Messmore - Call Sign: Inside the Rowdy World and Risky Missions of the Marines Elite ANGLICOs

Call Sign: Lightning

Call Sign: Lightning

Inside the Rowdy World and Risky Missions of the Marines Elite ANGLICOs

Scott Messmore

Stackpole
Books

Guilford, CT

Published by Stackpole Books

An imprint of Globe Pequot

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

800-462-6420

Copyright 2017 by Scott Messmore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-0-8117-1585-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-8117-6374-5 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Jeffrey Eugene Messmore, a big brother lost too soon

For years I tried.

Countless times I wasted my breath explaining my Marine Corps service.

I was Marine ANGLICO. Its a small Special Ops unit I jumped with, Id say.

Special Ops! You were in Special Forces? theyd ask breathlessly.

No. Thats the Armys Green Berets. Did I say SF? Id counter. Plus we were all paratroopers.

Airborne? Were you Recon?

NO! Did I say Recon? I said ANG-LI-CO, Id reply in vain. Like Ang Lee, the movie director!

He made a movie about you guys?

NO! Oh, forget it. Just tell your friends I drove a truck, Id say in conclusion.

It never worked.

Sixty years and America doesnt know us. Until now.

Introduction

When a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Office of Public Information has never heard of your Marine Corps unit, its time to start writing.

Twelve years in uniform and no one knows what the hell I did. U.S. Marine ANGLICO is an acronym that stands for Air/Naval Gunfire Liaison Company. Our stated mission from the Pentagon is to provide naval gunfire from U.S. Navy destroyers and battleships or close air support (CAS) attacks from fighter-bombers for the U.S. Army or friendly foreign troops. A large part of an ANGLICOs service isnt even with the Marines at all.

The American public has never heard of a Marine Air/Naval Gunfire Liaison Company. With naval gunfire origins dating to the Korean War, ANGLICO units have fought in nearly every war, conflict, police action, or other for the last half century. With the continuing fight against global terrorism, Anglicans will be fighting for a long time.

Even with the expansion of American Special Operations capabilities after September 11th, there are only five ANGLICO units worldwide with probably fewer than twenty-five hundred Marines and sailors. Over the years, Ive even met quite a few Marines who werent positive of the ANGLICO mission themselves, to say nothing, for example, of the U.S. Army infantry units who, busy preparing for field operations, usually werent told by higher commands we were going with them until the last minute. Most werent happy and didnt know why we were there or who we were.

ANGLICO? Why are you here? Is that your name? asked a very confused and impatient U.S. Army first sergeant.

No, First Sergeant. Im not Italian, its my job title, I answered.

Every time I was attached to the Army, I went through this little exercise. Frustrated, I sat down one day after returning from another peacetime exercise and figured out how to get the Army to understand what ANGLICO could do for them.

A few years before the UPS What can Brown do for you? campaign, I decided to create a sales pitch. Im not a sales kind of guy. In my bar, a pint of beer costs three dollars. Either you want it or not, and if you argue, youll just get kicked out as I call the cops. However, this was different. It was public service and needed to be solved. Master salesman Zig Ziglar advocated speaking to different groups in their own language. I always resisted this as I thought of it as catering to others conceit and laziness, but I was still doing all the talking and not getting through to the soldiers we were there to help.

I was always amazed to learn the Army had simply no idea what their countrys naval ships could do. I dont drive tanks for a living, but I know its huge, loud, and has a giant cannon that can blow apart small buildings with one shot from 3 kilometers away. Marines call that being a professional: If you might encounter a weapon on the battlefield, then learn its capabilities. Marine corporals and sergeants routinely quiz their teams on aircraft types, weapons capabilities, or combat first aid. Its called hip-pocket training and its done while you wait around for trucks or helicopters to arrive.

I wrote down a quick summary of naval gunfire: A 5-inch shell fired from a destroyer can fly 17,500 meters and creates a blast pattern (crater) roughly 50 meters wide and 150 meters long. Thats more or less the size of a football field.

Furthermore, they were a bit lost on the lethality of a 5-inch round. I converted 5 inches to millimeters and it equates to around 127 millimeters, which is much larger than the Armys 105mm cannons. But Wait! Theres More! Since destroyers had automatic loaders, they could fire twenty rounds per minute until the ammunition ran out. Now I had them, and you could see it in their face.

Each round might take out a football field, its bigger than our own 105s, and five minutes of firing brings in a hundred rounds? Glad to have you ANGLICO! Or whatever the hell your name is!

Mission accomplished.

While this little anecdote is funnyand true by the waynaval gunfire is brutal. When I was in Naval Gunfire School in Coronado, California, an incoming round skipped off the ground and detonated 400 meters from our position. We were shooting at a target 2,300 meters away and 400 meters lower in elevation. Since ships obviously fire at sea level, the trajectory is like a Peyton Manning pass: flat as a laser beam and haulin ass. I tell my friends this and theyre astounded. The target area was so flat the round ricocheted 1.5 miles and detonated almost 400 meters up the mountainside we were stationed upon.

Marine ANGLICOs abilities with naval gunfire are in addition to CAS missions that guide jet attack aircraft or Cobra helicopter gunships for strikes near friendly troops, and artillery missions from regular Army or Marine batteries. To date, ANGLICO is the only unit in the Department of Defense that combines all three. This book focuses on Marine ANGLICOs unique role within the Department of Defense.

If you take an Army artillery forward observer, an Air Force forward air controller (FAC), a Navy gunfire spotter, a field radio operator, mix them all together, pin gold jump wings on his chest and lace up his jungle boots, well, thats an ANGLICO Marine.

While I was with 4th ANGLICO, I served with communications and the line platoons for twelve years. I attended:

Platoon Honor Man, Recruit Training, Parris Island, South Carolina

Airborne School, Fort Benning, Georgia

Scout/Forward Observer School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Naval Gunfire School, Coronado, California

Long-Range Maritime Navigation School, Coronado, California

Mountain Warfare School, Pickel Meadows, California

Air-Load Planners Course, West Palm Beach, Florida

Embarkation/Logistics School, Little Creek, Virginia

I trained at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) with the Army three times and deployed to Norway twice on Operation Battle Griffin 96 and 99. Im very proud to have slept on the ground nearly 150 miles inside the Arctic Circle. I also spent countless weekend exercises locally, within Florida, or jumping into Camp Lejeune to call in air strikes or fire artillery missions during live-fire training. Plenty of times, in one weekend we would fly to Fort Benning, Georgia, jump in, train in land navigation, throw live hand grenades, stay up half the night on simulated communications exercises, run CAS missions, and then suit up for another jump back into Florida. It was hard and busy, but fun and productive.