Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [163]
Late on the afternoon of day twenty, 915 is on the tarmac at the Camp Mackall Army Airfield, awaiting its turn with several other student ODAs for airborne insertion into Pineland. Parachute is not the only way into Pineland. Teams have gone in by truck and by mule. The classroom work, the planning, the gear preparation, and the briefings are all behind them. Now they’re going to war, inasmuch as war can be arranged in an unconventional-warfare training scenario. Captain Santos has checked each of his men, and a cadre jumpmaster has checked them all. Sergeant Blackman and Captain Childers, like two mothers getting their children ready for the bus for the first day of school, are checking everybody. The men are heavy—each of them has a hundred pounds of gear, more or less, plus the weight of the main parachute and the reserve. The only man who is light, equipment-wise, is Specialist Justin Keller. The parachutes have a training-load limit of 350 pounds, and he personally makes up 250 pounds of that weight. Some of his gear will be jumped in by his teammates, and he will recover it once they are on the ground.
The weather is drizzly and the wind’s gusting up to fifteen miles per hour—marginal for Army airborne training operations. Bands of dark clouds march across Camp Mackall Army Airfield. It’s approaching dusk. “If the wind’s under thirteen and we have the ceiling, we go,” says Sergeant Blackman. “The rain won’t matter.” Aircraft land, take aboard student ODAs, and leave. Finally, it’s 915’s turn. Two Casas, small twin-engine transports, belonging to the Army Special Operations Command Flight Detachment, land to collect 915. The heavily laden soldiers waddle to the aircraft like a file of penguins, six on one aircraft and six on the other. As they board the aircraft, I race across Camp Mackall from the airfield to the Luzon Drop Zone in time to see two planes pass over the DZ in close formation. It’s raining, and all but dark. All twelve come out clean, and 915 is under canopy. One by one, the men drop their rucksacks, which fall to the end of a nylon tether. First the ruck, then the soldiers, slam into the DZ. Once on the ground, the men gather up their gear and parachutes, then make their way to the rally point on the northeast corner of the drop zone. They pile the chutes by the side of a road and mark them with a Chemlite for retrieval by exercise support staff. Then, after a head count and an equipment check, the ODA moves off in patrol formation to link up with the Pineland auxiliary.
In the real world, as in Robin Sage, linking up with partisan forces on contested ground is chancy business, one that must be done with care and caution. This will be the first test for 915. Following 915 that evening are myself and two civilian Northrop Grumman OCE (observer, controller, evaluator) personnel—simply referred to as OCEs. Either these two civilian controllers or Captain Childers and/or Sergeant Blackman will be on-site or with 915 at all times. Both OCEs are retired career Green Beret sergeants. The primary linkup site for 915 is a small bridge that spans one of Camp Mackall’s lake-overflow gates. It’s a two-mile patrol from the DZ rally point to the linkup. Once we are close, Captain Santos puts the team in a security perimeter and sends Sergeant Tom Olin and PFC Tim Baker ahead to exchange recognition signals with the Pinelanders. Signals are given, but not returned. Olin and Baker move closer and signal again. Then the shooting starts. Santos can only recall his scouts and make for the alternate linkup point. But the alternate is only a half mile away, and is sure to be compromised by the shooting. So it’s on to the contingent linkup site.
“I learned a lesson on that one,” Captain Santos later reflected. “You cannot have your secondary linkup within earshot of your primary. So I walked my team all night because I didn’t plan well enough.”
And walk they did. The contingent linkup site is close to an eight-mile hike from the primary. So 915, carrying close to a hundred pounds per man, walks ten miles that first