It’s been thirty one years since Grenada happened. These are rusty memories I’m pulling up.
One day on patrol when end up at the Cuban Consulate’s house. Since most of the bad guys shooting at us were Cuban, and we’d received sporatic fire from this general area a clearing raid was in order. After the ransacking we ended up killing and roasting his pig, eating about six of his chickens, all of the vegetables that were ripe, and washing it down with a 5-star bottle of French Cognac. That was my first experience with French liquor. I’m still not a fan of their wine.
One thing I found there (and kept) was a small plastic lapel pin. It was about an inch tall, had the year 1938 on it. It was an eagle with a German Swastika on it. I was amazed that a Cuban politician had been in or near Germany 45 years earlier and still carried this pin with him on his travels. I still have it.
Other memories include clearing other houses, kicking in doors, and such. We had one guy with us who was a big, strong dude. His preferred method of kicking in a door was to back up to it and sort of mule kick it. He did this once and, I shit you not, the house teetered over and collapsed. The whole front wall fell in, the sides fell off and outward and the back wall went, well, back. Flatter than a pancake, he looked at us and stated “This house is clear.”
Probably the most excitement I had was the night I got called forward to talk to the AC-130 Spectre gunship. We had unexplained lights across the valley and we wanted to know what was up. I got on the radio after climbing up to a roof to ID the target. I talked to the targeting officer aboard the plane, and without any secure means of telling him where I was described my surroundings and the target. He calmly answered back that he was looking at a road intersection. He stated there were four armed men in the intersection and about 100 meters away were two armed guys up on a roof. I looked to my left and through my NODS (night optics) could see four guys standing in the intersection at a road block.
Heart racing, I told him that he had found MY location. All six were friendlies. FROM that location, please scan 600 meters north. Understand that the AC-130 is a bad weapons platform. Bad as in awesome. Back then, it carried a pair of 6-barreled chain guns and a pair of 40mm Bofors cannon. They could have diced me and the other five up to pieces in a few seconds.
The target was just three cars parked close and one guy had left the headlights on.