Episode 68

3rd Battalion, 67th Armor

Camp Humphreys, South Korea

Lieutenant Colonel Hernandez read the operations plan slowly. While he had seen combat before, he had never participated in a mission of this size and scope. They had time to consider their actions so he wanted to get things right. The first lieutenant giving the briefing began to fidget and Hernandez smiled. For some reason, long, considered silences tended to unnerve some junior officers.

“Do you have any questions sir?”

“Oh, yes I do. I certainly do.” The young lieutenant audibly gulped. “Please tell me more about these attrition estimates. It seems to me that in Afghanistan we had much more trouble with IEDs than this plan assumes. Don’t you think that the DPRK is AT LEAST as creative as a bunch of villagers in Afghanistan?”

“Yes, sir. I agree they look low. However, we expect that as part of Long Snap we should see significant support by special forces prior to the invasion. Intelligence tells us that we have an excellent chance of disarming the majority of the traps set by the DPRK within fifty clicks of the DMZ.”

“I am not certain if the word ‘should’ or the word ‘majority’ in your answer concerns me the most. Lieutenant.”

The Battalion’s second in command, Major Lucas took pity on the young officer. “Lieutenant Peters, why don’t you take a look at the numbers from Iraq and then update with a ‘worst case’ and ‘best case’ estimate?”

Peters looked like a drowning man clutching a life preserver. “Ah, yes sir. I will get on that right away sir!”

“Very well, dismissed.”

After Peters left the briefing room, Lucas turned to Hernandez with a smile. “Don’t you think you were a little hard on the kid, Louis?”

Hernandez smothered a chuckle. “Hell Tom, you know I have to work at keeping up the mystique. What do the kids call me? ‘The Dragon’ or some such?”

“I think it was the ‘Dragoon’ last time I heard.”

Hernandez turned serious. “What I really want to see is some combined arms training with those Stryker Dragoons that just came in from Europe.”

Peters nodded. “Yes, agree. If we can get them interspersed with the tanks and the 1128’s, we have a huge firepower and rate of fire advantage.”

Hernandez pulled out a folder from a stack on his desk. “My concern here is that their fire discipline sucks. Those Stryker teams are not focused on taking out armor. They are looking for dismounted troops on the ground. I want them hungry for BMPs and anything small enough to take out with an APFSDS. Those things have a hellofa punch and I want them right up there in the fight.” He used his index finger on the report to enforce his point.

“Yes, I get you, Louis. I get you. But you can’t make these crews into shooters in a few days. It will take time.” While the idea of the 105mm armed Stryker “Mobile Gun System” or MGS had been to allow the infantry to take on tanks, the reality is that they were just too big and slow to screen the infantry and too lightly armored to take on full on Main Battle Tanks. The new Dragoons, however, with their 30mm Chain Gun, had a hard punch and could fire much faster. The goal was to allow the Strykers to take on the lighter units and have the Abrams focus on tanks. The concept worked in exercises but had never been attempted in battle.

Hernandez looked at Peters with an expression of absolute conviction. “Tom, you have three weeks. After that, we are going to war.”

“We’ll get it done.”

ODA 1211, A Co, 2nd Btn, 1st Special Forces Group

Captain Peters pulled Chief Warrant Officer Smith aside. “Chief, we good on personal weapons?”

“Yes, sir. Pulled all the M-4’s and everyone has an AK-74. We’ll make the right size holes, not to worry.”

While most of the world thought that all non-US armies carried the AK-47, the reality is that the Soviets had transitioned to the AK-74 in the late ’70’s. While the 5.45mm ammunition fired by the AK-74 was relatively close to the 5.56mm ammunition that was standard across NATO countries, it wasn’t exactly the same. If the invasion didn’t go off for some reason, the green berets would need to hide and leaving behind the wrong kind of brass was a sure way to tell the North Koreans that there were enemy soldiers in their country. While the North Korean Type-88 didn’t look like an AK-74, it shot the same ammunition which is what mattered.

First rule of a gunfight: Bring a gun that works. The AK-74 worked. Nobody wanted to bet their life on shoddy manufacturing in North Korea which ruled out the North Korean knock off of the solid Russian weapon.

Smith pushed his ball cap back on his head and scratched his short afro. “We’re good on weapons. Everyone fully checked out twice last year and then again this week. I’m WAY more worried about the timetable. Three weeks? What the hell can we do in just three weeks?”

“We do what we can Chief. What we can. Those armored boys are going to be charging up those highways in three weeks. We are going to make sure they live to tell the tale.”

“Roger that.”

“OK gents, mount up!”

As the twelve men of ODA 1211, weighed down with parachutes, rucks and all manner of destruction, awkwardly made their way onto the C-130, the reserve crewmen helped them with their gear and got the special operators settled into the cargo area of the large turboprop.

Peters slapped the shoulder of the air force enlisted manning the ramp. “You ready to roll?”

The senior airman grinned. “Hell, yes sir. We’ve done this same flight profile every night for a week.”

“Is it working?”

“Yeah, I think so. The first three times, the NK’s got all hot and bothered. By last night, they barely even lit off their radars. The wind is good tonight twenty to thirty knots from the south. Should give you a good extra ten miles of glide. Right in your butter zone.”

“Hope you’re right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

Flying a slow, non-stealthy cargo plane along the DMZ wasn’t exactly a super smart thing to do. However, if you do the same thing over and over, the enemy will expect you to keep doing it. If the first seven times were not dangerous, why would the eighth one hold any danger? The idea was to show the North Koreans something they thought they understood, but then do something different that they didn’t notice. In this way, they hoped to insert the green beret team into North Korea from a very large aircraft that everyone could clearly see. What they would not see would be the tiny men jumping out the rear ramp.

I hope to hell this works. Mom’s not gonna believe that I died in a “training accident” if this goes wrong.