Mortars and men: do you ever forget?

[Sig]

Hello.

This a grey and rainy day here. And I just want to share with you this little (real) story about mortars. Here it goes: once upon a time...

...I was doing my military service somewhere in the Alps during the late 80's and we were preparing an exercise for the next day. During a pause in the preparation, a CO (who witnessed it) told us the following event:

it was during a recent training with live ammunitions in a deep valley in the Alps. The exercise was to start with a battery of four mortars (81mm) firing at a target zone some 1.5 to 2 km away, at the very end of the valley. It was a prepared fire, and no targeting round was shot. The exercise starts, the battery fires, and all of a sudden comes a warning: a man has been detected in the target zone! Big alarm, firing is immediately stopped, but obviously too late as four 81mm warheads are already flying to target. The COs anxiously peer through their binoculars, and some of them can now see a tiny silhouette quietly walking right in the middle of the target zone. A few second later, four big explosions in short succession, right on target. The dust cloud settles, and no tiny human silhouette anymore...

Everybody runs to the vehicles and speeds toward the target zone. As they arrive, they find the guy, an old man, not only alive but also unhurt! Nobody could believe such luck. But it was *not* luck! This old man was an ancient soldier of the German army who fought during WWII, and 40 years after the war he recognised the sound of incoming mortar rounds and took immediate cover!!

This saved his life.

I was amazed when I heard this story and it made me wonder about the psychological impact this weapon must have had on men. To still have such reflexes after more than 40 years of a peaceful life says a lot. Amazing.

Sig

[Sergei]

And in post-war Finland, if an airplane flew over a field where horses were being used in work, they tended to run wildly away. That was because many horses had been leased by the army for wartime.

Also, I still sometimes recognize a smell or sound familiar to my own service (non-wartime, mind you). Standing in a trench in rain, observing from beneath my steel helmet for approaching APC's and putting plugs into my ears... Some experiences are hard to forget.

Thinking that makes me truly sorry for the millions of men and women who had to experience the second world war.

[Bullethead]

The sounds of mortars firing and incoming, airburst HE, and the nearby impact of submunition ordnance are things that stick with you. At least they have with me these last 11 years. And it's amazing how fireworks shows can exactly mimic all these sounds .

If I'm expecting it, then such shows don't freak me out, they just make me remember. But if they fire something by surprise, like when somebody hits a home run while I'm digging for change to pay the beer man, I'll be on my face in the aisle amongst the peanut shells

[offtaskagain]

Hey Bullethead, how much long can you hear mortar rounds coming in before they impact? I've heard they are fairly hard to hear coming in, except for the initial firing of them. Regular artillery is quite noticeable when it is about to fall, right?

[Michael Dorosh]

I thought the advantage of mortar rounds was that they flew silently. I've fired 81mm mortars and found that to be so, but was never on the receiving end so I can't speak to that.

I thought the second Bastogne episode of Band of Brothers had the barrage sound effects just right based on my reading. So, I second Panzerwerfer 42's question - what does an incoming 81 round sound like?

[Bullethead]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by panzerwerfer42:

Hey Bullethead, how much long can you hear mortar rounds coming in before they impact? I've heard they are fairly hard to hear coming in, except for the initial firing of them. Regular artillery is quite noticeable when it is about to fall, right?<hr></blockquote>

I don't think there's any time between hearing the mortar shell itself and it going off. As I recall, I was on the ground before I was consciously aware of hearing them and the sound of approach was just a grace note of the main explosion. Sort of a zBANG! effect. It has to be pure reflex to get down before that. I can only think of 1 time when I heard the shell but not the firing. Most times, I keyed on the firing.

Mortar firing is much more noticeable, and that puts me on the ground pronto. Somehow you can often hear it amongst the surrounding noise more than its volume alone would lead you to believe. Maybe it's because other noises are more high frequency but mortars carry like sub-whoofer pulses. I don't know. But that THOOMP of theirs makes me duck because even when time "stands still", it doesn't seem very long between that and impact.

Arty shells have strange sound effects. If things in the immediate area are quiet enough, you can hear them rumbling along through the air all the time, coming and going overhead and passing by on the flanks. That's "somebody else's problem." But when they come for you, suddenly the noise starts rapidly to increase in volume, it has a slightly different pitch than the "somebody else's problem" rumble, and it's more of a constant roar than a wavering rumble. You usually have a second or 2 from when that starts until it hits. And normally, you don't hear both the harmless rumble and the deadly roar from the same shell.

That's assuming you can hear it. Most times you can. But this loud sound can blend into the general din of a major engagement (or you're just deaf by then). And sometimes the shells are supersonic.

And sometimes the range and trajectory can play tricks on you. One time I was in an exercise at a "do-nut" base, where there's an impact area in the middle and the guns move around the edge shooting inwards. I was on an OP at the edge of the impact area and it chanced that the guns were directly across the impact area from me at this time. When they fired, I could hear the usual harmless rumble because even though the shells were pointed at me, they were landing a couple clicks away.

During the course of the afternoon, we shot at different points out in the impact area. And on one change of target, the gunners put way too much elevation on, with the result that they shot over the impact area and hit my OP with 8x105 shells. At first this sounded just like before, the usual harmless rumble indicating a distant impact. But suddenly it got into "HERE I COME" mode. WTF?!?!?!? We all hit the deck and emerged unscathed but our hootch was well ventilated

We figured later that because the rounds were going up like mortar shells, we heard the rumble when they were ascending. And the shape of the trajectory and the time of flight was such that this sound crossed the impact area in time to arrive just before the roar of the descending shells right overhead. Strange. Normally that doesn't happen.

[offtaskagain]

I bet it is that low pitch thoomp sound that tips the target off. Low pitch sounds would travel farther after all. Norman Schwarzkopf wrote in his book about how the NVA would conduct a mortar barrage on his base. They would bury mortars at night up to the muzzle and cover that with leaves and whatnot. The following night they would sneak out, drop a few rounds down the tube and run, so they wouldn't have to disassemble and carry the mortar back. They repeated it night after night. It got to the point that he would wake up at night and was already running for his trench outside of his shack without ever hearing the mortar because that sound tripped such a fast reaction.

[Gyrene]

Bullethead, it was interesting to read you story in your web page, as I remember when I was at Tanajib we kept hearing about you canny-cockers exchanging pleasantries with the Iraqis.

We sent some Skids (UH1's) up there to bring some wounded back a couple of times. It could have been up to the 12th Marines area though, not sure anymore.

I had a lot of friends with HMH464 from New River floating in the Gulf until they decided to bring them ashore, so you might have been in the same boat with them. If you were on the boat with CH53D's from New River than that were them.

When the area I was at in Tanajib got hit by a couple of Frog missiles we didn't hear any incoming. We were sleeping, but woke up on the floor.

Gyrene

[Bullethead]

panzerwerfer42 said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>I bet it is that low pitch thoomp sound that tips the target off. Low pitch sounds would travel farther after all.<hr></blockquote>

I agree. You "hear" mortars firing more with your lungs than with your ears anyway. It's always seemed to me that the THOOMP is more of fake sound manufactured by your brain to put a label on the body cavity vibration you feel. So I suspect that at long range, as in the story that started this thread, you might not actually hear the THOOMP with your ears, but might feel it and react accordingly, and your brain tells you heard the mortar because it knows that's what made the vibration. That's probably what happened to me the one time I don't recall hearing the firing.

[ 11-28-2001: Message edited by: Bullethead ]</p>

[Bullethead]

Gyrene said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Bullethead, it was interesting to read you story in your web page, as I remember when I was at Tanajib we kept hearing about you canny-cockers exchanging pleasantries with the Iraqis.<hr></blockquote>

Hope you heard the good stories about us

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>I had a lot of friends with HMH464 from New River floating in the Gulf until they decided to bring them ashore, so you might have been in the same boat with them. If you were on the boat with CH53D's from New River than that were them.<hr></blockquote>

I was never on a boat during the war. We put all our gear on boats in early December and then flew out at the end of the month to meet it at the port. Same thing coming home.

I really felt sorry for the guys who were stuck on the amphibs the whole war. They were there longer than the rest of 2MarDiv, cooped up with a bunch of squids, and never got to fire a shot. And for some reason, they didn't take kindly to being reminded of that when we all got back to Lejeune. Man, those were some good brawls

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>When the area I was at in Tanajib got hit by a couple of Frog missiles we didn't hear any incoming. We were sleeping, but woke up on the floor. <hr></blockquote>

I can imagine. Geez, those Frogs have some big warheads.

[offtaskagain]

BH, I was looking at your webpage and the bottom bit certainly caught my attention. How many chemical rounds do you think the Iraqi's fired at you?

[Bullethead]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by panzerwerfer42:

BH, I was looking at your webpage and the bottom bit certainly caught my attention. How many chemical rounds do you think the Iraqi's fired at you?<hr></blockquote>

In my immediate area, not very many. I never saw a full salvo of the stuff, just sometimes what appeared to be single gas shells mixed in with a volley of HE. The Iraqis used Russian doctrine and at that time Russian doctrine was to mix single vomit agent shells in with HE volleys. Only it appears the Iraqis didn't have vomit agent--at least we were never told of it--but used nerve or mustard gas instead.

Anyway, usually when we'd see a shellburst that matched the description we'd been given for gas shellbursts (small explosion, possibly with a vapor cloud), our detectors would start going off soon thereafter. We had the color-changing tape and some little boxes that sniffed the air. So we took that as proof it was gas. Plus we got the metalic taste and tingling nose we were told were symptoms of nerve gas.

OTOH, it's difficult to say what was really happening. The Iraqis certainly had their share of duds and low-order shells (I'm alive today because of at least 2 such burst failures). And sometimes the detectors would go off for no apparent reason--some said that all the oil well fumes in the air could set them off. And our minds could have psyched us into thinking we had gas symptoms.

But there was no doubt they had gas shells, nor that we set off a lot of them. This was happening even before the main assault. Like one time a plane bombed a reefer trailer full of nerve gas and reported how Iraqis were coming out of their holes all around doing the dead bug dance. But then it blew over our side of the lines and we had to dress up for it. So even if they weren't shooting it at us, there were still wisps of gas drifting across the battlefield all the time.

That said, other units around us reported getting hit with gas salvos, tripping gas mines, etc.

I think the whole gas issue was hushed up, along with the undoubted mass use of anthrax against us. As you know, US policy for years has been that if somebody uses chemical or bio weapons on us, we'll nuke them in return. But it wasn't politically expedient to nuke Iraq, nor was it to admit we got hit with this stuff and NOT nuke them. Nobody else would then believe our deterrent threat. So it had to be hushed up.

[Gyrene]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr> I think the whole gas issue was hushed up, along with the undoubted mass use of anthrax against us. As you know, US policy for years has been that if somebody uses chemical or bio weapons on us, we'll nuke them in return. But it wasn't politically expedient to nuke Iraq, nor was it to admit we got hit with this stuff and NOT nuke them. Nobody else would then believe our deterrent threat. So it had to be hushed up. <hr></blockquote>

Scuttlebutt was that some grunt had gotten gassed and that some planes had hit a gas dump and the sh*t was floating our way.

This was when we had moved up to the Lonesome Dove staging area for our trip into Kuwait City International with some TOW Super Jeeps (M151 Mutts, Humvees don't fit on helicopters...)

Our whole assault was a gaggle f*ck, but that's another story.

Did you guys send any people to the Hospital Ship offshore? A buddy of mine contracted that "Desert Storm Syndrome" and he was the only one of our guys to go to the ship, and that's where we think he got sick.

Gyrene

[Bullethead]

Gyrene said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Did you guys send any people to the Hospital Ship offshore? A buddy of mine contracted that "Desert Storm Syndrome" and he was the only one of our guys to go to the ship, and that's where we think he got sick.<hr></blockquote>

None of my people got hurt bad enough to go to the hospital ship until after the ceasefire, and when that happened they got sent to a hospital in Germany and then home.

Quite a few of us, including me, got varying degrees of Gulf War Syndrome. I think it was just a combination of being exposed for long periods to dozens of different nasty substances, parasites, and diseases all combined with a generally poor state of health brought on by excessive fatigue, short rations, poor hygiene, and the constant cold and wet.

[Bullethead]

BTW, early this morning I discovered there's another sound that sticks with you: tornados .

Anyway, I went to bed last night at the geographic center of a tornado watch. At 0030 this morning, I awoke to find myself sprinting down the stairs and yelling "TORNADO!" to wake up the family. Next thing I noticed was a tremendous roaring noise and that the whole house was shaking. But as I reached the bottom of the stairs, the roar broke up into a series of loud, house-shaking booms that gradually got further apart and finally stopped. Turns out it was just thunder from a couple trees in the yard getting nuked

[offtaskagain]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Bullethead:

But as I reached the bottom of the stairs, the roar broke up into a series of loud, house-shaking booms that gradually got further apart and finally stopped. Turns out it was just thunder from a couple trees in the yard getting nuked <hr></blockquote>

Last year lightning hit the roof right above my bedroom. It didn't even wake me up :eek: We've had 3-4 strikes in the last couple of years.