Capt. Patterson believes there are at least two dozen enemy fighters holed up in the huts to the left, firing on his men. The Marines saturate the area with heavy-weapons fire, but they can’t silence the enemy machine guns, which have everyone pinned down. He makes the difficult decision of calling in an artillery strike on the huts. Any artillery strike within 600 meters of your position is called “danger close,” given the wide kill radius of artillery shells. With the huts 300 meters away, Patterson is almost calling in a strike on top of his own men. But on their own, they can’t get past
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