The Ha-Shi'ah Valley

[Initial Debriefing : Cpl John Kelly
3rd Catachan Regiment, Ranger Team 4
Chi'Nan Province, Asha 4]

The Ha-Shi'ah Valley. You go 'cause somebody tells you you gotta. It is not recommended. It's not ours. Except for a brief time that the Marines went through, it never was. It never will be. The place sucks.

Its supposedly in the 12th Mordian's turf. But we change things from time to time. Fresh perspective maybe ... I don't know. But the marching orders are clear. The Ha-Shi'ah. Shit! We're gonna go try to get some intel. Gonna try to count heads. Gonna get our asses shot off. The last wasn't in the mission briefing. It's in our minds, though.

The Ah Shit Valley ... the bogey man for us. I'd rather go to Hell. At least once you're there, you're already dead. Something like 25% to 30% of all the teams that ever went in there didn't come back. The ones who do come back, you can see it in their eyes that they've been there.

Okay, we plan it. We read every report that's ever come out of the fraggin''place. There'll be no aerial recon. Every hole big enough for an insert is already known. To all parties concerned. Okay, we ain't gonna sneak in.
We're just gonna have to hope that once we land we can vanish real fast.

Major Burns says we've got good air support, plus there'll be a Navy cruiser in low orbit. Not a fast response time, but you can't keep something like that right overhead. They say the cavalry will be 30 minutes out and rarin' to go. We believe the 30 minutes, the rest probably ain't right.

What we're gonna do is get inserted just over the southeast corner ridge while the Navy is tearing the hell outta some other areas of the valley. We gonna try to kill anything in the way of watchers, and then disappear into the brush. Then the Navy is gonna tear the hell outta the LZ we came in on.
Command figures we'll get around 24 hours on the ground. We figure 50%
casualties, if we're lucky.

We pack heavy. Go light on food, real heavy on things that go boom. I don't know about the others, but I got a plasma grenade with my very own name on it.
I ain't gonna be MIA if I can help it, and I figure I can. Autocannon has been cleaned to death. I've got 150 rounds in the drum that's mounted, two more 100 rounders on my belt, and another three 150 rounder in my ruck. Another 3 drums scattered around the team. Grenades up the kazoo. Claymores, too. Full sized ones, which we hardly ever carry. We are both psyched up and out. Shit! The Ha-Shi'ah! Why the
hell can't we get something easy, like huntin' Hive Tyrants or something...?

D-Day. We troop to the transports. Nobody smiles. We're running heavy for 10 guys.
The Book says not to pack so many big guns in a small team. The Book's never been in the Ha-Shi'ah valley. We take too much, we can bring it back. We don't, we don't come back. Arnie's a big boy. He's got a heavy bolter fed by an aircraft feed tray to a 100 lb pack of nothing but ammo. Ace in the hole, we hope. Bulky, but puts out a lot of lead without having to change drums or boxes or nothing.
Too bulky for sneakin' and peakin'.That's okay, we ain't gonna be doing much of that.

We've staged north, and its only a 30 minute flight in. We're riding in on some new toy they want tested, Warthogs. Looks like a rhino with wings and no doors.
In the distance, the Marauder's are doin' their thing. T-birds [Thunderbolts] too, closer to us. Looks more like a war on than anything I'd ever seen here before.
Shit! Check my autocannon again. Friendly fire is a higher probability than any other mission I've gone one. Ah Shit, here we come.

We go in hot. The door gunners see the watcher and go after him hard. Got the little mutha, too. Good, maybe we get our 24 hours, after all. Little LZ, takes two trips. We form up and get out, fast! I'm runnin' next to tail this time out. Extra firepower in the rear. We get a 100 meters out, and the Marauders go in on the LZ - HARD! Nape, bombs, cannon, everything. We left anybody back there, they ain't gonna tell nobody. The 'hogs move on, dropping firefight simulators in other holes all over the area, for maybe 4 klicks around. Hopefully that'll confuse the Rebs, make 'em split up. Give us a chance to sneak a little, anyway. The fear is gone now. No time for it. Attention to what you're doin'. Fear'll be back if its needed. Always is....

Another 100 meters, been on the ground maybe 15 minutes. The HB up front lets go, as do some lasguns. Show time! Hop to the left, make room for the others comin' back, ready to drop a drum in the general area up front. And here they come.

Everybody hops left and right and drops a basic load as the guy in front of them peels back past him. Group stays organized that way. First one through is point. Then the HB. He stops opposite me and kneels down. We'll provide a big burst to give the others a chance to set or run. Noisy now, full fledged firefight in front of me. I hear a couple of dull thuds, grenades going off.

I hear something ... a mortar. A mortar?! Arnie looks over at me and says over the noise, "company." I don't think he means friends droppin in to visit. He means its at least a company sized unit. Not good. Concentrate. Only way out. Hope that cruiser is on the ball. The fear is back....

After a few seconds/hours, the new guy in front of me peels back and runs.
Arnie and I walk it out. Lots of movement up there, muzzle flashes. We can't see 'em, yet, so they ain't aimin' at us either. He drops a steady stream, rock and roll's it back and forth while I do bursts at individual targets. Finally, he turns and runs as well. Just me and the tail gunner now. He's got a grenade launcher too, and they start thunking out. I'm excited by this time, and I unload the rest of the box in a single burst. That'll keep their heads down.

The Emperor only knows where those last 50 rounds went. Tail drops more
rounds while I hook on a new drum and lock and load. Bug out time. I lead out, tail follows. We run into someone we know real soon, they've decided to fight. We don't, they decided to run. And I don't see nobody. Good!

We find ourselves back at the LZ before we catch up. Its still smoldering, fires still going on two sides. They've settled into an ambush position, and Ding waves us through. We're bait now. We're supposed to run out the other side and draw the bad guys into the kill zone. Okay, we run as fast as we can out the only other side not burnin'. Ten meters into the brush, we find a spot and move off to the side where we can help in the firin'. Hittin' the dirt, I burn myself a little on the barrel. The ambush opens up! They were that close! Shit! I can see Ding hollering into the radio.
The explosions down the valley stop. Good news, the flyboys are still around!
Go Navy! Kill 'em all.

T-birds come in first, all guns blazin'. Too' close for rockets. Then the Marauders.
The area beyond the LZ is a mess. Ding drops the team back to our side, and I wave him in. He moves me to the left for more firepower on the flank they're most likely to come into. Arnie's right up front, watchin' the LZ. Ding and Radar take the six with the radio and are jabberin' as fast as they can.

Drop my pack and pull out the spare drum, set it next to me. Gonna take as
many of them with me as I can. More drums handed over by
others carryin' my spares. First time I ever pulled out the bipod. We ain't gonna make it. I pat the plasma. Not afraid, now. Just pissed like a sonuvabitch. I ain't going quiet, and I ain't going alone!

Oddball, the tail, sees 'em first. His lasgun fires away in short bursts ... he's a disciplined dude. Keeps me calm, and the autocannon growls out streams of hot lead. Grenades go flyin'. Ding yells. T-bird rolls over and the woods in front of us explode. Marauders scream by overhead. They got the 'pounders marked, and Ding musta told them to waste everything outside the perimeter. They do. We don't gotta shoot except at some really confused fraggers that come our way thinkin' its "out." They go "out", all right. Two of 'em made it to within 5 meters of me. Fragin' rebs.

The noise is felt. Concussions. They're using rockets and 40mm now. We
ain't gonna make it, and they're gonna help us take as many out as we can.
Its coming in close, but it don't matter. I change drums again. I don't have a bayonet to fix, or I'd do that, too. Never thought I'd feel that way. I was wrong. I was gonna die. Those mothers were, too! Can't hear nothin', everything is visual. It stinks as bad as it sounds. We gonna make it stink like death! Die, you fraggers, DIE!

New noise. Hog! Someone is comin' in! I pull the new guy into my spot
and shift to the LZ. We just shoot into the sides, the brush. Can't loose the bird, man. That's our one hope to get out this mess! It comes in fast and low, right through the smoke and all. Tracers comin' outta the far tree line reach for it. It blocks our shots. T-birds roll in outta somewhere. The tracers stop. Arnie grabs five guys and runs for the bird. They're hardly in and it lifts.

It vanishes into the smoke, and another appears, coming in so low it looks like he's flying between the trees. Missile screams in from the treeline. I just see this flash then the Hog goes up. There's bits raining down on us, red hot metal and burnt flesh.

We bunch up close. I got the LZ now. Ding, Radar, Oddball, Snake and me.
I'm still firing at trees. Ding stops me. Okay. I put on a new drum. Only a couple left. More T-birds and Marauders scream through, plenty of tracer trying to light them up. One is hit bad, and goes vertical trailing smoke. Another gets it good, and goes straight into the trees maybe a klick to the North.
Nobody is walking away from that one.

Hog noise again. I open into the far side of the LZ again. The others are shootin' too. They ain't aimin' my way, and I can only guess what they're shootin' at. One thing at a time. Ding jabbers some more, but I can't make it out, even at less than five feet. The noise is incredible! The Hog hits the earth as the woods behind me ignite. Ding hits me, hard. We head for the Hog, pile on. It starts to lift. The engine sounds funny, and we run straight forward into the trees in a burnt out area. We're going down.

We settle to the ground. No explosion. Bail out. Now we got company. Door gunners grab their HB's and the ammo boxes.
Ding and I grab the pilots.Right seater is bleedin' from the stomach. The left seater is okay, and has his pistol out. It might even help. I help Ding with the flyer. We go around the LZ from the crash, in case it goes up.
The noise has not abated. Everybody who didn't see it now knows they got a bird down. They also know the crew's alive.

We're gonna get unlimited air now. The cruiser is on its way inbound now.
Didn't think about it, though. Busy tryin' to help the co-pilot. Shrapnel in the gut. Ain't supposed to give him morphine. Do anyway. Don't look like he's gonna make it. I'm startin' to get yet another adrenaline dump. And I'm still pissed.

Ding sets the HB's and the others, I'm busy. Shooting is sporadic. At this point we know its a fragging lot more than a company. This is intel we came for. I forget to take pictures. Just as well. Camera took some shrapnel, I found out later. So what? It wasn't at the top of my mind at the time, anyway.

From outta the Emperor knows where we got slow movers inbound. They're
busy workin' over everything within a couple hundred meters of the burnt out spot that used to be the LZ. They're takin' incoming small arms and some bigger shit - autocannons maybe. Outside our range, anyway. The T-birds continue to work on that. Something makes me look at my watch ... 35 minutes on the ground. It feels like half of forever.

Another hog comes in through the smoket. Ding and I take the lefty,
the door gunners and the right seater carry themselves, leavin' the HB's. We put 'em on, and then move out, a medic already workin' on the co-pilot.
Back into the trees and hose down the LZ again. The next hog in puts down in a minute. We make the run again.

Don't even make it there before it starts to slip toward the one already down. The gunners jump. The pilots fight for control. They don't make it. It smashes into the other and both ignite. We don't go look. One of the gunners ain't movin'. We grab 'em both and run back to the HB's. It's beginnin' to feel like one of those old war holovids,the one in which the hero dies! Shit! This place sucks.

Gunner's leg is busted. I can see the bone poking out through a tear in his pants.
He's out cold.Good. I wouldn't want to be awake with that either. The other guy looks scared, but mans the HB, anyway. He sets it up and starts lookin' out into the woods. I think he knows we ain't gonna make it, either. Fuggit.
Kill Kill Kill!

Calm. Eye of the storm. Any battle lasts long enough, there's a moment of it. It hits me like a plascrete wall. Bad cos it lets me think. I ain't done none of that since first contact. We take inventory. Oddball's got a scratch, the gunner with the broken leg is still out. Ding and I are covered with blood. We think (hope) its the co-pilot's. Count bullets, grenades, body parts. We ain't good for much longer. We're just about out of it, already. Fatigue. Emotional exhaustion. But it only lasts a minute. More Marauders come in. More nape.
Must be new birds. Look at my watch, 45 minutes, 30 since first contact.
New birds are about on time. Cruiser be along soon. Ding knows it, too.

Shit! Another hog. Didn't even hear it, its just there, droppin' into the hole. Grab the unconscious guy and run like hell. Throw him on. Climb on. The other door gunner is still out there with the HB, he's emptyin' it into the tree line we came from. The door gunner on our bird is doin' the same and screamin' into his mike. The last man turns, drops the HB and runs and jumps as the bird lifts. We drag his ass in. T-birds roll in on the tree line and light 'em up. We look at the guy an' he's got holes all over him. Ding and Radar go to work on him and I dump the last of my ammo into the tree line. Die you worthless mothers, DIE! I toss the last plasma, the one with my name on ,it, out after I run out of ammo. We're high enough now that if we go down, its just too bad. Maybe I'll get one of them . The stuff in the air will see it
as a marking round at least.

We go about 10 klicks and land in a big LZ with T-birds in short orbit. The wounded guy is transferred to a chimera with a red cross. We carry him there ourselves. He's one of us now. We'll put him in for a medal. Door gunner with brass balls. We notice our bird has holes, too. They'll count 'em later - 35. We lift off again and get some altitude. Back in the valley, the ground is beginning to shake. Every air asset is out. Except for crew we left on the ground.

Less than 60 minutes in the Ha-Shi'ah. Six crew dead, three Hogs gone, three wounded, the team is whole. Lotsa bad guys dead. We go home. No pics. So who cares!

When we do get back and clean up, the only casualty is Oddball. A round
creased him, went through his left shoulder. He'll get two weeks leave, and then back to work.

[ Debriefing Ends]


Darryl Trainor