So much win in that image.

April 2006 Baghdad had enough hail on the ground, it was 2" deep.  Everything was white, it looked like snow.

going to need video evidence to believe you.

It is one of those things where if you didn't see it happen, you would seriously never believe it.  I know if I hadn't seen it, no way in hell would I believe someone telling me that.

But my entire team (6 other guys) saw it as they drove past our bus while we were waiting for our LT to get done inside RPC.  

Desert Storm. We deployed after the air war started and Scuds were flying.

We had just landed at the airfield in Saudi and were on a bus to our billets at Khobar Towers. Dark, I think 9pm local, IIRC.

All of the sudden there were rockets launching in the desert around us. Driver gives the ole familiar arm signal, yelling "Gas! Gas! Gas!". Bus is all over the place as he's donning his mask. He finally gets it on but apparently can't see for shit. Up ahead is a T intersection and he shoots straight thru it at about 40mph.

Waited over an hour for the 88Ms to show up and tow our ass back to the road.

It's all uphill from here, right?




More surrealism as we had front row seats to all kinds of F-16, A-10, MLRS and ICDPM madness as we marched through the desert.

same thing happened at a steel mill I worked at in college.   Trains were operated by drivers via remote control via these big suspender/belt hung remote control boards.


one of the techs  needed to fix one of the connection switches on the engine, they decoupled the engine from the cargo car and backed it off. The driver had to take a dump,  switched his control box off and went to the bathroom, they verified the lockout switch was set.

The Maintenance tech was working on the train when the driver went to the bathroom, in the bathroom he took off his remote and set it on the counter and went in the stall, someone came in the bathroom and set down a toolbox and threw a jacket on the box and control box, hitting the lockout switch and engaging the drive.  

The engine backed into the haul car, smashing the tech in the lock mechanism and pinning him there.

Same thing happened, he was awake, and alert, trapped at the stomach.  He was remarkably pain free according to the EMT I talked to who was on scene. They shut down the yard and sent cops to get his wife out of school or work, wherever she was. They kept him alive until they got her to his side. They were able to say goodbye,  they got a surgeon on site for when they unhooked him, ran a bunch of fluid into him to try and keep his BP up for when they separated the train.  I think he said they put a load strap around him to try and tighten down to keep him alive for the tirp to the hospital.  

As soon as they uncoupled the car he passed out and never recovered, said he was dead in a few seconds and they never could get him back. He was alive almost an hour I think after the initial accident.  Sad....

In afghanistan watching UAV thermal footage of a fistfight between two people they stop fighting, one walks away, gets on his scooter, the other goes in a house, scooter drives off, then guy comes out and runs scooter down and pushes it over then they get in a fight again. more funny than anything, didnt expect that from the uav footage

+1

One of those big dust storm things while transiting Kuwait. A haboob. Rolled in, then everything was orange. It was weird. I was imagining it would be hard to breathe or something, but it wasn't, really.


We were trying to do counter IDF patrols at night in Afghanistan. Had a new replacement E-5 with us. He was on my hip, and we were standing around talking about the area, when a group of motorcycles drove past. I said "Those guys are bad guys. I wish we could just shoot them, but I think that'd technically be murder."

He says "How can you tell they're bad guys?"

"I don't know. They just are. No one else drives around at night in a group like that." Which was the truth. I just knew they were bad guys. Nothing I could articulate beyond that.

A few minutes later we get told to move towards where they were. We move maybe 300 meters, and after we passed the next mud wall, two 107mm rockets shoot over our heads, with a POO not more than 20 meters in front of where I was standing. They don't sound like any rockets you'd imagine.

I turned to the new E-5 and said "See? Bad guys."

Yeah, I hear you.  First RIP right-seat and the incoming unit had no idea why we're nervous about specific details during the patrol.
The fish-fryer street vendor that's always there? even when it's fucking raining outside... yeah, he's not there.  Except when all the locals know there are ugly dudes in-numbers in the area.

One multi-tour junior NCO was poking fun over the radio, "LOL, no fish dude, roger... got it"

Contact, skidding around corners, baseball slides to cover, crew serve suppression, light incoming indirect, a few RPG rounds, even a drive-by.  Contact pursuit to a hoax IED, then a live IED.  Ten minute TIC, in-and-out
.

The debrief was hilarious, same junior NCO joker "so, uh... about that fish dude...tell me more about him".

I imagined it would be like a movie, like an awesome fireball and a disintegrated body with nothing left, so what really surprised me was that all of their limbs also blow apart at the joints. It always reminded me of the crashtest dummies toys I had as a kid where you push the button in their chest and it launches their arms, lets and head off.

A group of guys had been executed in the desert and a pack of dogs were eating the brains out of their skulls as we rolled up

Not really AT Al Jabbar but west of it, was where I was.

Great stories, gents, keep 'em coming.  Thanks to all y'all, for your service!  

Lots of mofos near Najaf have six toes per foot.

Mosul 2004  
 

Here's a neat arch I climbed up on top of way out in the country.  I didn't know until years later it was part of a friggin' Roman bridge.  And here my stupid ass is walking on top of it.  I loved the history of Northern Iraq.  I wish I could go back and just visit all the ancient sites.  Link to more information


As for surreal, other than the arch, this was a Christian priest I met in a village just below a church that was carved out of the rock in 700ad.  Surreal in that he was blind and made me sit down by myself, then did the "I'm gonna feel your face to see what you look like" and he said I was stressed and needed to let go.  He had been in the Vatican before he came here.  Strange world we live in sometimes.

Anyone else remember the fucking HUGE (Like tornado huge) "Dust Devils" over there?



I used to do the 'Leatherneck-Camp Dwyer run about 3 times a month (Total "Moonscape") and it seemed that

we got caught in those every time.  They looked scary as hell but didn't do much damage.



'Leatherneck-Dwyer terrain:







'took this pic' the first month I was there (It was a "You gotta be fuckin' kidding" moment ).

In retrospect, people come apart at the seams.  Friggin' toymakers and their hidden agenda.

My dad's war stories always seemed cooler than mine since I had an old dad who did The Korean War.  He was out on guard at the camp one night and some Ethopians who were involved went out on patrol.  He went off duty at 0200 and told the guy they were outside the wire.  Guy on duty at 0500 heard noise, gave the challenge, got no response and proceeded to light up the bushes with a Thompson.  Come dawn it turned out he'd killed the Eth squad.  All of the Ethiopians had fresh necklaces of ears.  Turns out the Ethiopians didn't speak English well.

Another time he was on police call after, I think, 3rd battle of Seoul.  Job was to pick up bodies.  Every body they picked up had the head fall off.  Apparently the Norks were big into a garrote to be sneaky or finish the job.

Somewhere before the first story he was a tanker (like I ended up as).  Got forcibly branch transferred to Infantry for driving a tank through the PX to steal beer.

Once, after being forced into infantry, he was with a squad up on a ridge with a river in the valley below one spring.  On the opposite ridge was a Nork squad.  They apparently existed in a state of unofficial truce for about a month.  His squad would go down, once a week, and wash.  Norks would do the same on opposite weeks.  Nothing much happened for a couple months.  They'd report up that they'd kept the yellow menace stalled due to their fierceness.  No doubt the Norks did the same.  Eventually they had a tank platoon roll up and announce they were there to help with the stalemate.  Tankers threw sixteen rounds of HE across the little valley and into the North Koreans.  Didn't kill any of them, but it pissed them off enough that they called off the truce.

We carried around a female suicide bombers head in a trash bag for a while ..everyone wanted to see it

Got passed Around till the Brits took possession

The worst part is how happy and pissed they are, when you can finally call back  

We delivered lots of body parts for CEXC, but they were all packaged up in Styrofoam.

Not a war zone, but I did get freaked out in GTMO (RSC/L) one time. It was in late 94 or early 95 and our new captain (Gurfein, who later went on to some fame in Iraq...apparently recovering from some infamy in GTMO) was all moto and shit and didn't like the idea of grunts just predictably sitting up in fence line towers, so he had us doing a lot more patrolling and other odd-ball shit. Sometimes we would man towers that we rarely did...stuff like that. Well, one night me and a couple other guys were sent up to MOP Tango. For those that haven't been there, there is a rudimentary trench/bunker system built on that hill and a tower / comm bldg on top. Some NCO sticks me in a bunker and puts other guys in their own fighting positions and we're supposed to hang out and watch for the horde of Cubans that wasn't going to come. Anyway, in GTMO you spend a LOT of time out on the fenceline at night, so you get pretty good at knowing the difference between "the sounds of the night" and actual people approaching. So there I am, I've been sitting (couple stacked ammo crates) in this bunker staring out the gun port thingy for hours with not a peep from other grunts or anything else. Then I hear it. It sounds like something moving between my bunker and the fence. As tends to happen at a time like that, you're not 100% sure you heard something....so you focus and get reeeal quiet and stay super still. Then I heard it again, and it was closer. The hill had some grass on it. Something was out there. I turned my head a bit to see if it would help determine the direction it was coming from to make sure it wasn't a friendly coming up the trench system behind/next to me. Heard it a third time, and it was CLOSE. I thought, 'holy fuck...this is it'. I stand up a bit (you couldn't stand completely straight up and down in this bunker, you kind of had to bend at the knees a bit...but I got up and got my M16A2 at the low ready. Though the mid 90s was 'peace time', security forces type gigs carried an appropriate load out of 175 rounds of 556. I heard the sound one last time. Safety flicks off. Right after that, and I mean right after the safety clicks, a fucking CAT jumps through the opening of the bunker, almost hits me, and goes hauling ass down the trench system behind me. Just about fucking shit myself. If I could have reacted fast enough, I probably would have shot the stupid thing, but the little feline bastard jumped through the gap like a damn ninja. Stupid thing was, I never saw a cat at any other time during my entire tour...and we had thermal cameras, good NVGs, and a shitload of night time boredom, so it's not like you couldn't spot them hunting at night if they had been common. Dunno if it was a stray from our base or if the little bastard was a Cuban cat that had crossed the minefield to terrify me...

While walking through AlFaw palace (the water palace) at Camp Victory at BIAP, I see none other than Don King, the boxing promoter, rounding a corner coming towards me.

My grandfather was on a LST (Landing Ship Tank) in the Pacific during WWII.  Before he died my dad and I sat with him and he went through all his stories.

He was in charge of an anti-aircraft deck gun. To practice a plane would fly around towing a target behind it. Somehow my grandfather's crew managed to shoot the cable between the plane and the target. It scared the pilot and he said forget this shit and flew away.

He was at the West Loch disaster at Pearl Harbor. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to tie all these LSTs up together. While loading or unloading gear a mortar round went off in one of the LSTs. The fire spread to a number of the ships that were tied up together. My grandfather said one guy was on the bow of a LST with a water hose trying to fight the fire when the whole thing exploded. The guy just disappeared. Luckily the crew on my grandfather's ship was able to warm up the engines and get away from the fire.

One time he was on torpedo watch at night on the deck. Before he could get a word out he sees a torpedo headed right for him and the ship. It went under the ship and didn't detonate. Luckily, they had just unloaded their equipment so the ship was sitting higher in the water and the torpedo was set too deep.

When they would land on a beach my grandfather would stand guard on the front of the ship with a tommy gun to make sure all the marines got off and no sappers were able to sneak in with explosive charges. All the marines were trying to get him to trade his tommy gun for their Garands or carbines. He made money trading several times... because he had access to a bunch of tommy guns.

They were serving lunch on the beach and everyone was in line for chow. Then 20 feet away a Marine fires his 1911 sidearm 2 times... The Japanese soldiers were trying to sneak into the chow lines to steal food.

He was witness to many Kamikaze attacks. His crew was able to shoot one down that was headed for a destroyer. When they shot the plane they hit the pilot and the canopy of the plane turned red.

Hail wasn't too rare in Bagram but we got enough of it one time that it piled up around all the buildings and trapped people inside.  We were working out of a clamshell on Warrior side and we had to get someone to come let us out.  Then we spent the next hour or so shovelling it into a ditch to keep the tent from flooding as it melted.



I flew from Bagram to Ghazni several times and remember seeing dust devils so big the tops of them were higher than we were.

A little albino kid in Mosul.  His knees bent the wrong way.  He got around on all fours, couldn't stand up.  We called him Chicken Man.  Fucking inbreeding like a motherfucker up there.

A dude fucking a donkey in Karbala.  Sitting on a roof with our sniper section, pulling security with the PVS 22.  Saw something fucky in a reed-line by a canal.  Watched it for a while, thought it might be a guy digging a hole.  Donkey walked forward a couple steps and holy shit, that dude ran up behind him and started pounding his ass.  Pun intended.

So just before the invasion our BC gets the bright idea to do a battalion level sand table in the desert in Kuwait.  He has his staff working on this thing for like 2 days beforehand.  Calls the companies together, has this huge detailed sand table laid out, probably 100'x100'.  Tons of work, obviously.

 
Calls the companies to attention, has us fall out around the sand table.  As we're falling out, one of them dust devil tornadoes rips through and levels the whole damn thing.  I laughed until I thought I would be sick.

Same here. Back on the safety of FOB Salerno. Skyping the (then-) fiancée when we got hit with a couple rockets. Had to go pretty quick, said goodbye, signed off. Then the next day the FOB Chapman mass-cas event happened where all the CIA personnel got blown to fuck. We were on double missions for like a week before we got settled back down and I could get back to the MWR hut. Wife lost a few years off her life stressing, I'm afraid. I felt bad about that.

And clothing issues from blast- lots of both naked dead folks and survivors from blast effects

Oh yeah.

We taught the local kids to point at them and yell "Wormsign!"  

An ass cheek laying on the ground after a vbied detonated. Same incident, working dog snagged some tango bits on the ground and ate them.

My dad was Pacific WW2 vet, things that the military allowed then would cause heads to explode in today's PC environment.

My Vietnam War veteran instructors had plenty of tales that I probably should not share, not Hipster-safe.

Hajahahahaha that was THAT weekend. The weekend we met Chesty.

Sitting on the roof of a house with NVGs on watching a C130 dump flares during a meteor shower



not bizarre or surreal - but it was sure relaxing

I worked on Eggars in Kabul and lived near the pool where all those people were executed. Anyways, there were 5 of us in our 4 Runner driving from Eggards to the house, talking shit to each other, going on about whatever. I was sitting back right and see a dog that had what looked like a second fucking head!!! I yell, "holy shit" and everyone just looked right. A few others saw it, and for the rest of the ride home (~8 minutes) nobody said a word. It was funny because of the 5 in the truck 3 (including me) are damn certain we saw a two headed dog. 2 said they couldn't see. Either way, it was fucking weird and to this day I stand by what I claimed.

ETA: also one night we were sitting in the "front yard" of our compound and out of nowhere glow sticks just fall out of the sky. Looked up and there was helicopter with no lights, flying over. Didn't hear a thing until it was right on top of us. Figured they were saying hi.

Tag for later reading

I was expecting a banana rat. Little ninja mother fuckers
Not bad tasting either. I got there mid '96. Windward, S6

Afghan dust devils are epic. Pretty much anywhere I was you could look out across the desert and see 5-10 of them at once all around



 

Last SCUD alert of Desert Storm.  Several friends and I were sitting by the swimming pool, eating Baskin Robbins double chocolate ice cream and watching the AF women swim.  The siren started and we all looked at each other, said fuck it and kept eating.  We were supposed to go to MOPP 3 and go inside. That was at Eskan village (PX, Anthony’s Pizza, AAFES burger bar, Baskin Robbins, swimming pool), yep Lee was right, war is all hell.

Thats fucking brutal

two funny things.

doing a veh follow with a pred. Dude in the van is an HVI who we have been following for a few weeks, then the van just blew the fuck up. Everyone was like WTF?? We didn't hit it, who struck the van? Turns out he ran over an IED.

Seeing 4-5 guys get naked then all get in the same bed.

See many guys fuck sheep/goats/donkies

Last trip to Afghanistan I was at the green beans getting coffee when rocketts came in. I'm sitting there with my coffee listening to rockets explode when this chick runs by in a miniskirt High heels and a fur coat. She wasn't bad looking either.
I'm guessing she was a worker for FLOARE? Or there was a moral tent I had not been to.

Seeing a woman run out of her makeshift tent trying to flag our convoy down, a baby in one arm, and a bunch of bootleg dvds in the other.  

A 5 year old Iraqi boy riding his bicycle on MSR Tampa outside Nasiriyah, giving us the peace sign as we drove by.

A line of military personnel inside Al Faw palace, waiting to take photos of themselves on Saddam's throne.

Air Force One parked on a runway in Tallil, being hidden from view in a large sandstorm.  

The strange Fred Flintstone village/ children's park consisting of graffiti marked "caves" outside Camp Slayer/Perfume Palace.  Very weird place
(not my photos)



The 4k+ year old Ziggurat of Ur, and having Easter Service on top of it with Charlie Daniels.

I saw a dog with a pipe shoved up its ass.

It proved to be useful for navigation--  "Turn right at the dog with a pipe up its ass".

The Ziggurat was built for the moon god Nanna. This is what it looked like in the early 1920's before it was excavated and restored by Brits and Americans.

It had a name perfect for the region. Its name was é-temen-ní-gùr-ru, ‘the house whose foundation is clad in terror.’




The west corner of the ziggurat of Ur along the northwest side; Messrs. Bull and Shelton, and Prof. Breasted in the foreground, March 17-18

After some googling:

http://www.americanvillage.info/

Would rather live here than Detroit!

Yep. The site of Abraham's house is thought to be directly to the left, and one of the ruins contains an arch which is claimed to be the oldest in the world.
The history of that area is amazing, and was amazing to see.  Walking around the grounds of the Zig, you encountered pottery shards everywhere, and bricks with cuneiform on them.    

Lot of cool stories. I was in the same place(s) at the same time as some of the dudes posting here.

Bizarre story for me. Saw an overturned civilian tanker in Afghanistan. ANA arrived quickly to cordon off the accident and ensure that as fuel spilled out the cap on the top of the trailer they were able to fill up all their containers and trucks. Well, the fuel they didn't get was forming a nice little creek that ran under the road and out the other side. Locals were already three deep all along this creek to fill whatever jug they had brought. Even saw an old man and his little grandkid rolling a 55gal drum across the desert to try and get some of the fuel.

Bosnia: Found a T62 tank in a barn. Barrel was sticking out of the door. Owner said he forgot it was there. Saw a C130 perform a combat offload for some secret squirrel types at Eagle Base back in the day. ( that was actually pretty cool)
Liberia: Dogs fighting over human body parts, a bombed out Mason Lodge (no shit) still had the symbols on the door, a fully functional swimming pool complete with chlorine smell in the middle of downtown Monrovia. ( I guess you had to have been there to appreciate the irony).
Iraq: We had incoming late one night and apparently one of the rockets didn't explode, it just kinda bounced around in the motor pool,  skidded up between 2 vehicles and lodged itself in the drivers door of a Suburban. Nobody noticed until the next morning when the PSD teams were leaving and nearly tripped over the tail fin. Had to call EOD on that one. Guys deciding it was a good time to quit smoking and started taking Chantix and walking around camp in the boxers with a live grenade and talking to themselves. Watching nets being hung over the side of the bridge to catch the bodies as they floated by. A well tended patch of green grass about the size of a large rug in the middle of camp.