Rio Bravo
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Joined: 7/13/2013
From: Grass Valley, California
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quote:
ORIGINAL: CaptHaggard
HAGGARD GROUP
SPECIAL COMMUNIQUE
Tsinkiang, China
September 28
THE DAY Marine Captain Stu Heffel saunters in, the lump of soggy bandages weighs on my forehead as heavy as cocktail prawns on a bed of ice.
“Lieutenant,” he states cordially, “—feeling better?”
I imagine the good company he keeps in regretting that a crafty Jap sniper was not responsible for my wound. After all, he is General Vandegrift’s adjutant—men who do not stumble. Sliding to the foot of my cot, Heffel gazes philosophically across the balcony to the harbor, where confiscated lighters unload the last of the tankers—
“Colonel Puller is taking the twenty-second to knock next door—” he catches my quizzical expression, “—Tsinkiang, twenty miles up the coast.”
He pauses, seeming to listen for the sniper-fire from Amoy across the sound. But that stopped yesterday. “You’re here, apparently, to tell our tale,” he says, scrutinizing the hilly horizon beyond Amoy, and in an instant his cordiality evaporates: “Or we can put you on a tin can out of here—”
September 29
“BLOOMQUIST-ROSE,” Colonel Puller reads my orders, “Lieutenant... USNR... what’s the ‘R’ stand for, sailor?”
Colonel Puller is the only man I’ve ever met who makes a crestfallen expression a warning. He steps up to breathe on my bandage: “R—Resolve. Let’s just agree that ‘R’ stands for ‘resolve’.”
A few chuckles. He and his smirking Marine entourage stride away toward the maze of tents. “If you haven’t chowed, chow, Lieutenant. We leave when the trucks arrive...” They disappear into the tent-maze, but Colonel Puller’s gravel-in-a-drum voice booms forth in a pretense of primitive confidentiality: “Bloomquist-Rose, reservist—Jesus! If it were up to me I’d have that navy prig in the brig until he changes his name—and not a month longer!”
Every Marine has a good laugh—
“Bloomquist-Rose?” roars Puller, “It’s enough to shake my resolve!”
A happy army on the shore of a hostile continent.
RUGGED RAVINES clutch the coast tight north of Amoy but nearing Tsinkiang those mountains release their grip, and a broad stream-laden plain extends out to sea. Even with the recent rains, these squads of Marines fan out along the road in raised dust, a regiment silent except creaking leather, staining canvas and herds of rapid boot-falls.
By the time I slip away from the modest wagon-train of three communication trucks, the sun dips below the ridgeline and the village on the low bank behind us exudes spicy cooking aromas. “They’re throwing caution to the wind and smoking the last of their chickens,” my famished mind cries, “And who can blame them?” I stand before the stick concoction bridging the stream there: it looks like its repair chit for structural upkeep was submitted sometime during the Han Dynasty, so I restrain myself from moseying over to make new friends...
SOMEONE WITH a flashlight beam glancing a wristwatch tells me it’s twenty-three thirty-seven; rifle fire is intensifying straight up ahead. It is hard to believe the outskirts of a large city lies less than three miles distant; here it’s just village after village in low-lying marsh.
The first casualties are brought in to the hospital tent—three engineers who blew up a Jap stronghold on the far side of a bridge, a mile up ahead. Corporal Hurley, a young engineer with a bloody shoulder wound, pulls on his Viceroy and tells me what he’s most proud about the escapade is that the charge launched the stronghold into the sky but left the bridge completely undamaged. No small feat: Hurley is not referring to the Brooklyn Bridge here—in this flood plain, even the strongest bridge along the main route—manufactured under British supervision—appear as though they might collapse with a few well-placed grenades, much less Hurley’s satchel charges.
EARLY A.M., September 30: Colonel Puller comes charging through the night, looking for the radio crew responsible for squads on his left flank losing communication. Two seconds after the problem is fixed he disappears forward into the darkness, and I am gripped with a vile thought. Not since USC was robbed of victory by our hometown referees have I experienced anything like this—
For an awful moment I feel sorry for the Japs. I can’t help it. I stand a few yards away from the radiomen, listening to communications crackling back and forth, over which I hear the voices of distant men who are crawling forward in pitch-black, over terrain they have little idea of, and against an implacable enemy—an enemy who has no chance against them.
Nothing will stop these Marines. Nothing.
Submitted,
F.W. Bloomquist-Rose, Lieutenant, USNR
Special correspondent, SPECOP Haggard Group
F. W.-
It appears that you have a rough march ahead of you with Col. Puller.
*laughing hard*
I appreciate how you describe the terrain the Marines fight upon in China; interesting visuals come to mind.
Your pal,
-Terry
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_____________________________
"No one throws me my own guns and tells me to run. No one."
-Bret (James Coburn); The Magnificent Seven
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RE: THE WAR COLLEGE-Rio Bravo (A) v. El Lobo (J) - 
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