Yeah, she actually was



I was only there for a couple of weeks but she was a frickin' ICON on that base.  



The other thing I remembered from there was going into the chow hall every day and the big, hand painted signs

in front of the 24/7 TV's with (hockey on all the time) that said..."Don't change the fuckin' channel!"



 

Fuck that place.  One of the worst shit holes I've ever been to.  I saw a babboon rip a dog apart there.  Some guys were walking with the babboon, it had a really heavy chain attached to it.  Stray dog came running out of an alley barking and that babboon just went ape shit (literally) on it.  By the time it was over the babboon was beating the dog with it's own ripped off limbs.



When we first got there we were going to go for a run on the trail along the airfield.  We noticed on the way out that the guard tower was manned, it was odd because it was the only manned tower on the whole camp.  When we got back they were closing the gate up for the night and we asked them why they were in that tower and none of the other ones.  They told us they were there specifically to watch the runners in case the local pack of hyenas showed up.  Did my running in the gym on a treadmill after that.



We did go play the golf course while we were there.  I can't remember how many holes it had but it seems like it wasn't even nine holes, something like 6 or 7.  It was nothing but a big sand trap.  You'd tee off and your caddy would go running out to find your ball.  If you'd hit into the "fairway" he would pick it up, place down a square of artificial turf and you played off of it.  The greens were big patches of tarred sand.



The Marines there had a rugby team.  There was a French FOreign Legion post down the road a ways and they heard our guys had a team and wanted to play a match.  They quit halfway through because the Marines were playing too rough.  They particularly zeroed in their compaints on one Marine in particular who had made a couple good tackles.  Marine was a female.



Also when we first got there they had just busted up a prostitution ring.  Some of the Navy chicks found an empty housing tent and set up a brothel and swingers club.  How that went on for any length of time on that tiny little place blew my mind.



Djiboutians chew khat.  They're all starving to death because they're poor but they have money for this stuff.  Anyway the khat plane flies in shipments every day or so into the airport there.  The Djiboutian airfield is a tiny one strip operation, military and civilian use.  One day a C5 came in and broke down.  Things were crowded but not too bad until the C5 that was bringing the repair parts came in and also broke down and didn't bring the right parts.  It shut the airport down for a few days and that meant no khat coming in.  The whole city nearly rioted over that.  They ended up using Navy CH53s to bring in the khat until they could get those planes off the ground.



Final Djiboui story.  One night around midnight there was a huge commotion over at the shoot house.  MPs and medics running around, we thought someone got shot during a live fire.  Story came out the next day, two Navy LT CDRs were meeting up there at night to fuck.  Female was bent over in a window sill on the 2nd floor and male bucked her out the window.  She broke her arm and got knocked out and he paniced and beat feet, leaving her there.  She woke up some time later and started screaming for help.  Took them a few days to get her out of there and it was hard not to laugh whenever you saw her walking around with two black eyes and arm in a sling.

Yeah it was all over the place, just under the surface.

Reminds me of the time we were late for movement with the ANA and Polish. One of the Polish Soldiers went to look for the ANA Sergeant Major and apparently had caught the Sergeant Major caught fucking his Chai boy. He had him bent over the desk, going to town like he was a $20 hooker that owed him money. There are some things I just don't need to know about. The Polish Soldier was pretty detailed with his story, makes me wonder. Worst or best part of the story, the Chai boy was around 12 IIRC.


Every time I think about that, part of me wishes I would have caught him, there would be one less pedophile on this planet, and part of me is glad I didn't because I would be in Leavenworth now.

I was at RPC on and off again through out 2005. I worked 12hr shifts at the ECP off by it self in Indian country with the Iraqi LSF and a hand full of SF and Hawaii NG.
The LSF where Iraqis trained by SF to provide security. I either lived at a private compound near the air traffic control tower about 300 yards away from the flight line at BIAP or on Victory.  Was living at the IZ and Taji a few times as well.

The Hawaii NG was in running the base security at RPC. The DFAC was really good there and every once in a while someone would be shooting off the roof with a Barret.

The cages where for lions and there was a large pond / pit that had been filled in by US troops that had held alligators or crocodiles. Story has it that people would be fed to the animals. The hole Victory complex was like a hunting preserve for Saddam and his friends.

When SF teams did a large raid they held bad guys in the cages. Saw at least 100 dudes in there at one point when Abu Ghraib was over crowded.

True. I had to guy a few prisoners in 2004 that was held inside these cages.

Khat is an amphetamine-like stimulant, which suppresses the appetite.

Has anyone tried to google map the places they lived in Iraq?

Found almost everyplace I lived that was located in or around Baghdad.


I think the satellite view was updated this year. .

There's a Willie and Joe cartoon about that.....  "Dammit Willie, it wasn't your turn."

the mosques playing the haji music over the speakers all the time in Baghdad, sounded like the music from blade runner, especially when I 1st got there during october rain season...


everything was gray with lightning and no rain, all the buildings and cars on fire, dead floating down the canals beside the streets, speakers blaring that good awful music from blade runner

I know of a guy that was told to drive a badly damaged Bradley by himself, got separated from the rest of his element and completely lost, and somehow made it from New Baghdad to Falcon. I'm sure that was an ass puckering experience.

zombies

That sounds like a clown shoes operation.

I have several times, it was a shithole then and still is.

this, I find the whole idea disturbing, but at a certain point of hunger, meat is meat, they are animals after all.

speed

We had a corporal do something like that.

Each gunner rode with the heavy lift local semi lowboys when they were moving our tanks from port to the staging areas in the desert.

We happened to be moving when the air war started.  Corporal D's driver said he had a mechanical issue and Cpl D had to unload the tank for him to fix it.  When Cpl D unloaded the tank, the driver left.

So there he is, all alone, in the desert with a tank.  So he starts driving.  Finds an MP who tells him where he thinks our unit is.  The problem was that we were one of the very few 8th ID units in theater.  We were 8th ID, from 5th Corps in Germany, attached as a round out battalion to 3rd AD, which was 7th Corps out of Germany.  Nobody knew who or where we were.

So Cpl D drives on, gets fuel from another MP unit and they tell him about a tank unit not far away across the trackless desert.  They give him a compass heading, but Cpl D had no way to take shots without getting out of the tank from time to time.  So he took the compass shot, then turned the turret to the proper heading and duct taped the cadillacs.  Then he rotated the hull to keep his head right under the gun and off he drove.  We ended up using this method of navigation for the rest of the short little war.

He found a tank unit but it wasn't us.  They fueled him up and their battalion commander told him he could stay with them and be the tank's TC, but they were going to hang a plow on the front of it and give him a crew.  

In the middle of the night, Cpl D left, not wanting to leave his real crew without a tank and definitely not wanting a freaking plow on his tank.

He finally found us after searching for three days.

It blows my mind that things like this can happen



 

No shit! That Corporal has some balls!

In 2008, I was on Rustamiyah living in single story barracks where each room opened to the exterior motel style. The front door was hollow, something like the average American would expect to be used as an interior door. One morning, I'm asleep when I am awoken by a pretty decent explosion that shook my janky door in its frame. My first guess was a near miss of IDF, but there was no CRAM. Then I started to think some of our guys got hit, and I started to worry, but even if that was the case, there wasn't anything I could do, so I went back to sleep until it was time to get up and head in. I get the usual brief, and nobody mentions anything about any IEDs. I ask, "At around this time, I heard an explosion. What happened?" Guy laughs and tells me they had a controlled det up at Taji, and someone got a little carried away.

For those unfamiliar with the Baghdad area, we're talking a distance around 25 miles.

She was pretty good



And God Bless Her.  She knew what was going on and did what she could to help the team.



WE appreciated her efforts



 

That is fucking crazy. He drove around lost for almost the entire war

At least he won't have to tell his grandkids he shoveled shit in Louisiana.

I Commanded a small Detachment for 13 months during my second OEF tour (OEF11-12).

We arrived in-country in July and flew into KAIA directly from Manas and then convoyed straight to Camp Phoenix.  BN S-3 found out and chewed on me to get our collective assess on the next bird to BAF.  The next day we flew to BAF for a mandatory three day training event which included doing all the same shit we did 2x in the previous six months leading up to deployment (MRAP rollover, weapons range, IED classes, courtesies and customs, etc.).  

We departed BAF for KAIA after completing the training, loading up on a C-130 for the 23 mile, 20 minute flight to Kabul at around 2330 the next day.   We were in full battle rattle, full combat load, four duffles for each man (palletized in front of two other pallets on the aircraft) when we boarded.  We sat on the runway for 60 minutes waiting on more PAX.  Two guys come on board, both wearing jeans, beards, plate carriers, and carrying MK18 Mod 1's. They end up sitting in the webbing next to me and so I am listening to their conversation.  Their topic of conversation involves freefall adventures, favorite parachutes, etc., when one of the gentlemen states that he is going to fly this Bird tonight and he proceeds to pull an aviation headset out of his backpack and put it on his head.

We finally take off for the 20 minute flight to BAF.  About thirty minutes later the crew chief comes to our seating area and gets headset guy and takes him up the stairs into the cockpit.  We fly another 20 minutes (checking my watch) slow down, lose altitude and I think, okay. we are on approach.   However both sides of the aircraft light up (window reflections) as anti-missle flares are deployed and the plane starts juking left, then right, accelerates, climbs and flies away.

About five minutes later headset guy comes back and sits down next to me.  We fly approximately another 65 minutes before we finally land at KAIA.

As we are deplaning I grab the crew chief and ask him what the hell just happened, why did it take 95 minutes for a 20 minute flight?  He looks at me with a straight face and says, "we had severe head winds tonight Sir, it really slowed us down."

Hit, Suweya, Tall Aswad, was my AO in 08.

WTF?

I see what you did there...

No, the air war started 15 days before the ground war.

He drove around for the same amount of time that the ground war lasted, once they unleashed a bunch of unwashed tankers on their sorry asses...

 
I tried it.  The negatives way outweighed the positives. Would not recommend it.

777

Please elaborate.

P

My brother in law brought a cat (or had a cat sent home) home from Camp Liberty in 2008 or 2009.

I dipped Copenhagen in Afghanistan. The ANA and other locals dipped something they called tobacco or whatever out of little baggies. I thought I would spread cheer and goodwill by trading some American tobacco for Haj tobacco. Stuck a pinch of their stuff in my lip and spent the next two hours staring through time. Found out later it was most likely some kind of opiate they dried out and powdered. Good thing we didn't have a piss test that week.

 

A 7ft tall ghost that looked like a Buddhist monk floating about 6" off the ground glided along a jungle trail out into a small clearing then disappeared into the trees
between monsoon downpours around 0100 hrs....he turned 45° and motioned for me to follow him...I pulled out my rusty .45 took the safety off but no matter how hard
I pulled the trigger the weapon would not fire....I tried to shake our RTO awake..he was sleeping and trying to stay dry under some banana leaves but he would not wake up....as soon as the apparition
disappeared...he woke up and looked in the direction I pointed to but by that time it was gone and he never saw a thing...

you believe that shit?

I couldn't even get light duty after I told the Batt Surgeon that story...

This is a remarkable story.  The soldier did well for himself.

 

That's the cover story.



It was a bank job.

Kuwaiti bullion, as documented in the historical movie Three Kings.  

Don't let it die!  MOAR!!!!!!
absolutely awesome thread.

Both areas in Iraq and Afghanistan google earth are all from before I made it in country.  Even though it wasn't the same, it still brought back a lot of memories.  I got to say for as fucked up as some of the memories are, both places could be absolutely beautiful. The sun rises and sun sets in Iraq and the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan are memories that will be forever burned in my memory.  

The most awesome sunset I saw was from the top of the hill right outside the wire from Camp Bande Sardeh. Almost zen like, it lacks words to describe it even to this day, six years later.

I miss the beautifully clear sky at night. Sky so clear you could see satellites circling the earth.

Being on a black out fob in the middle of no where and almost 0 light pollution was amazing.  On a clear night it was almost like you could touch the stars.  When using NVGs HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
 

I was just star gazing with my PVS 14 30 mins ago. Shit is calming as feck.
Bump fer epic thread.

Turkey had a lot of red and yellow haired guys who looked like Lloyd Bridges.

Red and yellow hair, green and blue eyes came from Central Asia, spreading to everywhere the horde went.

Water on the FOB smelled strange and had a weird feel to it...kinda greasy.  This was the non potable water used for laundry and whatnot...some showers and stuff.  

Eventually got bad and we asked the KBR guy where the water came from.  He pointed to the river...and said it was "filtered" but not much.  

We went down to the reeds and saw donkey feet sticking out of the intake pipe...dead...very very dead floating donkey that had fully clogged the intake pipe and now had the water flowing through its rotting corpse.  


Donkey water...

Paid a local guy with a small boat to dislodge the donkey and it floated away.

funniest thing I saw was something just like that. Inside the cab was a bunch of men and boys, but on the back instead of more cargo, on top of the stuff in the bed was a bunch of women and girls holding on for dear life. In a mud rain storm.