Victory Point - Ed Darack [144]
“George is hit! George is hit!” a Marine shouted. In the heat of the ambush, George disappeared from the side of the road, having been thrown five feet to a field below by the shattering impact of a PK round. But the fire grew so intense that none of the Marines near him could jump to his aid. Cirencione, however, hearing that his close friend—they’d known each other since George checked into the battalion two years prior—had been hit, tore through the field of fire to find the lance corporal. As he sprinted toward George’s last known position, he fired his M16 at the attackers above—but he could find no sign of George anywhere.
“Bradley!” Kinser called. “Can you see the point of origin of the fire?” The lieutenant was located at the village of Kandagal, directly below the finger of rock on which Bradley and First Squad stood.
“No, sir, I can’t. Too far into the valley. But I can see our guys’ tracers tracking to a number of points on the east side of the valley,” Bradley replied.
“Bradley. Listen,” Kinser replied sharply—even more sharply than usual. “The next thing I want to hear out of you is a fire mission for these 120 tubes.”
“Roger.” The corporal and Corporal Burgos dove into studying their map of the valley, deriving a grid for an initial volley within a minute. Two deafening cracks! echoed throughout the area as the rounds sped toward their targets. Whump! Whump! The corporal could feel the reverberations of the explosions in his chest—and could see that the first salvo had missed the target by about a hundred meters. After readjusting, the two tubes once again explosively hurled rounds toward the attackers, and this time they hit dead-on. The ambush ceased, the fighters turning their attention from assailing the Marines to saving their asses—they grabbed their weapons and began to egress. “Fire for effect,” Bradley transmitted.
Over the next few minutes, the two 120 tubes hurled another thirty rounds onto the ambush position. The gun team would have sent more, but two A-10s checked in on station, screaming into the depths of the valley, and quickly identified the fleeing attackers. With multiple cleared-hot calls by Rashman, the Warthogs finished off the last of the ambush team, flying so low at times that the grunts of Second Platoon could see details on the pilots’ helmets as they roared through the Korangal. Meanwhile Cirencione, jumping down the side of the road where George had last been seen, found his friend. He and three corpsmen tried repeatedly to revive him, as Second Platoon commander, Lieutenant Chris Hagan, called for a Dustoff extract. But the lance corporal had died. Whalers drew to a close early in the morning hours of the nineteenth on an exhausted, somber note.
14
VICTORY POINT
With Shah’s flight to Pakistan and the decimation of most of his small army, the battalion had crushed the extremist’s force by the time Whalers drew to a close. Through detailed, thoughtful planning, well-coordinated integration of all assets availed to them by Task Force Devil—not to mention some classic USMC war-fighting improvisation, perseverance through fire, and some remarkable battlefield valor—⅔ had defeated a determined and vicious enemy intent on destroying a fledgling democratic government and reinstating a draconian tyranny. But while the victory was far from Pyrrhic, bringing Shah’s cell to its knees had come at great cost. With injuries ranging from shrapnel wounds that would heal completely in a matter of weeks, to deep-tissue trauma that would haunt the injured for the rest of their lives, ⅔ proved unfailing in their commitment to mission. Of course, Phillip George, having sacrificed his life as he directed his fire team during the furious, last-ditch attacks of Shah’s men, would never be forgotten by any in the battalion. His death, like that of Joyce just before