European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 27, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse $1i-v a iof if top gets o touch of makeup before the action to arts. A machine a nah rated enemy position Confer the 3rd platoon a / up s ready to n Range for their Light firing engagement the dangers of warfare in the dark by Don Tate staff writer ight. Cla Kety. Scruff. Rpp. Scratch. Sounds of shovels clinking against dirt and Rock. Bolts of weapons sticking to. Deadly Little noises. Get a voice whispers. Lock and night. When it s so easy to screw up. When Small confusions escalate into Black magic. Maps that Don t look the same As in the Day. Hills valleys ridges that seem to reshape and float before the Eye. Trails that curve into nowhere. Grid coordinates that uncoordinated. Troops occupying wrong positions in tiie dark. Men wandering around and shooting the wrong people their own people. So Many ways to screw up. Murphy s out there at says a Veteran infantryman behind every Rock. Trying to make it All go in Vietnam it was said that the night belonged to Charlie. Viet Cong who buzzed out like ferocious mosquitoes when the Sun faded stinging hardest Between Midnight and 3, when civilized soldiers preferred to be dreaming. In Germany the night is beginning to belong to the spartans 1st in 36ih inf 3rd army div. Their commander it. Col. Walt Mather a Veteran of Vietnam nights has been running a full reverse Cycle nine Days of sleeping nine nights of shooting with his troops at Grafe Woehr training area. It s something no other troops in the 3rd army div and hardly anybody in Europe has done before. Ill be very Frank with you we have not hit a lot of targets Mather had said a bit earlier watching the 3rd platoon of Alpha co piling off their tracks digging fighting holes in the hard Earth setting up their guns before the sky went Black. But that s the Best reason for being out Here he added. Every night they re building in Vietnam the first few times Green troops loaded with firepower ventured out at night they were often More dangerous to themselves than the enemy. Spooks and shadows. If a jittery Grunt stared into the dark Long enough he was Likely to see something evil creeping along even if there was nothing creeping out there but his imagination. And suddenly it turned into an old Chicago gang War with everything but the enemy hitting the fan. It can get pretty hairy right Here says Mather with Guys running in the dark firing. That s hard to control. I think from the safety standpoint there s a reluctance to do much of that in Europe. But wars Don t Knock off at Sundown at ratan Wohr it s All made As much like the real thing As possible. The spartans will attack and defend. Right now the 20 men of 3rd platoon Are flattening out in the dirt behind their machine guns and rifles gazing through Starlight Scopes and night vols Lon goggles that Light up the world. What was deep darkness becomes Light twinkly Green. The Scopes catch any available Light from stars Moon even cigarettes and amplify it. Their Thermal sights not being used this night can look right through dense fog seeing any object one degree warmer than the environment around it. A lot of the men did t Trust those Scopes when we got Here says Alpha s commander capt. John Conger. Said they could do better with their Plain eyeballs. But the More the targets fall the More they change their Plain eyeballs he says tend to shoot High at night. Plain eyeballs can t hit what they can t see. Now 2nd it. Harry Tunnell. Leader of 3rd platoon tells his squads to shush whispers Only. On battlefields noise As Well As Light amplifies tending to shorten longevity. Those Are ust targets in the shape of men and vehicles not real enemy that will be popping up out there in the dark but for Tunnell s platoon it is real enough. They Are being evaluated on How Well they shoot. Tunnell is being evaluated on How Well he commands and controls the shooting. And those Are real live bullets. Hey Jones a Soldier whispers to two eyeballs Down in a Hole. You ready i been ready. Are they ready for me what they waiting for it s past 9 30. They thought the firing would commence at 9. Jones is spec. 4 Russell special delivery Jones. He s called special delivery because he never misses. He puts the steel on the target chuckles sgt. De Mooradian hunched Over the Starlight scope of his .50-caliber machine gun. To the right with two 100-round belts of ammo linked together waiting to fire his m-60 machine gun. Is pvt. Don Hadley. He d never night fired the m-60 until last night says squad Leader sgt. Martin Esquibel. He did the whole Quad did Good. Through six nights of firing Escabel s War dog squad leads the battalion. The War dogs will prevail again grins Escabel. No Retreat. No surrender. That s suddenly another voice stand by. Enemy positions How come they re not shooting and then Bop Bop Bop they Are shooting. In seconds the platoon becomes a f restore. Short 6 to 9-round bursts from the four m-60s. Longer deeper 9-to 15-round bursts from the three big .50 cals. Intermixed is a chorus of m-16 Rifle fire. The firing shifts and alternates sometimes heavy from the left other times solid from the right As though they were instruments in some ferocious a band. The amount of fire a platoon of mechanized infantry can put out is amazing. Muzzles flashing red tracers ripping the night like flaming arrows ricocheting 50, 100 feet into the air. And All that fire is interlocking fanning out to cover the whole out front. Theh Amber flares come floating Down blinding gunners using the night scope with too much Light. Damn Damn they try a different method using the naked Eye to walk rounds up to targets. The firing stops for a while. One shot rings out. Who fired that hisses Escabel. That an Accident or did you see something saw hisses a voice Back. I definitely think i saw Jones watch your front get it get it got it got my then All the guns Are hammering War s wild music is playing again. Just ahead whistling artillery simulators Are going off. In the distance real artillery rounds Rush overhead and explode. Sound and fury. A Green Star Cluster Breaks overhead. What s wrong with that Mother Hadley s 60 has jammed. Soldiers work Over the ailing gun with a Small Light like surgeons Over a patient. Hold that baby hold it. Move it. Light right they clean it out got it shooting again. Now faster than it started the firelight blows Over. a Soldier mutters. great if we had tried this the first night Here it would have been a mess totally ineffective bullets flying everywhere says Mather analysing what he s seen. But that was Good fire control. If i was an enemy i would t want to have been walking in our direction 27. 1985 the stars and stripes Page 15
