Lapland '97

[Medic]

MGRS coordinates: 34WEB 95202 09291
Location:Enontekiö, 5 kilometers from Fenno-Norwegian border

The column of trucks from the Golf Coy, 3rd Marine Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment of the 2nd Marine Division of United States Marine Corps rolled through the icy wilderness. General Winter had greeted them coldly, with -21 degrees centigrade and a wild that really drove the coldness home. It whipped every face through the tiniest gaps in the tarps covering the beds of the trucks and put the faces of those manning the Ma Deuces on the Humwees under a blistering bombardment. Touching anything metal with bare skin was an act of lunacy, paid back in lost bits of skin due to it freezing in to the cold metal and coming of in slates.

The Regimental HQ was certain that only a token of resistanke if even that would come from the Finns. The weather was surely effecting them as badly if not even worse as the intel said, they did not have that many vehicles. Up here, there was only a single brigade, the Jaeger Brigade and even that would be spread thin as they had the whole of Northern Finnish Lapland to cover. Somewhere along the column sat a particular Navy HospitalCorpsman, Connagh O'Murray. He had recovered from his wounds received in Northern Norway while dragging two Marines from under fire. He had joined the Navy after several years in the service of the NYPD ESU as a paramedic because he wanted to be able to shoot back - he had lost his partner to a junkie with a gun and had nearly bought it himself as well. "So, Connie, you reckon we'll see any sight of the Finns", Lance Corporal Watts asked him and brought him back from the reverie. "Fuck if I know", Connie replied in a slightly annoyed tone as he had dreamt of some place warm and a hot girl there with him.

What they did not know was, they were already under observation. Two kilometers down the road, a forward observer team of five men was keeping them under a watchful eye. They worked quietly in a position, built in to snow in a manner that concealed them almost completely from everything, including thermal imaging. The young lieutanant called out coordinates quietly, followed by his NCO, a slightly older ylikersantti confirming them and the private with a stereoscopic rangefinder calling out the range to the last vehicle of the convoy. The communications specialist confirmed the whole fire mission from the screen of his messaging console and with the okay from the three others pressed 'send'. Some fifty meters away in the team's tent, the second communications specialist simply sat and added two more logs in to the stove.

The mortar platoon of nine 120mm mortars mounted on the beds of the backsection of Sisu Na-140 all-terrain carriers received the fire command in less than ten seconds and the command was written down in the firing journal of the mortar company. The mortars had been sighted at the particular target and when the command came, the crews were already at their weapons. The 12.5 kilogram high-explosive fragmentation rounds fell in to the barrels and the team leaders pulled the lanyards upon command sending the rounds out simultaneously. Round after round after round was sent up towards the clouds and upon the unsuspecting Marines. The target area was 300 meters wide, spanning along the long straight on the road and spreading fifty meters on either side of it. It was enough to send deadly howling shower of shrapnel upon the marines at a range that was pure murder.

WORK IN PROGRESS!