The Last Centurion

by John Ringo

  One thing I'd done, coldheartedly, was to figure out which were the most important to the mission of getting home and the order was: The technicians, the U.S. infantry, and the Nepos.

  Why?

  I only had a few technicians. (The satellite/internet/electronics geek from Fillup's company was now in that crowd.) We were rolling with a lot of wheeled and some tracked vehicles. Wheeled and tracked vehicles break. They need maintenance that goes beyond "filler up and check the oil." Commo breaks. Weapons break.

  We were going to need to have most of this stuff most of the way through the mission. I needed those techs to keep it running. Lose one grunt or Nepo and I was out a shooter. I had lots of shooters. Lose one tech and I was probably fucked.

  So the technicians were going to need careful handling and feeding. They were all, basically, Fobbits anyway. Oh, they could handle themselves in an ambush if they were firing from a vehicle but I wasn't going to be using them for any assaults even if they weren't as valuable as gold.

  So the techs had to be protected.

  Fortunately, there was a way to kill two birds with one stone.

  Military equipment is very heavy. It's got lots of metal parts and then, of course, all that armor. With a few exceptions (and we weren't taking any Humvees at all) you can't tow it with your neighbor's car. You need big fucking metal to tow a Stryker very far.

  Thus you have the armored vehicle recovery vehicle. (Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utilty Lift and Evacuation System: HERCULES.) Hercules looks sort of like a big fucking tank without a gun. And it's got more power than God. It can tow, I shit you now, two Abrams tanks at the same time. (The suckers weigh in at 73 TONS apiece to give you an idea what I mean by "more power than God.") It's not real fast, unfortunately, but it could keep up with us. We weren't going to be going fast.

  There were over a dozen of them in the base. I'd pulled out four before rigging. We ended up taking two. Why two? Redundancy. More on that later.

  Now, this was a big motherfucker. And it was designed to carry a "recovery team" of three guys. In other words, I could fit six techs in those.

  Then there was another necessity. We were going to be crossing a lot of watercourses. Some of them we could ford. Some of them there were bridges strong enough to take even the recovery vehicles. Others we were going to have to bridge.

  Big bridges were out of the question. They take, like, a fucking engineering battalion to put up. But the Army also has a cute little "fast bridging" armored system based on an Abrams chassis. It was the only Abrams chassis we were taking. I do love those big motherfuckers, even if they are hard to destroy. But they just sucked so much gas and were so hard to move through certain areas I had to leave my last two. (And I didn't destroy them. I left them for the mullah. Seemed like the Christian thing to do. And they had ammo.)

  Point was, it could span a thirty-foot watercourse. Crew of three. More techs. They could learn as they drove. Driving an Abrams is not hard.

  So I had lots of heavy metal wrapped around my techs. It gave me warm fuzzies.

  We took two of the big rolling command post/commo vans. They were Strykers with a big ass box on the back and could keep up satellite commo and local radio even on the move. Lots of electronics I rarely fiddled with. They were supposed to be for battalions and above. What the fuck, I was a reinforced company. Close enough. Later I got closer. I'll get to it.

  Then there were the Strykers. We had enough for all the guys and most of the Nepos. We could have had them for all the rest of the Nepos but I had another use for them.

  Now, Napoleon said "An army travels on its stomach." Since I wasn't planning on walking to the Bosporus, much less low-crawling, this army traveled on more than its stomach. All those vehicles took fuel. Lots of it. Military vehicles are graded in gallons per mile not the reverse. (Strykers are a bit better, but not much.) We were going to need a lot of fuel.

  Since I wasn't planning on looting local villages for olives and shit (see Anabasis) we were going to need food. That was mostly going to be MREs and BritRats. The latter were for the Nepos. And they'd brought some of their own food that they might get a chance to cook.

  We were going to need water, both for the vehicles from time to time and for our own consumption. Most of the vehicles were towing a trailer. Some of them were water buffalos. We also had a portable ROWPU we could figure out how to use. Had an onboard generator. Quit working? Why do you think I brought the techs?

  We needed ammo. We might need lots of ammo. There's never such a thing as too much ammo. There's only too much ammo to carry.

  Sideline: A lot of people over the years have dissed the M-16 series of weapons that we were still using in the form of the M-8. It wasn't all that different from the M-4, just a slightly longer barrel and it could be "modulated" for different weaponry and stuff you could hang on it. It fired a dinky little 5.56mm diameter round. That translates as .221 caliber, same as a .22, basically. Big diff.

  The difference matters, though. Because it went very fast. And, honestly, with good shot placement was very lethal.

  The Army had used .30-06 rounds in WWII. Those were big honking man-killers. Then they'd gone to the .308 which was still pretty hefty. It was what we used in our medium machine guns.

  Why go to the 5.56?

  Took up less room. More rounds for less weight.

  Lots of arguments both ways, but when I was figuring cubic space to carry all this shit, I was glad I could pack 30% more 5.56 into the space the .308 took up. And it took up less than .30-06. And waaay less than .50 caliber. All of them took up less than mortar rounds.

  Yes, we brought two mortar Strykers with us. Indirect fire is a good thing. I'd have taken more but I was getting pack-rattish and I knew it. It wasn't the vehicles, it was the ammo. And the fuel to haul the ammo.

  Most of this shit was going to have to go on trucks. Several trucks. The trucks were going to be our most vulnerable targets. Therefore the Nepos drove the trucks. They were the least vital group.

  Why were the Nepos our least vital group?

  It wasn't because they weren't Americans. I'd grown to love the little bastards like they were my own boys back when I had B company. But they simply were not as important as the U.S. infantry. Why?

  The Nepos were shaping up to be good irregulars. Given enough time and opportunity and some more trainers I probably could have gotten them up to the point they were just as good as the U.S. infantry guys.

  But they weren't. They were good cooks, some were sort of mechanics and they were decent irregulars. They wouldn't run from a fight and they could sort of shoot. Quality on that was coming up and would come up more.

  But they were semiskilled. The U.S. infantry were highly skilled technicians on the subject of war. Let me try to explain.

  The Nepos could fire their individual weapons pretty well, clean and strip them and put them together. The ones that had been trained on machine guns could fire those machine guns, clean and strip and clear basic jams. They could slap a compress on somebody who had been shot.

  The riflemen in the Stryker unit could: Fire their individual weapons, clean, strip, detail clean and in many cases do minor repairs. They could do the same on a pistol, squad automatic weapon (SAW), a medium machine gun or a heavy. Didn't matter if that was their primary job. The Javelin gunners could do the same and most of the guys could work a Javelin about as well as the gunners. They could do close quarters battle, movement to contact on foot or in vehicle, set up an ambush, react to an ambush, perform battlefield first responder actions up to and including inserting an IV and in many cases stitching a minor wound. They could lay in claymores and in many cases more advanced demolitions. They could call for fire from the mortars. They could land navigate using GPS and/or map. They could perform fire and maneuver. They were trained in night movement either in march or combat.

  They could all work a radio.

  The Nepos, mostly because we simply had not had the time to train them with ev
erything else going on, couldn't do most of that. And most of them, still, didn't speak English. So whether they could work a radio or not was sort of moot.

  I didn't want to lose the Nepos. But if it came down to losing them or the guys who were highly trained specialists at survival, I'd take the highly trained specialists over the semiskilled any day.

  So the Nepos drove the vulnerable but incredibly important trucks.

  The problem being, most of them didn't know how to drive a car.

  Foreseeing this as an issue as time had passed, I'd taken some of their training time to ensure they could all drive military trucks.

  Driving military trucks is not like driving a car. The ones we were using were HEMTTs (Heavy Extended Mobility Tactical Trucks.) Think a four-wheel drive tractor trailer. Bit smaller than a tractor trailer but not much. They are big, boxy trucks designed to go anywhere tanks or Strykers can go.

  Teaching the Nepos to use them was . . . interesting. Among other things, the Nepos turned out to have a repressed size inferiority streak. Putting them in big-assed trucks with cabs six feet off the ground suddenly put them in charge of their destiny.

  It's very hard to roll a Hemitt on flat ground. They managed it. Fortunately, they had very hard heads and we had lots of Hemitts. (It's how it's pronounced.)

  They eventually got the picture and got over their tendency to race each other.

  Strykers:

  We had a lot of Strykers. We had more Strykers than we needed. Why? Since they all used fuel?

  Look, I'm a big fan of the Stryker. But the things just break a lot. All military equipment breaks. It's a function of how it's used in part. (I won't get into deep conspiracies about companies that then get to provide parts.) And who uses it. Soldiers are specialists in breaking things, not keeping them going. And they're complicated compared to the average car.

  But Strykers break a lot. They were, in fact, overengineered. They had way too many moving parts. Frankly, much as I liked Strykers I wished they'd have gone with something like the LAV. Not as complicated and broke less. "Keep it simple, stupid" is a military acronym that weapons designers and generals often forget.

  I had lots of Strykers because I figured by the time we got to the Dardanelles at least half of them were going to be scattered on the road behind us. I was planning on fixing any that we could. Barring that, they were going to be left behind.

  We had three types. The mortar carriers. These were the latest and greatest things and actually were pretty cool. They were 120mm automortars with automated tracking and guidance. That is, instead of manually moving them around, when you got a call for fire a computer figured all the corrections and they automatically fired. Assuming everything worked. If everything didn't work, there were manual overrides including a way to work them around by hand.

  But if we got in the real busy, they might come in handy. Two of them, again. For one thing, the more mortars the better. For another, redundancy. I was hoping that those wouldn't be the Strykers that broke.

  Then we had Assault Gun Systems. These had, originally, been the "Mobile Gun System" with this weird-assed 105mm "semi-recoiless" cannon. That had lasted, from what I heard, five years after deployment. Then they all got converted to "Assault Gun Systems." Difference? The well-tested 25mm Bushmaster from the Bradley replaced the 105. The 105 was supposed to be an "anti-tank" gun system. It couldn't stop most modern tanks straight on. Neither could a 25mm but it could from the side. Just like the 105. And it didn't break as much and you got more shots.

  Besides, we had Javelins for tanks.

  Most of them were "Infantry Carrier Vehicles." Just big rolling boxes filled with shooters and a commander's cupola with a .50 cal. Some of the commander's cupolas had Mk-19 40mm grenade launchers.

  Oh, and six recon vehicles. Those were, basically, AGS with more ammo and less room for shooters. Also better commo including a satellite and meteoric bounce system if they got too far away for radio.

  All the vehicles had "Block Five" Blue Force Trackers. That is, they would continuously tell me and Fillup where they were and more or less what their status was. There was an automated ammo counter we'd long before learned to distrust.

  With all the vehicles, most of the team was driving Strykers at first. Or commanding them or gunning. I figured that would "consolidate" over time. And the Nepos were cross-training on Stryker driving.

  I wasn't planning on stopping for much if I could avoid it. I figured that RIFs along the way, if they heard we were coming through, were likely to pile on just to take out an American unit. Not to mention the loot. Oh, speaking of which.

  We had ten trucks, two supply, two food, three ammo and three fuel. One Nepo driver and an AD in each. AD manned the .50 caliber. In the case of the supply and food trucks we'd also mounted them up on the back with two more .50s in ring turrets and welded armor.

  We did not have enough fuel to make it to the Bosporus. I was hoping for some Islamic charity along the way.

  The basic plan was to stay off road as much as possible. The Strykers would stay in a ring around the trucks. Scouts out.

  The Scouts were most of Third Platoon. Why Third? I drew it out of a hat. They loved the fuck out of it. Third Herd usually has a touch more esprit than the other two platoons in any company. Why? Well, they're the only one with a cool name, I guess.

  They each carried a crew of three and two "dismounts." The dismounts carried rifles and there were some Javs in the vehicle in case it got real busy. Javs were good against not only tanks but anything else that was big as previously proven.

  Spare weapons for when one got totally fucked up, spare batteries, spare clothing, parts, tools . . . I created one list that had us with eighteen trucks. Wasn't going to happen. I winnowed it down. Forgot stuff we'd really need. Went back up.

  It was the best list I could create is all I can say.

  So we rolled. And then we stopped. Did I say something about watercourses?

  Iraq, which we entered almost at once, is part of the Fertile Crescent. If you didn't get the Fertile Crescent in school I'm not going to be explaining. See there are these two rivers that run through it, the Euphrates on the west and the Tigris on the east.

  We were running along the east bank of the Tigris. The Tigris is the big river in Iraq. It's not huge by American standards, not a patch on the Mississippi, but it's pretty big.

  And my God is it farmed. It's been farmed since time immemorial. This is ancient Babylon, Sumeria, Ur, cradle of civilization, blah, blah . . .

  So there are, like, four hundred and twenty-nine billion damned irrigation canals running off of it. Especially to the east.

  We spent the first week working our way through that fucking maze. Setting up the temporary bridge was fairly quick. Taking it back up not so quick. And when you're looking across one irrigation ditch, which is just too deep and steep for your vehicles to negotiate, at another five hundred meters to the north, well, you tend to see if there's a bridge you can use. Only problem being, most of the damned bridges were designed for farm trucks. So the answer, especially in the case of the HERCULES was: No.

  Bridge. Roll. Stop. Bridge. Roll. Stop. Bridge.

  It was during this period that we developed the habit, that we kept even during minor skirmishes, of "afternoon coffee."

  Yeah, we had coffee. I know there are people who lived through the times that are gritting their teeth. We drew on a big fucking LOG base and I made sure we carried plenty of coffee. An Army runs on coffee. We had coffee.

  Specifically we had it every afternoon at 1630. (That's 4:30PM for all you non-mil types.) And we did it right.

  All the officers had somehow ended up with Nepo "orderlies." I swear to God it was never ordered. I think Samad did it. But we all had "orderlies" whether we wanted it or not.

  Things had gotten pretty weird, obviously. Back in the LOG base we'd had our "temporary wives" and, well, we were stuck in the fucking Middle East with no clear route home. Things had gotten we
ird.

  I remember the day I decided it was a good time to do "coffee." We were rolling out on the second day and I wanted to sort of "brainstorm" what some of our potential threats and weaknesses might be. How to do it? With Samad? He hadn't a real clue. He was coming along in the "anticipate and intelligently expand orders" area, but he wasn't really any sort of military expert. Surprising inputs from time to time . . .

  So I decided to do an "officers' call" and "council of war." Those were the technical American Army terms for it. We did "coffee." I called for all officers to come to the commo van at 1630 to "talk shop." Told Samad he was included and suggested we might have some coffee and maybe some MRE crackers or something.

  Should have known better than to get Samad involved. Remember, he was trained by the fucking Brits. And he'd participated in packing the supply truck.

  So at 1600 my orderly comes into the commo van carrying a fresh uniform. We hadn't stopped. He just opens up the back and pops through, fresh ACU over his arm.

  (Despite my repeated discussions of "safety" the Nepos considered the exterior of moving Strykers, at almost any speed, to be quite convenient ways to get around. I swear they were half monkey. But I digress.)

  Sahib will be pleased to change before his conference?

  Huh? How the fuck did you get here? Why would I change? Sure, I've had the uniform on for a couple of days but, hell, it's good for . . .

  Sahib will be pleased to change before his conference.

  So I changed.

  1615 the orderly opens up the door to the commo van. A thing drops down.

  Ever moved yourself with a U-Haul? They've got this sort of ramp thing that you extend and stuff.

  Call it a gangplank in this case.

  The vehicles have all slowed as if for a LOG, which wasn't scheduled.

  There is now this gangplank sort of thing hanging off the back of the commo van. Fillup, in a fresh uniform, looking a little confused, walks down. It's got a railing. It's riding on the front slope of his Stryker. All he had to do was crawl out the TC hatch, grab on and walk down. Simple. Scary, bad safety, but in a way very fucking cool.