Roger Dunlap had bulled ahead with his decision for everyone to stay at the Templar retreat. Despite vociferous arguments from others in his group, Dunlap decided that the odds were that the Federals would head straight north from Moscow, and bypass Troy and Bovill. As Dunlap saw it, there was no way that they could evacuate if they wanted to, anyway. Their cars and trucks weren’t working. They had several horses, but some of the group members were in no condition to walk or even ride. Three of their members were sick in bed, ill with a particularly virulent stomach flu. Another was pregnant, and a week past her due date.
When they first got word of the Federals in Grangeville, Dunlap had ordered slit trenches to be dug on three sides of the ranch house. When they got to Lewiston, he agreed to set up a cache of supplies a mile south of the ranch house. When the Federals arrived in Moscow, he agreed to let one young couple from the group, Tony and Teesha Washington, go to “babysit” the cache.
Everyone else agreed to stay, most of them convinced—or at least hoping—that they would be bypassed. They hoped that they would be overlooked long enough for their ill to recover, and for their expecting mom to deliver.
A cavalry motorcycle scout zoomed down the county road near 2 p.m. He slowed when he came to the Dunlaps’ gate, and then sped up again. The Templars’ gate guard, hidden in an LP/OP near the county road, radioed in a report. Everyone who was able immediately went to their assigned trenches.
The sick, elderly, and children stayed in the house. They waited.
Just after 4 p.m., they could hear many vehicles maneuvering down the county road, and on the logging roads to the south and west. They weren’t in line of sight to the house or the gate guard. Then the sound of the engines stopped.
Wes, the retired signalman, scampered down the connecting trench line to Dunlap. He pointed a finger in Dunlap’s face and said, “You’re a fool, Roger! I told you that we should have built a travois or two! We could have had everybody up at the cache two days ago!”
Dunlap was momentarily speechless. He stared at Wes, and finally blurted out, “I’m so sorry.”
Moments later, they heard the distinctive thuds of mortars being launched, far off in the timber.
“See, I told you so,” Wes said sourly. Along with the others,Wes instinctively curled up in the bottom of his trench.
It took a long time for the first mortar shells to land. With their high parabolic flight, it took almost twenty seconds from the time they hit the bottom of the tubes until they landed. To the Templars, the long delay seemed like an eternity.
The first rounds fell long, on the north side of the house. The eighty-one-millimeter shells went off with a roar and threw up huge clouds of dust. They had all been set to “HE Quick,” so they went off immediately after impact.
They missed the trenches on the north side of the house by just a few yards.
On a hill seven hundred yards to the south, a young sergeant E-5 named Valentine from a fire support team was talking on a battered old PRC-77 field radio, and peering through a pair of cheap Simmons binoculars. With practiced precision, he intoned, “Drop one hundred.”
The voice on the radio rejoined, “Shot, over.”
Valentine tersely replied, “Shot, out.”
There was a pause, and then the second barrage came. The rounds fell between twenty and sixty feet short of the trenches on the south side of the house. Dunlap’s men and women covered their heads and got as low in their trenches as possible. Rocks and dirt showered down on them. Some of them started to scream.
Sergeant Valentine watched the impacting rounds, and keyed the microphone. “Add fifty. Fire for effect.”
The next barrage continued for a full minute. Round after round landed in and around the ranch house.
Valentine surveyed the impacts, and again keyed the microphone. Still looking through the binoculars, he again keyed the handset. “Reee-peat.”
Another minute-long barrage started. Fire broke out in the house. Soon there was a fire in the barn, too. Some of the rounds fell directly into the trenches.
The young NCO called in another laconic “Reee-peat.”
The south wall of the house collapsed. The house and barn were now engulfed in flames.
The mortars fell silent, and the last of the rounds whistled in. Sergeant Valentine picked up the handset and commanded, “Cease fire. Tell your section well done. Good shooting, fellas.” Then he reached into his ALICE pack and pulled out a silver tube with a white paper label. It was one-and-a-half inches in diameter, and a foot long. He pulled off its metal cap, and slipped it back onto the other end of the tube. Then, turning his head, he slapped the bottom of the tube on the ground. With a loud whoosh, a signal rocket roared out of the launcher. A moment later a green star cluster burst in the sky. In the distance, far off in the timber, he could hear two signal whistles blowing.
Two survivors crawled up from the trenches and ran. Only one of them had his rifle with him.
Alpha Company of the 519th Infantry Battalion began to move by bounds toward the objective. The platoons deployed on line and started to make their sweep. The two men who had run from the trenches were cut down by three bursts from an M249 squad automatic weapon.
When the troops were in the open areas south of the burning remains of the ranch house, Ted Wallach popped his head out of his trench. He began to fire an M1A rifle. He hit two of the infantrymen from the first platoon in rapid succession at a range of two hundred yards. Then Wallach was in turn hit in the head by a hail of return rifle fire.
After a sweep across the objective, in which the bottoms of the trenches were sprayed with fully automatic fire, the squads set up a defensive perimeter.
Weapons that were recovered from the trenches were laid out in the circular drive. Beside them were the bodies of the two Federal soldiers that were killed, shrouded in body bags. A second more thorough search revealed the LP/OP.
The bunker was hit by three grenades fired by an M203. The third one went through the door, killing the single sentry in it. The Templars that had died outside the house were left where they lay.
Captain Brian Tompkins, the Alpha company commander, looked tired. He sat down in the dirt next to the outhouse—the only structure left standing at the Templar retreat—and consulted his map. He jotted down a note in a small memo pad, laid a clear plastic protractor over the map, and jotted down another note. Then he waggled his forefinger at his radioman in a come-hither motion. The radioman got up from his prone position immediately. Out of habit, he handed Tompkins the dog-eared Communications-Electronics Operating Instructions (CEOI) notebook that he kept on a lanyard around his neck beneath his ACUs. The CEOI had not been changed in nearly six months. Brian Tompkins leafed through the CEOI, skipping past the frequencies and call signs. The CEOI had been unchanged for so long that he had them memorized. He turned to the TAC code section, looked up the three letter code for administrative pickup, and made another quick notation in his memo pad. Then, he reached for the radio handset and called in a brief report:
“Kilo one seven, this is Bravo fife niner, over.”
The battalion’s duty radio operator replied, “Bravo fife niner, this is Kilo one seven. Go ahead.”
Tompkins spoke slowly and clearly. “Prepare to copy… Objective Oak taken. Estimate one-niner enemy KIAs. Zero captured. Two friendly KIAs. S-1 report to follow. Send Hotel Yankee Mike to grid golf oscar fife niner eight three two fife one one. I say again, Grid golf oscar fife niner eight three two fife one one, to recover two-four captured weapons, three property booked weapons, and two bagged friendly KIAs. No intel sources available. Continuing to bivouac point Crimson. ETA four zero mikes.”