The S#!t hits the fan... or the MRE's nearly hit me...
Pt II of VIII - Yeah, that's right, it's an eight parter. The whole thing is done, but I'll post a few parts today, and the rest tomorrow. I don't want to flood JU with a bunch of posts all at once.
I woke up in a sitting position. I didn't know why I was sitting up but there I was. I could hear Church yelling "Short drop, short drop!" but I had no idea what he was yelling about. I looked up and saw a massive object roll over once just ten feet from where I was sitting. And I could see something moving above me in the treetops. My mind moved as fast as it's ever moved in my life. In the space of a few seconds, I tried to come up with possibilities of what was happening and just as quickly, I discarded the ideas.
I remember thinking that a mortar shell must have landed in front of me. This was partly because Church's "short drop"s were very close to "short round". I knew that couldn't be it, if a mortar had landed ten feet away, I'd be dead.
I thought that maybe an earthquake had caused a boulder to roll down the hill and it knocked a tree over, causing the movement I saw in the treetops. I passed on this since there were no boulders on the high ground just above us.
My mind came up with more possibilities but those were the ones that were foremost in my mind at the time. I finally said, "What the f*** is that?" This caused Church to finally (and thankfully) shut up. We all got up and moved to check out what the large object was. We quickly saw that it was a large pallet of Meals, Ready to Eat (MRE). It was connected to a small parachute that was now hung up on some nearby tree branches.
Church started talking again, without pause, without breathing. "And I saw the plane flying overhead and I looked at it with the NVGs and I thought how cool it was, flying with its lights out and it passed three times and I watched it every time and on the third time I saw something else coming down in the sky and all of a sudden I realized one of them was coming at us and I started yelling 'short drop' but it was too late and it was already on the ground and I saw it rolling over and then I was worried that it hit Chip and I started freaking out and I tried to think how do you treat a crush wound and then Chip asked 'what the f*** was that?' and then I knew that he must be OK and so then I got up and came over and here we are¡¦". He kept going, but that's the main points.
I knew that we weren't going to be staying, so I started packing up my stuff. Church ran off to try and find our observer/controller (OC). At JRTC the OC's are exactly that, they observe soldiers and later offer feedback on how they are doing their jobs. They also act as controllers. JRTC employs a system similar to laser tag in order to simulate hits and misses in firefights. Since this system is not overly accurate, the OC's also control combat situations. That way, firefights don't devolve into a bad game of cowboys and indians. Before our OC left to get some sleep, he showed us on the map where he'd be sleeping. OC's travel the battlefield in trucks and in the case of small teams like ours, they will park a good distance away in order to keep our cover.
P-Ro called our unit on the radio and tried to relay to them what had happened. It was 0200 and P-Ro was having a hard time explaining the situation to the sleepy radio operator on the other end. Church came back in a few minutes later with a soldier. This soldier was from a transportation unit that was expecting an airdrop of supplies. He told us that the drop had missed the drop zone (no s#!t, Sherlock) and that there were two more drops expected in the next hour. P-Ro told us to grab only our sensitive items and get ready to move. I was carrying the batteries on this exercise, so my only sensitive items were my rifle, my protective mask, and the teams PLGR (GPS system). I dropped my ruck and helped Frydaddy pack his up. He carried the intercept system, so we had to take his ruck. It was at this time that Frydaddy said something so funny, it completely stole all the tension from the situation for me. He looked at me in the dark and said, "You know, Chipper, statistically speaking, the safest place to sleep would be right next to this pallet."