Dear Reader, I would love feedback on this excerpt from a book I'm writing. This was an actual training exercise I took part in a few months back. That said, nobody was actually hurt or killed. But I shifted the optics of the story to sound like a real engagement. I'm mainly trying to see if how I am writing the story is able to paint a picture in the mind and is easy to follow. Formatting tips and all other critiques are appreciated. I have no formal education in writing other than grade school.
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August 23rd, 0455
Somewhere in the deserts of Denovia...
"BDO! BDO! BDO!"
After 5 hours sleeping, packed like sardines in the back of the Stryker we were brutally awakened by the order to dismount our vehicle and set up security against enemy attack.
"DROPPING RAMP!"
The seven of us crammed in the back of the lightly armored vehicle deployed out with haste to set up security, still unsure of the current situation. Were we about to be attacked? Were there enemy tanks moving in on us? Did we finally make it to our objective? The lack of Intel our command team passed down was frustrating to say the least.
But as I glanced down the road those questions were answered. Our objective: The City of Razish. Our first target was to secure a prison on the outskirts of town being used as an enemy stronghold. As I looked towards the city through my night optical device, or NODs as we call them, I felt a sense of awe and excitement. Perhaps typical of a brand new soldier who hasn't yet seen or experienced fear, real carnage and the loud chaos that only modern battle can produce.
Great and heavy clouds of smoke began to pollute the air between us and the prison. It was ours. We had begun to deploy smoke to conceal our advanced on the city. In the open desert of Denovia this was a necessary tactic as there was no natural cover or concealment to reduce the inevitable casualties soon to be produced. The occasional infrared laser could be seen piercing through the vast cloud. Explosions and gunfire gave brief life to silhouette of buildings and soldiers racing towards the city.
"Alright 3rd squad, pick up, lets go!", my squad leader barked. We formed up in a standard wedge following behind 1st and 2nd squad. The city was upwards of three hundred meters away. As we moved into the smoke the gunfire ahead of us became sparse. A lull in the battle... It was impossible to tell if it was enemy fire or our guys because the enemy had the same equipment as us. They also had NODs and lasers of their own. Allowing them to engage effectively at night. Our army is known to "own the night", but when the enemy has night capabilities too ownership is no longer exclusive.
The gun fire suddenly became more rapid and urgent so we took it as a sign to pick up speed. Running across open ground, deep and soft sand, with no cover, towards enemy machine guns, and (we found out too late) no cover fire. Typically we would have an element of soldiers (called a Support By Fire) with large caliber machine guns pouring rounds at the enemy as another element (Assault Team) advances with haste to close with and destroy the enemy. The purpose of the support by fire is to suppress and kill the enemy so that they do not come out of cover to shoot at our assault team. Our support team was not in place before the assault team was ordered to advance and so we began to lose men.
Enemy rounds began ripping by as we closed in on the buildings up ahead. An enemy squad automatic weapon let loose a burst of fire, nearly missing me but instead hitting our grenadier to my right. In the chaos of battle nobody noticed until much later.
Still running, I was about 100 meters out when I could clearly see the first building: a guard tower to the prison. The Prison itself was fenced in with chain-link, barbed wire and concrete barricade walls. Chain-link fence stretched between all of the guard towers in the front half of the prison complex, denying us any cover between the towers as we searched for a breach in the wall.
I was almost to the base of the tower. I could see black shapes of our soldiers pinned down by enemy fire coming from the main prison building. Green-white hot flashes of gunfire peppered my vision as both sides traded fire. The cover up ahead, behind the tower, was rapidly thinning due to how many of us were piling up. But myself and the men behind me had nowhere else to go. We had to move forward.
At the base of the tower our leaders worked out the dire situation. Two soldiers would peak the corner and put suppressive fire into the active windows while two more soldiers would cross to the next tower. Rinse, repeat. This allowed us to cross from tower to tower with few casualties. Farther down, the fence turned into an eight foot concrete wall topped with barbed wire. But somewhere along this wall we found a breach. Our Squad was not the first to go through so we had to be very careful. Friendly fire could quickly happen in an area like this.
The Prison complex had three more large buildings to the right side. We rapidly and quietly cleared through these and then moved on the main building. We decided using main doorways into the prison was not an option as we skirted around the sides of the building. We witnessed a whole squad of infantry get blown up by a single grenade dropped from the second floor because they were too hesitant to breach the door. On the other side of the main building we made the decision to climb through a window. The sky was brightening up at this point as we helped each other over the windowsill and into a small room.
Inside, we had remnants of first and third squad. We prepped to stack on the door and "send it" but only a few moments after I was inside a grenade came flying into the room right past me and into the wall I had propped up against. It wasn't even a thought in my mind and I was already jolting towards it with my free hand. Before I could even process the fact a grenade came into the room I had already picked it up and slammed it out the window we came in. Ideally I would have thrown it back out the door where the enemy was sure to be but I did not expect to have the time or accuracy to make it back out the door. Regardless I had saved the remnants of 2 squads of infantry from certain injury and death.
----
August 23rd, 0455
Somewhere in the deserts of Denovia...
"BDO! BDO! BDO!"
After 5 hours sleeping, packed like sardines in the back of the Stryker we were brutally awakened by the order to dismount our vehicle and set up security against enemy attack.
"DROPPING RAMP!"
The seven of us crammed in the back of the lightly armored vehicle deployed out with haste to set up security, still unsure of the current situation. Were we about to be attacked? Were there enemy tanks moving in on us? Did we finally make it to our objective? The lack of Intel our command team passed down was frustrating to say the least.
But as I glanced down the road those questions were answered. Our objective: The City of Razish. Our first target was to secure a prison on the outskirts of town being used as an enemy stronghold. As I looked towards the city through my night optical device, or NODs as we call them, I felt a sense of awe and excitement. Perhaps typical of a brand new soldier who hasn't yet seen or experienced fear, real carnage and the loud chaos that only modern battle can produce.
Great and heavy clouds of smoke began to pollute the air between us and the prison. It was ours. We had begun to deploy smoke to conceal our advanced on the city. In the open desert of Denovia this was a necessary tactic as there was no natural cover or concealment to reduce the inevitable casualties soon to be produced. The occasional infrared laser could be seen piercing through the vast cloud. Explosions and gunfire gave brief life to silhouette of buildings and soldiers racing towards the city.
"Alright 3rd squad, pick up, lets go!", my squad leader barked. We formed up in a standard wedge following behind 1st and 2nd squad. The city was upwards of three hundred meters away. As we moved into the smoke the gunfire ahead of us became sparse. A lull in the battle... It was impossible to tell if it was enemy fire or our guys because the enemy had the same equipment as us. They also had NODs and lasers of their own. Allowing them to engage effectively at night. Our army is known to "own the night", but when the enemy has night capabilities too ownership is no longer exclusive.
The gun fire suddenly became more rapid and urgent so we took it as a sign to pick up speed. Running across open ground, deep and soft sand, with no cover, towards enemy machine guns, and (we found out too late) no cover fire. Typically we would have an element of soldiers (called a Support By Fire) with large caliber machine guns pouring rounds at the enemy as another element (Assault Team) advances with haste to close with and destroy the enemy. The purpose of the support by fire is to suppress and kill the enemy so that they do not come out of cover to shoot at our assault team. Our support team was not in place before the assault team was ordered to advance and so we began to lose men.
Enemy rounds began ripping by as we closed in on the buildings up ahead. An enemy squad automatic weapon let loose a burst of fire, nearly missing me but instead hitting our grenadier to my right. In the chaos of battle nobody noticed until much later.
Still running, I was about 100 meters out when I could clearly see the first building: a guard tower to the prison. The Prison itself was fenced in with chain-link, barbed wire and concrete barricade walls. Chain-link fence stretched between all of the guard towers in the front half of the prison complex, denying us any cover between the towers as we searched for a breach in the wall.
I was almost to the base of the tower. I could see black shapes of our soldiers pinned down by enemy fire coming from the main prison building. Green-white hot flashes of gunfire peppered my vision as both sides traded fire. The cover up ahead, behind the tower, was rapidly thinning due to how many of us were piling up. But myself and the men behind me had nowhere else to go. We had to move forward.
At the base of the tower our leaders worked out the dire situation. Two soldiers would peak the corner and put suppressive fire into the active windows while two more soldiers would cross to the next tower. Rinse, repeat. This allowed us to cross from tower to tower with few casualties. Farther down, the fence turned into an eight foot concrete wall topped with barbed wire. But somewhere along this wall we found a breach. Our Squad was not the first to go through so we had to be very careful. Friendly fire could quickly happen in an area like this.
The Prison complex had three more large buildings to the right side. We rapidly and quietly cleared through these and then moved on the main building. We decided using main doorways into the prison was not an option as we skirted around the sides of the building. We witnessed a whole squad of infantry get blown up by a single grenade dropped from the second floor because they were too hesitant to breach the door. On the other side of the main building we made the decision to climb through a window. The sky was brightening up at this point as we helped each other over the windowsill and into a small room.
Inside, we had remnants of first and third squad. We prepped to stack on the door and "send it" but only a few moments after I was inside a grenade came flying into the room right past me and into the wall I had propped up against. It wasn't even a thought in my mind and I was already jolting towards it with my free hand. Before I could even process the fact a grenade came into the room I had already picked it up and slammed it out the window we came in. Ideally I would have thrown it back out the door where the enemy was sure to be but I did not expect to have the time or accuracy to make it back out the door. Regardless I had saved the remnants of 2 squads of infantry from certain injury and death.
