A love story about mortars
On Wednesday, May 20th, around 0700z the attack started.
The world’s largest FOB was resurrected. The siege was moving at a snail’s pace. The raiders knew it was probably only going to be me defending, maybe one other guy if he woke up.
Then I remembered something.
I had role-played the absolute hell out of the mortars.
Being a veteran and former mortard gave me the technical know how to employ an indirect fire system with an unhealthy level of dedication. Days before the raid, I had placed a mortar tube at each external TC, four total. Using little wooden signs as aiming stakes, direction written down, and elevations interpreted through pure weaponized autism, I had pre-sighted all eight corners of the base.
When the breach opened, I started dropping frag rounds.
For fifteen glorious minutes I held the line with indirect fire.
My buddy logged on.
Victory was within reach.
We were going to win the raid.
…
Just kidding.
They simply went to the opposite side from where I was defending, blew through a different wall, killed me, and won anyway.
That said, once teams start understanding how to properly employ this tool, it’s going to change the game. Pre-sighted firing points, range cards, backup tubes, defensive fire plans the potential is honestly insane.
We lost the base, but for fifteen minutes I got to live out my indirect fire dreams, and nobody can take that from me.