They have done this eight times already, and they are exhausted.
This is how a rifle platoon seizes control of a building, one room at a time. Once they entered the school, the LT placed his gun team and HQ, along with the wounded and civilians, near the primary doors, plugging the main entrance. This base became their foothold for action inside the building, while denying access to outsiders who might reinforce enemy forces.
This accomplished, the next step is to systematically clear the building. The three squads each entered a separate wing of the building, with the fireteams in each squad alternating as assault and support forces.
“All right, here’s the stairwell leading up to the second floor,” the Sergeant says, mopping sweat from his forehead. “Down there is the admin wing, which we got to clear before we can go up. McLeod, I am placing you here with your SAW.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” says McLeod.
Ruiz sighs loudly through his nose. “The rooms behind you have been cleared. We will be on your left, down that hallway. You lie here and point your weapon at the stairwell until we get back. Think you can manage that?”
“Since you put it like that—”
“Listen to me, dipshit.”
“Okay, Sergeant.”
“You got our backs. Do not screw up or nod off or rub one out or read a good book or whatever it is you do instead of soldiering. If you do, I will not assign you KP or smoke you with exercise. I will frag you. You will die. Okay? Do we understand each other?”
McLeod nods darkly. “Yes, Sergeant.”
“All right, let’s do this, ladies. Sooner we clear this building, the sooner we can kick up our feet.”
“Roger that, Sarge,” says Hicks.
“Take point, Private Williams.”
“All right, Sergeant.”
Williams turns the corner toward the admin offices and almost walks into the man standing there smiling down at him. A tall, skinny giant of a man, almost six foot five, wearing a neat suit and tie.
“Oh, sorry, sir,” Williams says.
He glances up at the face and his bowels turn to water. The man’s swollen, bruised throat bulges over the shirt collar, which is soaked with drool and mucus.
“Shoot him, Private!” roars Ruiz.
The man opens his mouth, making a bubbling, percolating sound deep in his throat, and reaches out with his long arms to embrace Williams.
The rifle pops and the man staggers backward, wincing in pain, his dress shirt now soaked red.
Williams blinks in surprise, then fires again as he was trained, putting the second bullet into the man’s face, blowing off his jaw and ear. The man spins like a top and eventually falls to the ground with a meaty sound, his hair smoking.
The soldier laughs hysterically.
“Who shot him? Was that me?”
“Give me your weapon, Private.”
Ruiz takes the M4 out of his hands, shoulders it and fires rapidly,
“I’m going to make a soldier out of you yet, Private Williams,” he says, handing him back his carbine and then retrieving his shotgun.
“Roger that, Sergeant,” Williams says, blowing air out his cheeks. “Roger that.”
A familiar voice from around the corner: “You guys all right?”
“Shut up and stay in position, Private McLeod,” Ruiz yells back.
“Sergeant, look, it’s a rifle,” says Hicks, stepping forward and picking the weapon off the floor. “It’s an M4.” He wrestles with the bolt and snorts. “Jammed.”
The Sergeant nods. He was afraid that at some point they were going to begin finding the shreds of First Platoon.
“And there’s a blood trail. See it?”
The trail of blood droplets leads under a door to an administrative office. The fireteams quickly get into position, ready to take it down. Ruiz peers through the window set in the upper half of the door, which is similarly spotted and streaked with blood. The inside of the office is clean and brightly lit but otherwise appears empty.
He counts down with his fingers,
The doorknob gives, but the door barely moves. Something’s blocking it.
He pushes hard until the obstruction clears.
The soldiers step into the room, clear it, and then converge on its sole occupant.
The corpse lies tangled up in his own limbs. They recognize him as Charlie Company’s RTO. He wears a crude tourniquet tied tightly around his leg, which has been mauled savagely below the knee. The top of his skull and brains are splattered up the scorched and splintered door, which he was blocking with his body.
Blocking, apparently, to keep the Mad Dogs out.
“This shit is cold,” says Williams.
“He didn’t want to become one of them,” Ruiz says.
“Sergeant?” says Hicks, puzzled.
“Nothing,” says Ruiz. “Just thinking out loud.”
The man still clutches the pistol that he used to blow his brains out. As RTOs are not issued sidearms, the pistol is not his, although the soldiers recognize it as an Army-issue nine-millimeter.
The Sergeant crouches down and tears off one of the corpse’s oval dog tags, then contacts the LT using his handheld.
“War Dogs Two-Six, this is War Dogs Two-Three, over.”
“We have cleared most of the first floor of hostiles and have located a member of Charlie Company’s headquarters staff in the admin area of the left wing, over.”
“He’s dead, over.”
“Negative. We have something positive to report, though. The man we found is the company RTO, and he has a working combat net radio. Over.”
The boys glance at each other and grin. The man’s death is horrible, the more so because this particular death, among so many, is closer to home for them as soldiers. But finding an intact SINCGAR is a stroke of luck. Communications can be as valuable as water and ammunition in the field. With a working field radio, the platoon can easily talk to Battalion. They can get things they need to live and continue functioning as a military unit in the field. Specifically, through direct communication with the chain of command, they can ask for news, orders, reinforcements, evacuation, rescue, air support, food, water, ammunition, equipment and medevac.
“Wilco, sir. Sending Private Williams now with the radio, over.”
“Collect these weapons and any ammo you can find,” Ruiz tells the squad. “As for Doug Price here, we’ll pick him up on the way back so he can be buried with respect.”
A greater obligation
Lieutenant Bowman established his headquarters in the wide entry hallway of the school, surrounding a sprawling refugee camp of more than a hundred panicked civilians located directly adjacent to public lavatories and a water fountain.
At the end facing the main doors of the school, he placed his gun team, and at the other, facing the main
