Introduction
It was 1982 when it happened. Being part of a MAU (Marine Assault Unit) participating in a joint operation in Denmark wasn’t so bad, as long as you could handle the cold. However, things did not go as planned, even with the officers in charge. When everything started going south on us, I decided to start writing this down in my log book. I had no idea it would actually go as far as it did with me and my men in the center of it all. The Skipper (a company commander in the Marine Corps is called this as a nautical term) seems to have lost his mind but I think he will come around again….soon I hope. The rest of my Marines are taking it well and trying to cope with our situation as best as they can. A few have had to be restrained to keep them safe from the locals or they would have been killed by these crazy people as being what I can only guess, a Devil or Demon. They seem to look a lot like Vikings, from the movies I have seen but these guys, and women, look a bit more, how can I say it…..Fantastic? The operation started around zero five in the morning with us being helloed in and landing a few miles inland for the ten mile hump forward. Our counter parts, the Danish Marines, humped out to our position the night before and were waiting for us to land. That’s when everything seemed to go astray in that the weather turned foul with snow and wind, our compass started spinning as if next to a strong magnet. Well...let me start from the beginning.
Our Company was tasked with humping ten miles inland to meet up with a Danish Marine unit, then making camp on a hill for the night. The next day we would hump another five miles with the Danish Marines and carry out an assault on a fixed position with them in a live fire exercise. Everything went according to plan, even setting our position up on the hill that was selected a few days earlier by the Battalion Commander and combining forces with the Danish Marines on the next hill (other than our compasses going nuts). We had about two hundred Marines in our company but the Danish Marines only had a platoon size unit of about thirty men and set up on an a joining hill. As we set in, it began to snow again so I went around to each man making sure they would not freeze to death during the night and to set the watch then went back to the center of our lines on top of the hill with the Skipper. The radio was screeching loudly with a lot of traffic from other units as the radio man sent and received messages from the rear.
As the night went on the snow stopped and a heavy fog set in that was so thick I yelled out to my Marines to stay in their holes so they wouldn’t get lost. When the sun began to rise it gave the area a strange glowing appearance from every direction. I guess from the sun shining off the fog but it looked really strange…..and quiet! I could hear when someone move and crunched the ground under them, it was so quiet.