2013 campaign log entry # 2

[stg58fal]

If you haven't read it yet and are interested, here's the first log entry:

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=3616

Originally I'd planned this to be the end of the previous session, however, we spent a good portion of the time we had for the first session on character creation, so this part didn't get done. Meh, it happens. Like the Corps taught me, "Improvise, adapt, overcome".

Now on to #2.
===============

Wednesday, May 15, 2013
St. Petersburg, Russia
1LT L. Reed, US Army

As I was staring at the indescribable food gloop sitting on my mess tray this morning and my fellow platoon mates were talking amongst themselves, the officer who seems to be personally responsible for all of our missions approached the table. I hadn't even finished what was supposed to be oatmeal, and already my day was getting worse.

A team from yesterday never made it back to HQ. Another team had been sent out to look for them, but only found a battle field. It looked like they'd been cornered by Russians and never made it out. Once again this stupid war has taken more people. People who would be missed, and with the mass destruction over the past year, or even decade, people who would be needed to rebuild our world from the sad rubble of devastation we'd placed it in. Some of the people we lost each day, week, or month would never have been prepared for the fight as they were nurses, or cooks, or God in heaven, chaplains. I had to put my spoon onto my tray before I bent the damn thing out of shape.

The officer was ordering us to move out as soon as breakfast was over and hunt down the Russians who had committed this atrocity. Dr. McCreedy became a little green around the gills and slowed down his consumption of the gelatinous oatmeal. My three grunts, Payne, Arnes, and Fontaine, immediately shoved their trays away and looked ready to be on the trail. I'll never understand their readiness for death.

I perked up a bit when I saw the armored humvee we'd been granted for the duration of the mission. I held back my desire to hug her. She was magnificent. I just hoped she'd come to less damage than the last one I'd been given. I always hate when a vehicle in my protection got hurt.

A while later found us at the site of the attack. Mortar shells had ripped huge chunks from the sidewalk and buildings along one side of the street. Our side of the street. We'd never had a chance. Payne and Fontaine did a sweep through the houses along the Russian side and found a trail of blood leading out through the back of one, along with a pile of bloodied bandages. Looked like we might have gotten one after all, and from the amount of blood on the lengths of cotton, they couldn't have gone far.

A young boy approached our humvee while Fontaine and Payne were doing their sweep. Cheeky little bastard was offering information for a trade of ammunition. Arnes and I scrounged up some Russian ammo and a jambalaya MRE no one in their right mind was going to eat, which seemed to satisfy the boy. He pointed us in the direction of North, as he scrambled up into the seat beside me, pushing Dr. McCreedy to the back of the humvee despite some disgruntled noises on the doctor's part.

The young scrap of boyhood led us to a mall complete with surrounding restaurants and movie theater. Scavengers scuttled about like cockroaches, grabbing anything that was leftover and might possibly be worth anything. The movie theater was suspiciously quiet and even the scavengers gave it a rather wide berth.

Fontaine and Payne went around the back to check it out, while Arnes, McCreedy, and I stayed with the humvee, Arnes perched up to man the gun there. It took me a moment to realize that the scavengers had all scattered to the foul Russian winds, even our boy had slunk from the vehicle, when a loud bang issued from the other side of the movie theater. A radioed message from Payne informed me that one of the outer doors had been booby trapped, but that they were both fine, and entering the premises. Movement in the front lobby alerted us to a Russian getting ready to fire at the humvee team. Arnes took him down with the 50 cal. The poor man didn't even have time for a prayer before he was liquified in the foyer.

We had little time to think about that though, as more Russians appeared in the lobby armed with machine guns and an RPG 7. I threw the humvee into drive, screaming at Arnes to down the RPG. As a child, I would often steal my father's car and proceed to do donuts in several of the gravel parking lots sprinkled around my small town. That was nothing compared to what I did now in that mall parking lot. An RPG sailed over us as I skidded around the blacktop. Arnes was able to take out the two machine gunners near the ticket booths, but that damn RPG still loomed like Death's toothy grin. Then I took a wrong turn with the humvee, as an RPG headed straight for us. It made contact rocking me to my core. A sharp blast of pain lanced through my right shoulder as a piece of shrapnel hit. Luckily the damn thing only barely hit the passenger side corner of the windshield. We got some stray pieces of shrapnel, but everyone was still alive.

Furious at once again getting another one of my vehicles hurt, I gunned the humvee, pulled parallel to the front of the theater and let loose a burst of bullets from Arnes' M16. The RPG gunner didn't even have a chance as limbs disconnected from his body. A Russian bolted from the lobby out into the parking lot. I stomped on the gas, as Arnes took a final parting shot at the RPG finally taking out the man trying to stuff a rocket in the damn thing with one stub of an arm.

I...uh...gently bumped the fleeing Russian with the bumper of the humvee. He went down after meeting the already cracked windshield. This seemed more humane than letting Arnes pelt him with the 50 cal. So sue me. I was under pressure...

Radio contact with those inside let me know they were safe, although Payne had taken a pretty nice shot to the arm, and there were no more Russians. They'd found some Russian communication equipment though, which we confiscated and brought back to HQ with us. We stripped the place of weapons and ammo, and left. I wanted to get Payne back to HQ.

Once the adrenaline wore off from the fighting, I'm a little ashamed to admit that I sort of lost it. I should have concentrated more on disabling and less on destruction. It's hard, seeing someone taking a shot at your platoon members and keeping the humane part of yourself aware. I desperately pray that this damn war will end before I find myself lost in the blood of this place. I don't want to be like Payne, Arnes, and Fontaine, interested in only who their bullets will rip through next. I want to come out of this as...me. I want to curl up inside an engine and just sleep until this whole thing is done. I am not proud of today.