We had forty-two ACRES of "long storage" rations. Boxes of Number 10 cans stacked two stories high. We had another fourteen acres of MREs.
When you're discussing MREs in terms of acres you know something has gotten truly screwed up.
The total coverage area of all the mass of material that was to be "left in place" and "secured" was right at two thousand acres.
Unless you live in someplace like Kansas or Nebraska, you've probably never seen two thousand acres. That's three square miles. Think a box a mile and three quarters across and wide covered in . . . stuff. Tanks, trucks, water blivets, stacked tents, weapons, internal bermed areas for ammunition dumps. Concertina wire, thank God.
It was amazing to look at. And very very scary. Especially when there was just one.
As units finished their "phased redeployment" (euphemism for "run away, run away!") they were flown out. Yeah, international air travel was suspended. Which just meant there were a lot of planes sitting around. And pilots could be scrounged up. We had 747 after 747 roaring out of Abadan airport (which we secured) morning, noon and night.
And then there was one.
Somebody was supposed to stay behind "until relieved" and "ensure inventory, maintenance and security" of the enormous mass of material.
Units were needed in the States. Things were going to hell and the Army had a job seeing that things didn't come apart entirely. Every body that could be spared was going home.
I don't know what fucking lottery led to our battalion being tasked with leaving ONE COMPANY to do the job of a fucking BRIGADE but we got handed the shit end of the stick.
Remember me mentioning the Bravo Company commander? One of my former JO's and not the battalion commander's fair-haired boy?
You guessed it. The battalion was tasked with leaving "one company of infantry and minimal necessary supports" as security for an area you couldn't walk around in an hour.
And "a logistics officer" to maintain inventory of the "stored equipment."
Gulp.
Chapter Two
There's this Duck Video . . .
The Emperor Trajan once ordered a legion of Roman soldiers to "march east until you come to the end of the world." Everything but that is spotty history but they're believed to have been destroyed in battle by, well, the Iranians somewhere not too far from Abadan. They're remembered in military legend as "The Lost Legion."
(It's possible, though, that some of them made it as far as Western China. There's a very odd tribe over there. But that's ancient history at this point.)
As we watched the last trucks headed for the airport, watched the eyes of our fellow soldiers who were headed home, leaving us behind to "maintain security" over an area that was impossible to secure . . .
Well, we wondered what history would call us. If anyone remembered us at all.
We weren't the last people in Titan Base. (Don't know who named it originally but it had gotten fairly titanic that's for sure.) All the contractors hadn't pulled out. There were a few Brits left. They'd been in charge of the mess section for the original Titan Base. They, however, had to leave on a plane at the same time as our guys or they figured they'd never see balmy old England again.
They were in charge of the mess section. They didn't do the scut work. The scut work had been done by a lot of different laborers. Most of those had gotten out. But they still were in charge of sixty Nepalese.
And while there was transport for the Brits, there wasn't any for the Nepalese.
The guy in charge had been a British Army cook then worked in one of the universities. He was a specialist in producing large amounts of good to excellent food. He also was a stand-up guy. Which was why he stopped by my office as the battalion was loading up to "redeploy."
"Old chum, got a bit of a bother."
(Okay, he was a stand-up guy. But he also had a very affected Oxford accent. It's a Brit thing. Think Keeping Up Appearances but a guy.)
"Go," I said, not really paying much attention. Look, Captain Butterfill was, technically, in charge of security. But, one I had time in grade on him and two he wasn't in charge of inventory for all this shit. I was up to my eyeballs in the paperwork regarding inventory for two fucking divisions.
Look, nothing had been inventoried. What I had were the inventories for the units. And inventories, notoriously, are inaccurate. Oh, not stealing. The Army had an incredibly minor problem with that. Usually just bad paperwork.
But in this case, shit had been picked up and then dumped off. There'd been a general with a huge staff in charge of the base. Before all the shit was "redeployed."
I knew, deep in my bones, that at some point someone was going to be asking me pointed questions about where a case of DL123 batteries went. Okay, four truckloads of batteries.
It took me a couple of days to grasp the futility of my job and revel in the fact that I really didn't give a shit. But at the time I was trying to be a good little Assistant S-4.
"I don't have transport for the Nepos."
"Nepos?" I asked, wondering what in the hell Britishism that was. Soap? Guns? Hell, with Brits it could be anything. They were worse than pharmaceutical companies. Why not just call Viagra "Dickerector"? I think it's a plot with the Brits.
"The Nepalese," he said, pretty patiently given that his driver was honking the horn. "The cooks and whatnot. Been screaming to home office about it but Nepal's gone quite isolationist what with the whole birdie thing and Foreign Office won't take them in. The rest have gotten transport out or bunked off. But there's the Nepos, you see."
I did see. What he was telling me was that there were a bunch of foreign civilians left on the base with no way home.
What to do? It wasn't like I could just kick them out. The Nepalese are not Iranians. They couldn't get integrated into the society. And things were coming apart, fast. Hell, there was still, technically, a government in Tehran but if it controlled anything past the city borders I'd be very surprised. Kicking them out into the wilderness Iran was quickly becoming would-be murder.
"Vaccinations?"
"Up to date," he said, handing me more fucking paperwork. "Good chaps. Willing. Couple of them speak English. Sort of. Don't suppose you've got a Gorkali speaker?"
"No," I said, coldly. We had one translator, an American born Iranian who'd been raised learning Farsi. He'd grown up in L.A. and really wanted to go home. He also spoke a smattering of Arabic. I'd been told by one of the Iranian officers I met that he was very nearly incomprehensible in Farsi. Basically, what he spoke was the Farsi equivalent of Ebonics.
"And?"
"I can't be sure we'll survive, much less your 'Nepos,' " I said. "But I'll do everything I can to keep them alive."
"Thank you," he said, clearly moved. It was apparent he liked his "Nepos" and felt like shit leaving them behind. Well, there was a lot of that going around. "Good luck, old chap."
"Same to you."
Well, I learned why he liked his "Nepos" over time. Pretty quick I started to learn but it took more time to truly learn. If there was ever a race destined for greatness who just ended up at the wrong place and the wrong time, it's the fucking Nepalese.