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Goodbye Jesus

Misfire Unload!


Casey

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"Platoon, 20 rounds Emergency Rate Fire!" the mortar line officer orders, in his best just-got-out-of-officer's-school voice. Doesn't fool the line though, we can hear the catch in it. They teach you how some things are done, but they don't always teach you what the same things mean.

 

They also can't seem to teach some people when to keep their great gates tightly shut. Take Barnes there, our mortar line officer for now. For a week he has been supervising our TOEMDS (Pronounced TEES OH EE EM DEES, Tests Of Elementary Mortar Drills for outsiders) Very rarely has he pronounced himself satisfied, we've had to do lots of these over and over again, with Himself cursing our slowness at everything. "You lot are supposed to be trained soldiers! Dunno what you'd call that (in reference to an Action or set-up drill) but I'd call it slow as a gin at a christening!" Our ears ring with similar pleasantries, but a week's soon over.

 

A man would swear he was a Recruit all over again, so he would, but that's the Army. As our Sergeant says now and then, "If youse can't take a joke, you shouldn't have bloody well joined, eh?" Or as Jungles, the Number One or Gunlayer on our mortar observes quietly but more to the point after one memorable tongue-lashing, "Silly cunt ought to get some fuckin' service in. Je-sus, what are are they letting in to ROBC these days?"

 

Jungles has nine years in, as it happens. He's a veteran too, one tour of Vietnam, courtesy of The South East Asia Travel Office as he sardonically observes. He's called Jungles because at least when he wants to, he comes across as green and dense. But there's a difference between dense and thick, and he isn't thick. He is accounted our fastest Number One and is thus in charge of the Number One Mortar, always to the right of the line. We get orders to move to Camp Kerr for Field Firing.

 

Easy Range, Easy Sector, Wide Bay Training Area. What can I say? About ten or so square kilometers of sandy dirt, with sandstone a mere six inches beneath the surface just in case you're ordered to dig in. 'Spose a desperate cocky might farm the place, if all he wanted to raise was Blackboy palms and Death Adders.

 

Normally in an area like this, we'd get Field Allowance (couple bucks a day over our pay and don't spend it all in one shop) but, because the dear old Army has provided concrete pads on which tents can be erected, along with a couple of Nissan huts, that's considered housing, so no Field Allowance. Sure and that's luxury, see; there's even Jumbos and showers to go with it! What more d'you want? Still, there are considerable compensations. Nearby Rainbow Beach is well named, there is superb fishing to be had there and along Schnapper Creek, and a couple of laid-back pubs.

 

We spend the two first days setting up and firing normal missions, nothing out of the ordinary. Neither is Barnes anything out of the ordinary, we are still too slow to suit the prick. Then comes Day Three, which is when Al Rhodes, our Platoon Commander (naturally known to one and all as "Rocky" though not always to his face), casually observes, "Jimmy, you ever seen mortars fired at Emergency Rate?" "Happens to be" he adds casually, "one of the specialties of my Platoon".

 

It also happens to be bloody dangerous, as Barnes knows, although he tries to put a confident face on it. Before he can say anything, Rhodes says, "Know the drill? 'Course y'do, piece of piss to a trained man ain't it? Well, I'm off to the OP on Easy for a turn of Fire Control." Soon we hear the radio in the CP hiss and squawk as he calls in the co-ordinates. The plotting boards spin, the firing data is computed, and we have our orders.

 

The sights are set, Bearing 1400, Elevation 0900. The rounds are ready, safety pins out. Charlie our ammo number throws the first one to me, the Loader. You can call me Bill, you can call me what you like; chances are it'd be nothing like what my Sergeant will call me if I screw this up. That is, of course, if there's anyone left of us to chew out. Jungles glances around to make sure all is set, then applies his right eye to the sight, keeping his left eye on the elevation and cross-levelling bubbles.

 

I catch the round, Brit Skytrail set on Charge 9, the highest. Nine plastic segments full of cordite wrapped around its stem, awaiting the spark from there that will fire them. Catch the round so your right hand, palm up is under the top half and your left, palm down is over the tailfins.

 

Turn to your right, insert the round into the muzzle, drop it down cutting your hands smartly away. Follow the round down, turn left, catch the next, repeat until rounds complete, all done a damn sight quicker than I just said. Twenty rounds a minute, that's what Emergency Rate means, one round every three seconds.

 

There being six mortars in the line, 20 meters apart, the noise is hellish. Thuck booom, thuck booom thuck booom! kinda thing. 'Course it's a bit worse for them on the other end; all you hear there is a shrill tinny whistle and what happens after that, according to Jungles and one or two of our other veterans, "Would take your mind off sex for a while, wouldn't it?" Might do more'n that, mortar rounds are "daisy cutters" that go for the legs and the groin, so if you're standing when they go off, it's a wee bit nasty. In action, one of our dreams would be to catch a body of troops marching in the open just so.

 

There is another small thing, which evidently has just occured to our Second Lieutenant Barnes whom I can see five paces to the right rear of our Mortar. What if the Loader gets out of sync, double feeds the tube and you are standing where he is? Only consolation is you prob'ly won't live long enough to know much about it. Neither will the crew, comes to that. This thought doesn't cheer him up though; even I can see he's a shade green around the gills.

 

Or what happens if ... I catch the seventh or eighth round and pivot, ready to drop it when I see a horrified expression on Jungle's moon shaped face. "MISFIRE!" he screams from a wide-open mouth. Just in time I jerk the round back, pivoting to my left, crouching below the level of the muzzle, and putting the round down. Seeing this, Charlie puts down the round he's snatched up and also crouches down.

 

Misfire on One! reports Jungles, but that has no effect whatsoever on the Lieutenant. It is our Sergeant who orders, "Misfire Unload!" Jungles shakes the bipod vigourously in case there has been a hangfire, and when it doesn't fire, gives the same order to us.

 

Charlie unlatches the barrel, turning it to free it from its U shaped rotating socket. Meanwhile I shift so I am in front of the muzzle, although below it to its right. Charlie and Jungles between them lift the barrel while I cup my hands around the muzzle, left above, right below, the way we were taught all those times at Singleton. It's not part of the drill, but Jungles says to me "If you drop that, you better run fast when we get to hell". Veteran that he is, there are times when he just can't resist a little gallows humour.

 

Once I've taken the round twenty meters to the front of the mortar, walking because running isn't advisable, observed and reported "Round struck!" and placed it down, the drill is over. I double back to the weapon and we resume firing just as though nothing had happened.

 

Soon enough it's Rounds Complete. From behind us, in a rather strangled voice, we hear, "End of Mission! Tip out, swab out, Rest Stand Clear! While Charlie and I attend to these matters, Jungles leans back and rummages around in one of his basic pouches to make sure his fishing gear is there. After all, we'll be stood down day after tomorrow.

 

Jungles turns right about as he stands up, looks Barnes up and down in an old soldier's sweeping glance and asks unctuously, "Is the gentleman satisfied?" I near piss myself trying not to laugh because Jungles asked that in the same way the Madame of a posh brothel would ask one of her clients if he'd been shown a good time.

 

We never did hear whether the gentleman was satisfied or not because he would have little to do with us from then on. Mortars were evidently not to his liking. "Wonder why?" Jungles asked as sucked on a cold tinny or two and watched our set lines on a secluded part of Schnapper Creek.

Casey

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Goodbye Jesus

Hilarious read, Casey. You really put me there... I could almost smell the smoke.

 

Brilliant read!

 

Merlin

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Fantastic job!

 

Y'know, you could probably send that in to get published somewhere.

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Fantastic job!

 

Y'know,  you could probably send that in to get published somewhere.

 

I'm sure! Give it a try, Casey.

 

Merlin

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  • 3 weeks later...

Interesting read. Other than a few minor punctuation nitpicks, I couldn't really see much to improve on. Maybe a survivalist type of magazine or website would accept it as a short story.

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