Remembrances of Operation Just Cause

 ...for the most part everyone performed as we were trained to...

Contributed by Brian Winningham

Photo: US Army Ranger

Brian Winningham was a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment and took part in 'Operation Just Cause' on December 20, 1989.





I was on the pay phone when the alert came. It was Sunday night, December 17, 1989 and I was talking to my parents. Using the pay phones was always a pain -- you had to wait in line, and it gets cold in Georgia, even southern Georgia, in December. I finished my conversation and hung up. That's when I knew we had gotten alerted. There wasn't anyone left at the bank of phones.

Not many of the memories seem as if they were yesterday to me. I find it really hard to recall most of the nuances of feeling that I know I was experiencing as we spent the next three days preparing to go to war. I know I wrote a letter to my family (all of us did) in case I didn't make it back. Most of us spent the time alone inside ourselves. I do remember some of us sneaking out of the compound to our little PX branch to buy some tobacco. We bought all they had, but others had beaten us to most of it. There aren't too many original ideas in a Ranger Battalion.

The day finally came and we went to the airfield. It was some kind of cold, maybe in the high 20's and sleeting off and on. They had so much ammo laid on for us, it was almost beyond belief. They gave us a basic load list (much more than what the books call for) and then came back later and told us other things to add to the list. Then they came back a third time and told us to take anything else we thought we might need or want. We moved from the pack tray shed where the ammo was to a hanger sometime around dusk. We were given wool army blankets and served some thin lukewarm soup. Quite a far cry from the hearty meals they gave to the WWII GI's before D-Day.

It was finally time to load up. I was my platoon sergeant's RTO (technically the PL's RTO, but we didn't have a lieutenant) so I followed him around. We shook a few hands and wished them good luck. I remember the last guy we stopped and talked to was SSG Barnard. It was the last time I would see him and I may be the last person he ever shook hands with. "64 Rangers on a one-way trip" may be a cool cadence, but in reality sixty-four guys jammed in the back of a C-130, who are all fear sweating and farting, doesn't even resemble the same universe that has me sitting in my La-Z-Boy watching TV.

Once on the plane and alone in the noise with my thoughts, I started to feel pretty nervous. I was next to the last man on the outboard side of my stick. The man sitting next to me was a Grenada Raider vet. He was the current 3rd Battalion XO, who later came back as Battalion CO. He was one of (I believe) 9 people who made the jump in '83 and again in Panama. I guess he could tell I was nervous, because he started talking to me. I felt a lot better afterward and slept for the next three hours.

Every aircraft did things differently; it was up to the jumpmasters and crew chiefs. Some put their chutes and rucks on before boarding. We, however, chuted up and carried our rucks onboard. About thirty minutes out, we hooked up our rucks and equipment. Everybody tried to help everyone else but there wasn't any room. The guy in front of me in the chalk was our platoon medic and in front of him was my platoon sergeant. The medic was pretty new and a small guy to bat. He was about 5'7" and weighed about 140lbs. For some reason or other he was carrying his mountain ruck instead of the regular one. For obvious reasons he was never able to get his ruck hooked up correctly and it was dragging the floor between his feet.

We stood waiting to jump for what seemed to be an eternity. Almost everyone around me was eventually bending over at the waist trying to rest his ruck on the deck of the bird (static line control be damned.) Everybody's ruck was a lot heavier than what we carried in training. This is one of the few times when it was truly good to be a mortar maggot. We were used to carrying weight (although not quite that much) and I believe some of the line doggies really suffered.

The plane was bobbing and weaving pretty good and then I was sure we must be really close to the DZ. There was a big thump that felt like it came from right underneath my right foot. I knew right away we were taking fire. We had been standing for so long with the weight that both my legs were numb, and I wasn't real sure if I was hit or not (funny the things that go through your mind.) I managed to get a look at my boot somehow and it was still there. That and the fact that I didn't fall left me pretty sure that I was okay.

The stick started to move pretty quickly after that, or at least everyone in front of the medic was moving. His ruck somehow managed to get through his legs and was dragging the deck behind him. We made it up to the wheel well with me pushing him and then he fell down. Adrenaline took over at that point, with my First Sergeant behind me trying to drop kick him out the door, I reached down, grabbed him up and threw him at the door. He hit the edge and bounced off and fell down again. So we did an instant replay, First Sergeant kicking and me throwing. This time he was out the door and then I was too.

There were red tracers arcing up at me all the way down. I wasn't too keyed up about that, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Hoping that they missed was a much better alternative than cutting away, at least that's how I saw it. I wasn't in the air all that long but I did have time to lower my rack. I did not want to land with that thing on my lap. I'd done far too many feet-ass-head PLF's. It was still a very hard landing with me doing my usual impression of a bag of shit. My weapons case was underneath me and I couldn't get to it right at that moment due to a string of tracers cracking over my head at about two feet off the ground. I can remember thinking that if I put my hand up I could touch them, but reason won out. It turns out my chute had hung up in a small tree behind me giving them a great reference point to fire at. I continued to stay low as I cut out of my harness. I learned that lesson very quickly and cheaply.

I gathered up all my equipment and moved away from the spot in front of my chute. I was a little disoriented at the time and there wasn't anyone near by. I finally linked up with several people I knew (one was our medic) and we started moving toward the Rio Hato airfield. We were somewhere between three and five klicks out. I guess just because some knucklehead falls down doesn't mean the bird stops flying. Somehow all of us together in our little group of about five or so were B/3/75. One of the guys, he was in second platoon and from north Georgia, eyes as big as twin mortar baseplates and with a smile to match, put his nose about an inch from mine and in his cracker drawl uttered the truest words I've ever heard. "HOOO-F--IN-WAH" he said. I just grinned back at him.

As we moved out, we all realized just how heavy our rucks really were. We'd be at a distinct disadvantage if we ran into a large group and had to run and fight. The alternative was to throw some shit away, but the thought never crossed my mind. I wanted all I had, just in case. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. I found out much later that one guy had indeed gotten rid of his after he hit the ground. He was a staff sergeant and a section leader. He left for other climes after we made it back to the battalion AO. There's no way to describe what carrying 125lbs is like when its 85 degrees at 0200 with about 85% humidity. Let's just say it kicks your ass, muy pronto, without even factoring in the fear and excitement.

All of us in our little squad are doing it though, all the way, taking a knee at our frequent stops, pulling security, noise and light discipline, everything we were trained to do. Everybody was doing what they were supposed to do, everybody but one guy (two if you count the SSG, but I didn't know that then). The medic was flopping every time we stopped. He wouldn't pull security and would either fall asleep or sit there and cry or whine. Being the high speed, low drag Ranger PFC that I was and since we were both in the same platoon, I felt responsible for his young ass. I told him three or four times to tighten it up and get his s--- together. That's when he started whining about not being able to carry his aid bag any longer and said he was going to throw it away. That's when my patience with him ran out. I butt stroked him as hard as I could on his K-pot (too bad I was carrying a Car-15 or I might could have done some damage). I jerked him up off the ground and put my mouth to his ear and whispered to him, if you don't get your s--- together I'm going to leave you here and if you even mention dumping your aid bag again I'll kill you. He was a model soldier from then on out, at least until I lost him later at the airfield. He got sent to the battalion aid station to help with the wounded. I don't know how he did then, but he wasn't my responsibility any more.

We linked up with our heavy drop about a klick from the airfield and caught a ride on the gun jeeps the rest of the way in. That's when I saw a scene that looked as if it came from a movie. Our battalion chaplain had jumped in with us, only he jumped without a weapon. In my book, that made him more than crazy enough to be a Ranger. He had jumped in with an American flag and he was on top of the large stone arch entrance to the airfield planting the flag. There weren't just tons and tons of tracers flying past him as he did it, but it was still something that gives me goose bumps every time I think about it.

The gun jeeps dropped us off near the company CP (this is when I lost the medic.) By now the moon had set and it was pitch black. There was another guy from mortars that showed up about the same time and we asked directions to the guns. We could barely see twenty feet in the direction he pointed, but we started moving that direction. I was pretty paranoid about getting popped by our guys so we ended up stopping right away. I figured if I couldn't see they probably couldn't either. We flopped down next to each other facing in different directions and pulled security in opposite directions for the rest of the night. When it was light enough to see we found the guns and some of the other guys; the rest struggled in pretty soon after us.

The Rangers really kicked ass down there and for the most part everyone performed as we were trained to. It wasn't the hottest place anyone's ever been, but we started landing aircraft just after it was full daylight. That means that we had occupied every objective and had every blocking position in place within about five hours. I feel pretty lucky about the whole experience. I jumped in under direct (although ineffective) fire, and survived it intact. I didn't have to battle never ending human wave attacks, i.e., fire my weapon until I was out of ammo, use it like a club until it was useless, grab my e-tool, swing it until I bled out and then wake up dead the next day with my private parts stuffed in my mouth.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.