Page 69 - 100 Hours to Destiny

“I’m following in trace. I’ll meet you on the ground.”
“Ouch! Gunny, you just stepped on my hand!”
“Ha-ha, sorry Witch. I gotta pee…right now…move it, move it.”
Basically, at that point I just let go of the three rung metal ladder and
fell to the ground, landing on my feet. Gunny and I both laughed. I walked
around to the back of the vehicle and let Gunny have a moment of privacy…
we were parked near the 1Sgt, 75 meters south of American Hero. I reached
in the back of the logistics vehicle and pulled out a spare pair of NVGs and
started looking around. I could see all of Delta Company on a screen line,
stretching out for several hundred yards in every direction. The TOW Platoon
had pushed so far forward I could barely see them…just mere dots on the
horizon.
Suddenly, Gunny Dell walked up to me from the other side of the
vehicle and grabbed me on the shoulder, “Witcher you heard the Skipper,
you make sure you pray before we step this thing off. I’m going to go talk to
the 1Sgt. You stay close at hand, do not leave the vehicle…. In fact, get your
personal weapon out of the driver's hatch and look at your safety and tell me
it’s safe before I go see the 1Sgt.” With that order, I hastily got back into my
drivers’ compartment, unstrapped my M16A2 service rifle from its harness,
checked the safety – which was indeed on safe – with one of the red lens
flashlights I had near me. Exiting the vehicle with my weapon my report was,
“On safe Gunny.”
“Good work Devil Dog. I want you to conduct a roving watch around
the vehicle until I get back…. As I come back approaching the vehicle our
code together will be…you will say Delta, and I will respond Seven…copy?”
“Aye-aye Gunny. I say Delta, you respond Seven. I’ve got this under
control here.”
The 1Sgt was positioned about 50 yards to our left at 11 o’clock. I
watched Gunny make his way to the 1Sgt through the night vision goggles. At
that point, I turned my attention back to my area of responsibility.
A light breeze blew from the south, it was brutally cold… near-
freezing I estimated. The desert at night during February was a brutal
environment and as the wind cascaded around me from behind, I thought
about an old poem my mom used to have hanging on her wall in an
apartment in Houston Texas, just off of San Felipe as I recall. The poem was
The Wind at Your Back, and I felt nostalgic thinking about mom. So many life
lessons from so many people and here I am standing watch in the middle of
a cold desert protecting the one asset that will carry me in and with a prayer,
carry me back out of this upcoming engagement with an enemy poised and
ready to kill me and perhaps every man in Delta Company. Strange
thoughts…. So, to relieve some tension I recited the poem to myself and