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To: Gunrunner2
LOL. At this point the average grunt would say, (inter service rivalry, doncha know), something to the effect about the Air Force not being able to hit their butts with both hands, but I have a lot of experience with close air support and know better.

OK, my best critter story....we had gone in hot late one afternoon, and after doing the grunt thing we settled in for the night...It gets dark in triple canopy, real dark.

About midnight gunfire erupts from one of the holes on the perimeter close to me, so I crawl down to the hole; one of the cherries had "heard" something, and fired up the bush. I, and the noobie's squad leader listened for about 20 minutes and heard nothing.

I mentioned to the squad leader to teach the rookie how to engage at night ( grenades (no muzzle flash)), and walked back to the CP.

Ten minutes later a couple of grenades went off and I go storming down to the hole, but this time the SL and the new guy had heard something and engaged....good enough for me.

I called my pre-plots and for continuous illumination rounds... and fired the pre-plots again...nothing. We stayed at 100% for the rest of the night. At BMNT, I sent a patrol out to see what they could see. They only went a few feet and called me down to see the dead bad guy.

It was the VN equivalent of a nutria....the noobie had thrown his C-rat cans in front of his position instead of burying them, and the rat was foraging.

One of the grenades had got him....about that time the BN Co called and wanted to know what's what.....I quibbled and said "nothing of significance yet, aggressively patrolling."

Thankfully we found bad guys later in the day, and the previous nights activities were assumed to be part of the force we engaged later in the day....I never had to explain why I burned several thousand dollars of 105 and 155 rounds on a rat.

Nobody got hurt on that operation, so I can laugh about it.

62 posted on 03/18/2005 7:17:02 PM PST by 506trooper (I love country music.)
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To: 506trooper
Bwahahahaha. . . .that is a classic. Great war story. Funny as hell. The humor of it all after-the-fact is priceless.
63 posted on 03/18/2005 7:32:02 PM PST by Gunrunner2
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