Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL by Pfarrer Chuck

Author:Pfarrer, Chuck [Pfarrer, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

LOSING THE BUBBLE

IN WAR, BIGGER IS BETTER, and the battleship New Jersey was both. By the end of September she had completed a transatlantic voyage and joined the squadron of warships stationed off the coast. Sixteen-inch guns, armor plate, cruise missiles—she was the big stick in a language that everybody could understand. In a chow line, someone had said to me that bringing New Jersey to Lebanon was like taking a bazooka to a bullfight. It was definitely a weapon that could win, but it wasn’t the right weapon. Looming on the horizon, the ship was an impressive sight—long, lean battle wagon—but it didn’t fool anyone.

New Jersey’s sixteen-inch guns fired projectiles the size of Volkswagens, two thousand pounds of high explosive at ranges in excess of twenty miles. One such shell could vaporize a city block. Clearly, the devices that turned Pacific islands into lunar landscape were not the weapons of choice in a densely populated city. Firepower and brimstone had brought down the Axis, but were not applicable to the chores of hard-core peacekeeping. Bad guys here did not congregate large bodies of troops, nor did they shell us from static massed-weapon positions. They offered no targets for such a heavy hitter.

It was not merely a coincidence that when the New Jersey arrived, the tactics of our antagonists underwent a dramatic change. Previously, Druze and Syrian gunners set up on isolated promontories and whaled away when they felt the urge. Now the stakes were higher, and the consequences of establishing a battery in the open were 100 percent lethal. Offshore was a ship that could alter the geography of this country. Overnight, promontory shooting ended and “shoot and scoot” began. In the civilian centers there was safety, there was cover, and in the first part of October, fire came almost exclusively from the most densely populated areas of the city. Indirect fire weapons, mortars and Katyusha rockets, were brought to bear from vacant lots and roofless buildings in the heart of Hooterville. Sixteen-inch shells would take out the mortars, but they would also get everyone else in the neighborhood. Not exactly a transaction in the spirit of peacekeeping. So it went, round after round, in the early autumn.

Offshore the ships coasted silently, indifferently turning north and south into the fire-support areas and out to sea in unending circles. No one pretended to take comfort in their presence. The ships would never be used the way the grunts wanted—guns fired furiously until their magazines were exhausted, until the Shouf was ablaze and sand was all that was left of this fucking place.

Ah, fire superiority.

It was a dream, only a dream, and in hot afternoons the low shapes of the warships trundled about, sometimes close, sometimes hull down on the hazy horizon. It was not possible to look at them without tasting the bitter frustration that was starting to poison our every breath.

It could eat you up. A kind of cabin fever that arose from confinement in the compounds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.