set him where I’d been watching. I told him to keep and eye on the buildings beyond the roadway and the slope on the other side. I told him to flash his light like a crazy man in my direction if he saw anything that looked weird or like the enemy. I told him if any Hispanic

looking guys in uniforms that didn’t look like ours crested that hill in front of him, that they were likely the enemy and that he should probably kill as many as possible. The gunfire would bring the rest of us to him, and I planned on another guy being able to give him some good cross-fire from the left flank. I told him I’d be back. I rolled down and started running back toward the cover of the front side of the nearest track, taking the other four guys with me. I found cover for all of them and gave them directions on where to watch. SSG Samuals was no longer under the Aiming Circle, but I had no idea where he went; probably, the FDC track. I made rounds to all of them one more time, before I started looking for the Platoon Sergeant. I went to the HMMV’s of both the PL and PSG. Empty. I went to the FDC track. It’s an M577, a large, tall, aluminum-armored box on tracks with a whole slew of antennae sticking off it. I banged on the rear hatch door; no answer. I remember thinking how “impossible” this seemed. How insane. Daylight was beginning to break, and with it, the silence from my leaders.

I had just finished a round of checks on the guys on the four points of our perimeter and was leaning against my gun track’s front, the trim vane, when I heard the squeak-creak of a track hatch begin to open, then another and another. The top track hatches allowing the Mortars to be put into firing configuration were all opening up. I actually saw soldiers pushing them all into position. Locking them down. The FDC track dropped its back hatch. Orders came out of the FDC via SSG Samuals, “Get ready to lay in!” And he walked, sauntered, in his chubby way, to the aiming circle. “Aiming point this instrument!” he yelled. “Aiming point identified!” each gunner intoned as they drew up their sights on the aiming circle. And things progressed from there. We were preparing to take missions. I went to my track and told my gunner, “You and me, sport. When the shit is over and done with, I’m going to beat your cowardly fucking ass. It won’t be here, but it’ll Be.” And I ran out to the aiming poles to lay in my gun. All was prepared and the ammunition was getting readied. Our maximum charge was identified and each round out was cut to that propellant level. The order to cut ALL ammunition and place it outside the tracks for a quicker feed to the tubes was given.

That’s a lot of ammunition. That’s a lot of ammunition on the ground, outside the track. Each round weighs 35 to 40 pounds, there’s over 80 rounds per track. Missions still seemed about to begin. It was getting hot out. The heat in Panama is no joke, any time of year. Everyone was ready. Everything was poised on the edge…and… BOOM! Not 300 meters to our south. A mortar explosion. A round impact. Everyone stopped doing whatever they were doing. Shit, I thought, and looked at the ammo. Shit. There were boxes loaded just with the excess nitroglycerin charges everywhere. About two minutes went by… BAWOOOOM!! Another mortar round, not 200 meters to our North. Shrapnal whizzed overhead. We were being bracketed! Bad guys were bringing the rounds to us. Shit! SFC Fedd started to scream…”Put the ammo back in the tracks!!” and he jumped in his HMMV and LEFT. The FDC started up his track and LEFT! The LT got into his HMMV and LEFT! The gun bunnies were frantically throwing their rounds into the tracks. It was un-fuckingbelievable. About halfway through this upload another round landed about 150 meters to our Southwest. They hadn’t called a Fire For Effect yet, thank God. They didn’t have a perfect bead on us yet. But it sounded like it was another big mortar, not a toy. Long minutes loading the tracks. Men were screaming curses at the leaders and were dreading their enlistments, that’s for sure. I was busy capping tubes and tossing rounds up to Vasquez and Forrester, like a lunatic. Lune-a-fucking-tic. I have never felt more exposed to enemy fire, ever. I have never felt a greater dread that I was going to be blown to shit any second. Ever. Fear motivated every man outside the tracks. I honestly was hyped. I wasn’t so much scared yet, as I was desperate to get the track loaded and get on it; so when it happened, and Vasquez told me to get in, I was shaking from adrenaline overload. I pulled “airguard”…security…while we moved, pointing my weapon over top the hatches as I

aimed at potential target areas. My chest and upper body exposed. I have never been more desperate in my life, before or since. Never. I felt like the biggest target, with a great, fat Bulls eye painted on my fucking Kevlar. Moving up the road, we heard another round impact where we’d just been. It seemed to take forever for us to find the PL and PSG, about a mile up the road. The tracks pulled into what looked like a construction site and took up a temporary perimeter. There was a port-a-john off to one side. I told my squad leader I had to take a shit and it was the greatest effort of my life to walk to that shitter and step inside without falling. I opened the door, stepped inside, put the lid down on the shitter and sat down with my head in my hands and got my shit together. It took me about two minutes to stop shaking and I was out again. After that, I was good. Just needed a minute. Being a mortar on the outgoing side is definitely better than being on the receiving side. That night, elements of our Battalion stormed La Comandancia and rescued Americans held captive there. Strategic targets were destroyed or captured all across the isthmus. Ten thousand Airborne troops were dropped on Noriega’s head and he had taken residence in one of his command centers, while psyops played heavy metal music at ear-piercing levels right outside, waiting for him to appear and tell them to knock-it-off. At dual-guarded gates, when H-Hour hit, the American soldiers at those entryways turned to their Guad counterparts and shot them through the head. Guads at gates trying to stop tracked American vehicles were run over most perfunctorily. We were told to go and support the Scouts at one location near Amador. Amador was Guad barracks and military post. I’d actually landed inside there months before in a Blackhawk, with the rest of my unit at the time, and the orders were: kill everything, if they shoot one round at us. We landed right outside their barracks. They did not shoot. They didn’t even come out to play. We flew away. Damn. Anyway, our unit was there…this new unit. They pulled their tracked vehicles up to their billeting area and pulled out the loudspeakers and bull horns. They (We) offered the Guads inside their billets the chance to surrender. They did not reply.

The buildings were two story and beautifully built in the Spanish-south American standard, with red clay shingles and outside terraces that surrounded each floor. White stucco walls and heavy wooden doors. They were connected and arranged as semi-circular dwellings, shaped like huge “U’s” and our tracks stood at the opening of that “U”. When the Guads continued to be non-responsive, fifty-caliber machine guns atop each track exploded into action and walked the “beaten zone” of their rounds into the heavy, first floor double-doors of each building, turning them to splinter-like shrapnel. Simultaneously, AT-4 rocket launchers were fired into the walls near the windows of these buildings. The rockets would pierce the walls and explode inside the buildings. After this initial barrage, the Guads inside these buildings that were still alive, all surrendered. One thing I noticed working with the Scout Platoon that did this, their NCOs were always with their soldiers. Always. That was so different than my new platoon it was scary. Scary for my fellow junior enlisted. Scout NCOs felt a sense of ownership toward their people. The Mortar NCOs did not. These things all came to shape a lot of my own philosophies on leadership. They drove some of my behavior. Anyway, The Scout NCOs pulled guard with their soldiers. The Mortar NCOs did not. Our NCOs pulled 4 hours of radio watch and then had 16 hours off. The soldiers pulled 4 hours on, 4 hours off. It was a bear, after several days of no-sleep. While I was on guard, we had a few occasions to take prisoners. I remember once, during this time, finding a guy acting suspiciously near my post. I apprehended him at gunpoint and called the command. A HMMV was sent to my location, with an additional guard and a relief for my guard post. He was to be taken for interrogation. I really don’t understand the either apparent or feigned confusion on the part of prisoners in situations like this, c’mon… Clearly, there’s something resembling a “war” going on. Would any innocent bystander walk around armed men from another country, who are in uniform, and act suspiciously, sneakily, surreptitiously? Would you? Or would you just stay the fuck home? I would keep a low profile, myself.

So, when I saw this guy sneakin’ around my guard post…and I mean sneakin’…like a kid sneakin’ up on his friends playin’ hide-and-seek, I called my Sergeant-of-the-Guard (SOG) and snuck up on him. I about scared the poop right out of him. Maybe he did poop a little. “Manos arriba, mi amigo.” I said from behind him. He jumped a little. His shoulders slumped. We were behind the corner of a building near my guard post. I had maintained a low profile when I saw him playin’ Spy-vs-Spy and used the available buildings to cover my location and get right up on his ass. I shoved him against the wall and pushed down on his shoulders with my left hand, while I stuck my weapon up to the back of his head. He went to his knees, facing the wall. I motioned him to quiet himself, because he seemed excitable. Oh well. He was about my size, dark haired and a little worse-for-the-wear looking. His pockets, he was wearing blue polyester slacks, seemed stuffed with something heavy. He had on a flowery-pastel looking touristy shirt, but that was a common style here. “Wait,’ I said, “Esperamos.” And we did. An open-backed HMMV rolled up and Specialist Craig hopped off and ran over to me. SPC Crawford was on the back of the HMMV. I told Craig, “That’s my post right there…” and he cut me off. “I know. I know.” He said, testily. Craig was like an old man whose been interrupted while in the middle of a championship checker game. I told him, “Fine, fuck-you-very-much.” And I pulled the prisoner to his feet and led him to the HMMV. In it went the prisoner. We had cuffs of no kind, so I motioned him harshly to the floor and set my feet on the back of his legs. I made him place his hands behind his head. It was gonna’ be a rough ride for him. Crawford said, “Why do you have to treat him so rough, man?” “It’s a fucking War, dumbass. What if he wanted to knife you or something? Check his pockets, I’ll make sure he stays still.” And I tapped the man on the back, got eye contact and made a ‘stay-still’ gesture, pointing a ‘V’ with my left hand from my eyes to his face, I’m-watching-you. I pointed my rifle at his face. He stayed still. Crawford pulled his pockets inside out and found about ten rolls of quarters in them. He held them up for me to see. I said, “He probably just looted that shop next to the guard post. That’s what I’m guessin’…but the guys at Battalion can figure him out.”

Crawford continued to have that ‘I’m-sorry’ expression for the prisoner. I gave him a little Hell, “Look…every guy who’s out doing the wrong thing right now, when things are really dangerous…do you think they should be trusted? Treated like a regular citizen? They’re tryin’ to get somethin’ for nothin’, man. At the very least, they’re criminals. Shit, we can turn this guy over to his own cops, eventually, but he’s a thief, at least. Don’t even fuckin’ doubt that he’d cut your throat for twenty bucks, ‘cause he would.” The dude on the bed of the HMMV smiled at me. “Look at him. I’ll bet he knows exactly what I’m sayin’, too, motherfucker.” And I stepped a little harder on the back of his leg, making the guy wince. Crawford looked a little chastened. I said, “What’s important right now isn’t this guy, it’s watchin’ out for your buddies and doin’ the right thing. We’re not taking anything from this guy, except his Time, unless he gets really fucking stupid.” “Like if he tries to jump outa’ this vehicle…” I made him look at me, the Panamanian, and continued, “Then I’d have to shoot him. Muerte. Matador, motherfucker.” The HMMV sped along towards the Battalion Headquarters. A lot had gone on in the last couple days…when I got to the Headquarters area, I heard some of the rumors floatin’ around. I knew that they got Noriega. I’d heard that they’d found huge quantities of cocaine and cash and voodoo shit, paraphernalia, in his big house out on the causeway. The same house I know Postoak and Hogan had tried to get into the year before, to have a couple of beers with Noriega. They’d done it on a lark, just to be able to say they did. They’d ended up in jail for a few hours. I heard that there was a lot less money laid out in that house after some of the troops went through it, but a lot of protective masks seemed to have been lost, leaving large, empty containers on a lot of soldier’s at the time. I’d heard that one of the platoon sergeant’s I knew from my old Unit had executed a bunch of DENI agents, just lined them up and mowed them down against the wall of their building with an M60 machine gun. I’d heard that Cabacar, a guy from my last unit, along with another kid I knew, had saved a bunch of civilians under fire in a parking lot downtown, by providing cover and actually snatching them up and carrying them to safety. The kid, Davis, I think his name was, was wounded in the leg.

There was a guy they called “Alphabet” who’d been shot in the head after he’d jumped in with the 82nd, who’d been left for dead, who survived because the AK-47 round glanced off his K-pot and just knocked him out. One of our own people, CPL Perez, wasn’t so lucky, and a round penetrated his K-pot and killed him, instantly. A lot of information. Everything was buzzin…everybody was busy. We dropped the prisoner off with the S-2 fags and sorta’ hung out until some of the Senior Sergeants started to look at us like we were potential slave labor (which we were) and we un-assed the AO and returned to our own CP.