Cargo, Capacity, and Strain: The Effects of Pounds and Fear on Fighting, by GuerrillaLogistician

REF- 12D

@glogistician on X.com

 

Maxwell panted as the altitude and ruck weighed down his body and spirit simultaneously.  For days, they had been driving around the mountains of Utah in a desperate attempt to suppress the insurgency that had beaten and bloodied several patrols by now.  His training in the Marines had prepared his body for the grueling marches, but his platoon was a mix of former soldiers and urban dwellers from Chicago.  Even though he was having a rough time, he knew most of his men were suffering more, and he could hear the complaints from the ranks softly echoing in the cedar scrub occasionally.  They especially bickered about the heavy packs as they routinely hunted phantoms that were gone about as fast as they struck their target.  Command in the New American Army even tried to use artillery strikes. Still, in nearly every case, the rounds only struck friendly forces, as the little partisans spent only a few minutes on any target.  The only upside to Utah was the abundance of supplies they had redistributed from the hoarding bastard religious zealots of the region.  Even though they wore weird underwear, the women here could cook, and many had been conscripted to feed the units working in the area.  It was insane how much food they had stored in some of the warehouses.  His unit was gaining weight again, which was nice because their strength was building, and hiking through these treacherous mountains could take a toll without high-calorie food.

Halting his unit, he gave everyone the signal to drink water and looked at his topographic map, trying to figure out where those little bastards had gone.  As he went over his map, checked his GPS, and sucked on his Camelbak, he felt the fatigue of constantly being called out as the areas (Quick Reaction Force) QRF.  It wasn’t the fact that forces were hitting them all the time, but IEDs would explode, or a solitary homemade RPG would screech out of a pile of rocks.  The RPG usually would miss his comrades by hundreds of feet, but the convoys and patrols were required to call for relief.  The QRF would race in their up-armored vehicles, but they usually wouldn’t find much beyond spent brass and scorch marks.  Occasionally, these groups would be hit hard, but no one could talk about how badly they had been hit.  Just like in the Marines, scuttlebutt ran freely along with what alcoholic beverage could be acquired from the locals.  Maxwell had a good idea that some small patrols had been lost months before he arrived, and he even suspected that some fire teams had vanished overnight and really hadn’t gone on an R&R trip.  The scuttlebutt was that these units had been killed or captured, and Maxwell had guessed that himself.  He would notice when those teams moved their gear in the dead of night, freeing up much-needed space for fresh troops from the major cities.  If he hadn’t been out behind the building taking a leak, he wouldn’t have seen all the headlamps in and out of the neighboring team’s building.

As he continued to look at the small box canyons in the valley on his map, he tried to picture the terrain in his mind and guess which areas were impassible and which were the likely path of these bastards.  Realistically, the attackers were never more than 2 or 4 men typically, and his unit came prepared with M249s and, in some areas, indirect fire support.  He figured all these crazy Morman bastards were half mountain goats because, in the blink of an eye, they would hit a convoy or people’s security patrol and vanish in seconds.  They had been running around in quads, but with the fuel shortages, the Brigade commander promised these people would be slower and easily captured or killed.  Two months into the shortage, only a few enemies of the people were killed.  Maxwell had his doubts, suspecting they had killed a supporter or two who were way too vocal.  One of the guys they executed was overweight and didn’t have any weapons, even though he had a lot of the insurgent propaganda material on him.  They would find blood trails, and he was sure some of them had to be dead, but without a body, no one could make any solid showing of how the partisans would ultimately fail, and death was in their future.  He knew if he could do anything to facilitate the death of all these bastards, he would do everything he could because, realistically, he knew these people would never convert to working as one extensive functioning ecosystem that allowed everyone to flourish.  Maxwell knew they had the support of the people, both by the votes and what the media had shown, but still, it bothered him he couldn’t prove the point with one fucking body.  The New American Army had brought supplies and creature comforts for the troops that many thought were all but gone since the unrest had started.  Better food and actual beds again boosted morale, but it increased convoys, and convoys were being hit, which pushed morale back down.

The sound of a snap and what could only be described as a fast-moving bee whipped past Maxwell’s head. As that first round impacted the ground beyond him, more rounds snapped and zinged off rocks near others in his party. Maxwell dived behind cover to prevent himself from getting shot as he began assessing the situation and hearing his unit return fire up the valley. Jamming the topo map into his cargo pocket, he dropped his overburdened pack and shoved it to cover himself more. Many of his fellow soldiers were doing the same thing while others were returning fire. One of the fire team leaders had pinpointed where the fire was coming from and directed the returning fire as Maxwell assessed the situation in the area. In the few short moments it took for his unit to come under fire, the shooting abruptly stopped from the enemy. It appeared that a few partisans had risked a shot at his unit and gained very little. Maxwell verified with his fire team leaders that nobody had been hit and prepared everybody to bound up one fire team at a time. People shoved their heavy packs back on their backs and began positioning themselves to move as the first fire team moved out in a quick sprint.  As Maxwell moved his unit forward, he realized how gassed everybody was, but at the same time, he knew if he didn’t chase these people down, he would be doing the same thing again soon. This time the enemy had fucked up and not only done no damage to his unit but also had pointed out where they were going. Even if the box Canyon they were maneuvering into had a goat trail out, it was unlikely that the four people shooting at them would be able to suppress his whole unit and escape without at least losing someone. Maxwell needed one body or one prisoner, and he could unravel the partisans.

Maxwell and his unit noticed the small burst of radio waves. They notified another group of the disposition of the forces arrayed against them and the trap that had been set. While the light partisan fighters moved away from the enemy, knowing the terrain and not carrying as much gear, they used distance for security and protection. Not one of the partisans took over 45 lbs, and many stayed even lighter than that, allowing them to maneuver far more quickly in the uneven terrain. If Bryan’s plan and train analysis weren’t spot on, he had picked the perfect target. A physically exhausted force carrying far too much for the region, if not in general, compounding on the fear of these partisans popping up from nowhere at any time to shoot at them. This was an Omaha beach; what were the forces arrayed against Bryan? The lack of forethought by Maxwell over the weight of his packs and exhaustion made it possible that Bryan was about to pull another successful ambush.  Within the next 48 hours, he would find out how many people were lost in Maxwell’s platoon as informants from the people’s cooking team were notified and how many fewer mouths there were to feed that following day.