When one of our number, usually a grade A asshole to start with, would fuck up, it was "all soldiers are like that! They're all evil murdering lying scum!" When one of their number fucked up, if you learned about it, they were "confused" or "overwrought" or there was nothing fucking wrong with them at all. Circle the wagons. We'd sit there and prove that some story about atrocities was bogus and the fucking media would sail on as if nothing had happened. Anything bad about soldiers or the very hard job we did was major news. Anything good we did wasn't covered.
Don't think that the Plague had changed anything. Every fucking screamer with some sob story, no matter how wrong, was instant headline news. The 4th ID got reamed when some woman got a reporter on ABC to put her on telling about how a whole bunch of those poor fucking grasshoppers had been "gang raped" by a bunch of soldiers.
Was there ever any proof? Not a fucking shred. As far as anyone can tell she made it up.
Back in the Iraq Campaign there was some fucking Air Force sergeant who got some reporter to repeat her sob story about "thousands of women raped" and how she had been.
Were female military members raped in Iraq? Yep. And any time we could track down the bastards that did it we'd put them on trial and sentence them to max punishment. But when you have males and females together, you get rape. It's like sunshine and flowers and April showers. Fucking happens. Pardon the pun.
Were "thousands" raped? No. Despite there being nearly a million females rotating through the AOR over time. The rape rate was way lower than on a college campus despite pussy being rare as hell.
And the Air Force sergeant in question?
Not only was she not one of the "thousands," at least she'd never reported it at the time or since, she was never in fucking Iraq! She'd made it all up. And the news media fucking ran with the story anyway!
Any lie by anyone who hated the military was repeated endlessly. Any truth was ignored.
I did not and do not like reporters. Is that clear? Even after the whole Centurions thing I maintain my opinion.
Sherman said it welclass="underline"
"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast."
Oh, and about democracy.
The purpose of a free press, in which I believe believe it or not, is so that people can make rational decisions in a democracy. They'd already perverted the process so bad that was hard, but the point is valid.
So why give her the runaround? Why not answer the questions straight?
There was still Plague running around. Most of the cities were (or should have been) free-fire zones. People were starving to death. And there was an impending climate catastrophe they were completely ignoring.
What the fuck did a company stuck in Iran have anything to do with making rational decisions about how to survive in the current conditions?
Nada. Dick. Nothing. The closest you can get is deciding whether Warrick was a fucking idiot and the reality was all around you. It didn't take a rocket scientist. Not that the media was going to admit their annointed was a fucking fruitcake.
She was going for a "human interest" story, that most idiotic of media exercises.
Well. Fuck. Her. Try making a robot interesting.
The company dayroom was right by the commo van. When I stumbled out, unbuckling my helmet and swearing under my breath, the troops had lined up to give me an ovation.
"God damn, sir, you sounded like a Pentagon spokesman!"
"They're going to put you up for Chief of Staff!"
"Defense Secretary!"
"Fuck you all. I'm clearly not working you hard enough."
In truth, I wasn't. I wasn't working them hard, I wasn't working me hard, I wasn't working Fillup hard. Why? Because I knew we were all going to be working our asses off soon.
Bill Slim was an interesting guy. British General in WWII. Probably the best Brit general of his generation and certainly the best one that got anything done. (Way better than Monty.) Wrote a hell of an autobiography. One of the things he said stuck with me. (Well, a lot did, but I'll just get into this one.)
"A General should take as much rest as he can in peace because when battle rages he will get none."
Paraphrase but that's the general idea. I knew the shit was about to hit the fan. So I and everyone else was getting as much rest, food and water as possible.
Good thing I did.
Chapter Seven
All Good Things Come to an End
Yeah, that was Friday.
Friday is a holy day for Islamics. Not quite like Sunday or Shabbat, but it's the day they sort of celebrate the same way. They sure as hell weren't going to kick off an assault on Friday.
Saturday? Don't mean dick to them.
The best time to assault somebody is right before dawn. It's called "Before Morning Nautical Twilight." (BMNT) Its that time when the world is still and the light makes things look sort of blue. You can't tell a white thread from a black. It's not dawn; it's not night. Night vision systems get screwed up by the light levels.
It is, generally, when people are at their lowest ebb. Sentries are sleepy, those who are sleeping are generally sleeping hard and don't wake up well.
You'd have thought they'd attack at dawn. Think again. Iranians, remember. In'sh'allah.
I don't know if they meant to attack at dawn. I do know that our sentries, who were very bright eyed and bushy-tailed, let me tell you, said that there were some vehicles moving around down by Abadan and the refinery. It was easy enough to see them with thermal imagery cameras of which we had a fucking slew.
So I set up in the command post. Things had adjusted. The Nepos had positional security on Fort Lonesome. The U.S. infantry were taking the gate, surrounding bunkers and such. But mostly they fell out and into their Strykers.
We sent out a team to tell the refugees that things were about to get busy and they were not going to like the neighborhood soon. They were in a truly fucked up situation. The armed guys wanted to help us, or said they did. We weren't having any of it. We just told them to move off to the side with what they could carry and dropped one more set of rations. It was more than they probably could carry, we used a couple of forklifts to carry it out. But that was the point.
Temperature-wise, it didn't get hot. Not a bit. Abadan in mid-September is normally hot as shit. Not that year. We hadn't had a snow, yet, but you could see it creeping down the mountains. That day it never got above about 70.
Got pretty fucking hot otherwise.
So some vehicles came out. And went back. And came out again. The troops opened up their battle rattle and snoozed. We'd been up since before dawn. I called the Nepos and had them get the girls working on a hot meal. There was time.