Yeah, it was pretty fuckin awesome.

The views flying up in the mountains were some of the best I've ever seen. Snow-capped peaks 3 miles above the oceans, picturesque blueish-green alpine lakes probably never touched by man, sunsets like you described....amazing. You could forget where you were for a while up there, but inevitably something would happen to snap you back into the shitty reality that was Afg.

5th CAG.  We relieved 4th CAG in March 2005.



 

It isn't just dogs. "Donner, party of four?"

Had a dirt bag with an explosive vest blow himself and everyone else around him in a souk in Ramadi. Nasty body parts everywhere. Except, in the middle of the chaos, from the mid-calf on down and perfectly upright as if still attached to a standing man, is a right leg.  Pristine.  No dirt. No blood except for at the end of the stump. Clad in a perfect and new Argyle sock and in a perfectly polished penny loafer--brilliantly polished and without a scuff mark. Even the penny gleamed.  With a single touch it fell over. I can't believe it was standing there perfectly balanced amidst the carnage.

Why? He paid the dues, not us. He can share or not and he's welcome to explain why not as he did.

I've got a story to tell about my very first day time foot patrol, but it might upset a lot of people..


Supposedly my actions killed someone in a non-combat role.


 

We'd just gotten to Afghanistan and were at FOB Wilson (A Canadian base).



They had artillery folks there (Including this one gal who used to run around in a bikini [NO SHIT!] during

fire missions).



One day a Canadian SF (So we were told) unit screwed up and dropped a case of C-4 off the ass end of one of their vehicles

(While un-assing an ambush).



The area was under observation by other Canadian Forces.  They sat there for a couple of hours watching the local

bad guys trying to recover the C-4.  Every time they (Bad Guys) got close they got scared (I guess because they knew

'Wilson's guns were there...?) and backed off.  The battery at Wilson had their Comms on a speaker like American

Top 40 () so, once we realized what was going on we climbed on top of the Hescos to watch the show.  The

BD's would sneak up to the C-4, lose their nerve and then back off.



This went on for a couple of hours.



Finally...they fent and Wilson's 155's rained "Surprise Buttsex" on them.  It was like being at the Super Bowl! lol



Opening shot.

]
Whole lot of grab ass and back petting going on there.

Read all 13 pages rare even if it was a long.  Reminded me of listening to my Uncles and Great Uncles, WW2, Korean and Vietnam vets.

I did like this one from an interview of Mel Brooks who served in WW2.

Get thee to Kyrgyzstan, all the stunning unspoiled natural beauty, none of the people trying to kill you.

 
We were conducting searches in the ghetto market area and I picked out a random vehicle to block the road for a hasty road.block.


Terp was busy with the SL at business places, so I don't know what the people in the car were jabbering about.

It was hot...and very humid. Most of our deployment was fairly cool, but that July day was very hot.


A few days later, I hear some guys in another squad talking about some man who came up to the FOB about his baby that had supposedly had a heatstroke in a car that was used as a roadblock by Marines, and died because the car had no AC.


We were the only squad to have patrolled the market area within the 1st week, and I was the only person to be know to had set up a hasty roadblock.





Not that it keeps me up at night or anything

That's rough. Sorry that happened.

That's rough. Sorry.

Yep, beautiful country.

Agreed.

Aw.

When we had Rumsfeld one of the many times my team escorted him, he stopped at the 10th CSH in the IZ for a few hours one day to visit the wounded.  As we were chilling outside in our gun trucks on the street, we were near a bus bench/hangout spot.  There was like 10-20 Iraqi kids this one day, aged from like 8 up to 15'ish.  There was one kid in particular though that was wearing a sleeveless/cut off shirt and his entire upper body was burned and disfigured, like Freddy Kruger's face.  I watched the kids play for probably an hour and I kept looking at the kid.  He looked over towards us and our eyes locked on.  I kind of gave him a half-hearted smile and then I had to look away.  Not more than a day goes by I still don't think about him and what happened to him...was it Saddam's people?  Was it one of our airstrikes?  



eta: i edited my post above

We were up on top of a house doing over watch while 1st Team was conducting a census around the house. My team (2nd team) was on one top, and 3rd team secures the bottom, while they had one of their guys on top with us.

The guy from 3rd team who was on over watch with us saw a kid point an AK at gim from about 75-100 yards away, and then drop the AK and run. He got a good PID on him, but didn't shoot the kid. When we broke down over watch, we went to go investigate.


The kids uncle was an Iraqi Civil Watch guy. Basically they manned the checkpoints as there were no IraqI Police. The kid took his uncles AK and was playing with it. We didn't find him, but we talked to the uncle pretty sternly.


We had a platoon argument over it. Staff Sgt grilled him for not killing the kid, LT argued that it probably would have been a bad turn out if he had shot the kid.


A couple weeks later we finished our census and was just doing a presence patrol. The guy from 3rd team saw the kid in the alley we were in begging for candy. The Marine walked up to the kid and gave him a good reality check in the face.


Afterwards, doc checked out the kid and we talked to his parents  (who wasn't around during the AK incident) about what had happened. Turns out, the Marine from 3rd team beat up the twin brother of the kid who pointed the AK at him. His parents weren't mad. They were thankful.

Been to Manas a handful of times, both in the front and the back of the plane. Definitely beautiful country there, too.

People are saying lighten up because he's trying to seem badass.

The guy who tries to play the "we're an elite club, I can't talk to you dirty civilians" thing up in front of non-military is usually full of shit, hence the comments from everyone else. Nobody likes a humbrag.

I really LOL'D, I got a mental picture of Mel saying that!

Djibouti. Not technically a warzone, per se.

Saw a monkey attack a kid with a knife.

That is fucking gold.

Who had the knife?

I'd love to.

I think I was no more disappointed then when I think you pointed out we could totally steer the 'Stans for 30 years for the cost of one F-35.

I just tried looking up pictures from that and the first thing I see is some bullshit about an investigation to RAF personnel giving a thumbs up next to dead taliban. Fuck whoever thought that investigation was a good idea.

 
What do you think that was?

 
I'd like to hear more about that lol

It was late 2005 when I saw it.

The hole place is connected so it could have been the one I saw.

They said it was probably living of dogs and goats.

The lion  large but skinny the brief few sounds I saw it

I was attached to Guard for Delaram and we would post one Marine and one Afghan soldier. One day I am told that one of soldiers is accusing me of being drunk on post. I report to the CO and he says he believes a Marine over an Afghan and if I lie there will be consequences. So I tell him the truthird that I was never drunk and that was it.

Later I learned that the Afghan soldiers had a surprise health and comfort inspection and one was found with alcohol.

To save his ass he said I showed up to post one night, drunk and acting weird then I take me armor and blouse off and try to wrestle with him on post.

I tried finding him later to kick his ass but never saw him again.

 
I thought the only lions to roam Iraq were Prussian Lions, which are now extinct?


 

ETA: the tiger is extinct. The Prussian Lions is endangered

Really good pot would be my guess.  



 

NEVER saw that before!

No, I really did.  We had been given orders to shoot any dogs that were in our area and exhibited signs of aggression or sickness.

I was walking back to my tank after checkpoint duty and had our M-16.  We had a hooch set up next to the tank and when I got about 30 yards from it the dog came out of the hooch with an MRE in its mouth.  He looked at me, took one step toward me and growled.  I shot him between his peepers.

Then the TC threw down the shovel from his sponson box.  He had been napping in his hatch and didn't know the dog was there.  The one rule to shooting a dog was that you had to bury it.  I took it out about 10 meters and buried it about 5 feet down.

Later that day their humvee came by asking if we had seen the dog.  We all said that we hadn't.

Popped the CREWS system on one day when testing and the Blackhawk on approach to the FOB blew its flares.  

First time I stepped outside while in AFG and it was a perfectly clear night I stood and looked at the expanse of the universe, able to see the Milky Way clearly for the first time that I can remember, the profusion of stars tht just aren't visible at home.

Sticks with you.

That is rough.

One day on checkpoint duty a family comes through, pretty woman, cute 8 year old boy.  They were going to visit family.

Next day, the same truck comes through, but something is wrong.

Many more people on the truck and they were all in mourning.

In the back were two bodies, wrapped up the way they do it over there.

We radioed in we had two bodies and asked what to do.  Everyone had to show ID to get back to the safe side of the checkpoint.  

We were told to check the bodies against their ID.  Shit.  We asked as best we could for ID and we got it.  Yep, same pretty woman and cute 8 year old boy.

We had to check the bodies against their ID, so I had to unwrap them.  The wailing from the family was heartrending, and I can hear it in my head now, 26 years later.

I got them unwrapped, multiple small shrapnel wounds and explosive trauma.  Makes the body all puffy.

The story from the family was that the mom was walking through an area that had been cluster bombed, holding her son's hand.  Son saw a bomblet, shaped like a cylinder and kicked it.

I have never told that story to anyone, it's not a high point, but it shows the fucked up side just a little.

 
I've done that, just stopped one night when our team was traveling back from a remote village.  Must have seen a thousand more stars than you can see anywhere in the US.  Milky Way more visible than anywhere I'd ever seen.  Makes you feel real small.

Saddam had zoos.

I have done that several nights while over there. I wish I would have had a good telescope there. I ended up stargazing quite a few night with binoculars and a PVS-7 on occasion.

Half my detachment was laying out next to our runway while watching the Perseid shower in 2012 The cool thing is that it was almost directly overhead. It was pretty awesome.



 

Holy shit, that little devil is adorable.

 

I was in Ramadi as a contractor in 06.  Got tasked with checking out a route towards Hit (I think rt Michigan), so I was riding along with a NG route clearance patrol one night.  As we got into Hit, the convoy stopped and everybody was yawning and such; I asked why we were stopped in the middle of the road.  The Buffalo driver said that there was an IED, but I hadn't seen the Husky doing anything, and there wasn't anything going on over the radio.  As the LT in the Buffalo explained, there was an IED there every night.  "They even put it in the same crater cos' they're too lazy to dig.  They even re-use the same wire."  Sure as shit, EOD blows the IED and we move forward and stop again with the Buff's lights on the crater.  I can plainly see the wire, which is routed up into the window of a building just forward of us about 10 yds from the roadway.  There's a guy peeking out from the window at us, and I ask the LT why they don't shoot his ass in the face.  "Our ROE says we can't dismount and clear structures, and we can only shoot back if we take fire."  I said "but an IED is technically fire."  "We can't do anything."  I said "wait here, I'll go shoot his ass!"  They just chuckled.  As they saw it, it was fine because they knew where the IED was.  I thought it was a waste of good C4.

On another night patrol with the same guys, there was a strange looking Soldier sitting across from me in the Buffalo.  He was wearing ACUs with Major leaves, but he clearly didn't look to me like he was in the Army.  I struck up a conversation, and he said he was Navy EOD tasked to this NG unit.  Shortly thereafter, a Husky found an IED and our Buffalo uncovered it.  Two arty shells, 105s I think.  We backed up and the Cougar directly in front of us deploys a robot with a block of C4 to place on the IED.  It takes them forever to get that thing set up, and when the operator finally got the now armed robot moving, he moves it forward in a clumzy zig-zag pattern and drives it right under our Buffalo.  All the Soldiers started cussing and screaming, and we all jumped up on our seats, wondering what the fuck the guy operating the robot was doing.  The Navy EOD was laughing at us; he said that the operator was also Navy EOD and this was his first time out, and that they were there to bust his cherry.  He also noted that the C4 would merely mar the paint on the Buffalo.  Still, it was unsettling.

Wow



 

Was she bikini worthy?

Yes, inquiring minds need to know!  

Apparent sexual abuse of small children.  Piles of dead ANP.  Places like Afghanistan are fucked up.