Kent Anderson by Devil Sympathy For The

Author:Devil, Sympathy For The [Devil, Sympathy For The]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-28T12:47:48+00:00

G0NF1DENT1AL

021502 BS 987602 Sensor indicated movement in area. Engaged W/50 rounds 175 artillery. Movement ceased. A/4-21 checked area at first light, found one NVA uniform, one pa ir of US fa tigue pants, and some human internal organs lying on the ground. The uniform and pants were evacuated to HO IntelIigence.

Security classification to be downgraded at seven-year intervals.

CONFIDENTIAL

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From the daily intelligence bulletin of the 3rd Infantry Brigade (Mechanized)

At 8 A.M. the thirty officers in the air-conditioned briefing room talked and laughed like students before the beginning of class. The room was long and narrow, like a small movie theater, with a raised stage at one end. A podium stood at the right side of the stage, and the wall at the back of the stage was partly covered by a large window shade with the word SECRET painted across its face.

The walls were paneled with shellacked plywood, and plaques hung along the walls, bearing the crests of the subunits in the brigade, cartoonlike paintings of dangerous animals-tigers, dragons, coiled snakes-and clumsy Latin phrases that declared such things as "Never Falter," and "All The Way." Two strange totems flanked the stage. The one on the left looked like a brass cigarette urn, the kind you see in hotels, filled with sand. It was a 175-millimeter artillery shell, engraved with the words "50,000th round fired by the 1st Artillery, 3rd Infantry Brigade (Mech)." The shell gleamed in the light from the stage. A thirty-two-year-old staff sergeant polished it twice a day.

The totem on the right appeared to be a giant green carrot, two feet long, with green plastic leaves sprouting from its base. It was a sensor that could pick up vibrations in the ground. Dropped from a helicopter, it stuck into the ground like a fat dart and gave off radio Page 483

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signals if anything moved nearby. Quang Tri fire base would then bracket the area with artillery fire and send out a unit to sweep the area. They rarely found anything but craters and sometimes pieces of the sensor. The sensors, however, had a reputation for being effective.

This was because whenever they indicated movement in an area and artillery was fired, the indications of movement ceased. No one ever mentioned that often this was because the sensor had been destroyed by the artillery fire. The fact that there were no bodies found after the fire mission would be explained by the enemy's practice of removing any bodies to frustrate American body counts. The 3rd Mech got around that by estimating how many were probably killed. It was very scientifically done with mathematical tables and flowcharts.

A lieutenant at the stage door gave a signal, and the talking and laughing stopped. A moment later the lieutenant announced, "Gentlemen, the commanding general."

General Frederic Hart entered the room. He had command presence, the kind of charisma that some movie stars and politicians have. He was a handsome man with silver-gray hair who could have been cast in a movie as a general.

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