1369
04-07-2005, 10:02 PM
BE SAFE
One minute we were facing a very long and painful float of doing nothing but getting fucked with by the Navy and the next minute we were told to get up and get ready because we were going into Iraq. So we began another painful process of getting off that god damned ship. Here is a poor bastard in the grunts carrying his whole life on his back. You can't even see the guy because his pack is bigger than him. God bless BLT 1/1. Those fuckers endure the worst bullshit you could ever imagine. Eventually we got on another whistling shit can of death CH46 chopper. I had to get a picture of the crew chief asleep on the tail of the bird as we flew. Apparently he didn't get enough of his mandatory 8 hours crew rest. Randy shaved his head in anticipation of the things to come and then when he found out we would be driving through IED country (Improvised Explosive Device) in our very own USMC death mobiles he looked like this.
Here's a shot of the Death Mobile in question. Notice the nice wide open spots where there should be armor. When we finally got to our final destination the Army laughed at us and called our HMMVs "Hillbilly Vehicles" and said everybody inside one of them would be killed if hit by an IED. Prior to driving across the border we worked on our vehicles. We discovered that we had so much fucking gear on our bodies that we didn't fit in the vehicles unless we removed the seatbacks. We then had to make our own with sandbags, Fast Tac and green duct tape. The driver of our vehicle is Ando and he managed to put the blunt end of a large sewing needle through the palm of his hand the day before we left. That night in his sleep Ando's unconscious mind seemed to be completely in tune with the dangers that lay ahead and he began preparing himself mentally. While we were at a nice safe base nowhere near the border the poor young grunts had to erect a sandbag bunker to protect them from nothing really.
For us there was some last minute training in the desert where we got hit by some really wonderful sand and rain storms.
Here is Yerkes making sure nothing blew off the morning after a storm. This is a shot of the Skipper trying to find Iraq on the map but that didn't work out. After an hour he eventually found north.
At night we had a fire and the Skipper took watch for most of the night and studied his maps.
During the day he would also watch the vehicles for us. Then the day came for us to head across the border and into the bad place. There are a number of small Army bases along the way where we would refuel. The food at these places seemed to get better the closer we got to danger. One thing the Army can do is build a base and they don't fuck around when it comes to a chow hall. Every one of these bases kind of looked like something out of Apocalypse Now. The graffiti was both funny and disturbing.
At the last safe base we were at there were Army guys telling some of us about where we were headed. "Fuck that place man, nobody in the Army wants to go up there!" It was the first time I began hearing the words "Be Safe". Not said in an arrogant way. A simple phrase put out there by people who have seen friends blown to pieces. Don't be a hero, don't be John Wayne, don't be a bad ass, don't be crazy, just Be Safe. The other thing they asked us was "What the fuck are you stupid motherfuckers driving those god damned hillbilly vehicles for?" The last leg of our journey would be the worst. About an hour before we took off the Army towed in a civilian truck that had been hit by an IED 30 minutes up the road in an area we would be driving through. A HMMV got hit too but it was one of the nice up armored Army ones, so it was fine. The platoon stood around and made nervous small talk with the IED truck right next to us. That was when I started noticing a lot of guys in the platoon who never smoked before start lighting up. I checked my GPS with the grid I got from the Army guys where the IED went off and when night fell we pushed on. Like clockwork right as we got in the area where the IED had gone off one of our fucking vehicles broke down with a blown radiator. We got out of our vehicles and took up security positions off the road. As our awesome mechanic Torres fixed the damn thing with an MRE sleeve and green duct tape I heard two bursts of automatic rifle fire in the distance behind of our convoy. Later I would learn that the LAR guys could see five bastards under a bridge but could not ID weapons. Torres had our broken vehicle fixed in ten minutes but it seemed a lot longer at the time and we got out of there. Five minutes down the road I saw two assholes off to the side of the road messing with a 55 gallon drum. One of the guys had an AK 47. I couldn't tell if they were Iraqi police or not. Around midnight or so we finally got to our final destination. The place was rainy, cold and miserable. As the sun came up there was an explosion outside the walls and the crack of rifle fire. As always the grunts got fucked with shitty tents to live in. They had a small lake for a floor.
As we took our tour of the area I had to get a shot of this poster still hanging on the wall from when this place was an Iraqi military base. After living like sardines on the ship where we were crammed six dudes deep and three sausages high in a space the size of a walk in closet, we were given rooms that were supposed to fit two people. We put seven men in them with all their gear. It was like moving into a castle as far as I was concerned. The guys wasted no time decorating the place with pictures of naked women. The town outside the walls is your basic third world, war torn version with farm fields surrounding it. Not too far away is the famous Tigris River.
We started working within a few days and never stopped. Our first job was something I thought I would never do over here. A live recon patrol looking for bad Hadjis and weapons at suspected sites. Thirty minutes after we inserted on our patrol there was an explosion and gunfire to our west about 600 meters. There was gunfire in one direction or another all night long. I became acutely aware of how alone we were, walking in Hadji's back yard with six guys and not much else. There was a section of Apaches flying around that I was able to get on the radio. They did some looking around for us as we found some fresh footprints and digging at a suspected cache site. As they signed off to leave the pilot came across the net and wished all recon teams good luck and once again "Be Safe". I found out later he was a former enlisted Marine. He singed off with "Semper Fi". As the night went on our team was always near somebody's house trying in vain to avoid the endless parade of dogs that barked and yelped incessantly. If it wasn't a nearby house or dogs than it was some sewage cluttered irrigation ditch or canal we had to cross. Harper fell down one of those canals and his NVG halo cut a nice gash in the top of his eyebrow. At one point as we were crossing a canal I had my first experience with that "Creepy Feeling". The team was spread out and Blonder was across already when I saw light through my NVGs coming from the open door of a house about 60 yards to our left. A couple of dogs had been barking for 40 minutes as we worked our way through the area. I could hear my guys trying to quietly get through the canal but there was the cracking of dry brush that could not be helped. My throat went dry and my stomach felt like I was heading down a tall roller coaster as I heard some kind of weapon being loaded and before I could think a single shot range out. It was so close that Ridings later told me he thought it was me shooting at a dog with my suppressor (which is actually loud as hell and basically useless). As we spent more time here I would learn the area we were in is considered a hotbed of activity right now. Was it a bad guy who heard us or a simple farmer trying to scare away whatever he heard and make his dogs stop barking? What would you do? Light up the dark with indiscriminate gunfire and kill possible innocent people? You're tired, cold, wet and you've been awake for the last 20 hours planning and patrolling...you have about 30 second to make a decision. Blonder already had his sniper rifle out. My guys held tight and it was my call. All around us was wide open farm field except for the canal we were in. To the right a few hundred meters was another house that was lit up like a Christmas tree with another pack of dogs barking. There were some thick trees 500 meters to the west. With shaking hands I got on comm and called for Apaches to cover us as we moved into the only wooded area I could see. The birds were on station in ten minutes but it felt like an eternity. As they came overhead they ID'd my mark and stayed with me on the radio as we moved across the open field. They were awesome and hovered right over the house then asked if that was the place. As we got into the woods I heard another shot from our unfriendly farmer and two bursts of automatic fire from the south west. I had the birds do a wide sweep then come back around so I could hear what was going on in the night. They stayed as long as they could and when they signed off it was around three in the morning. We were soaked and freezing. We got our comm up and passed our reports. We were fucked as far as terrain went. To our east we were boxed in by the Tigres. Our cover was a simple overgrown orchard with many trails running through it. All around us were wide open farm fields. The Hadji prayers started at 0450. Blonder and I decided to move the team into some slight ditches before sunrise and I had everybody pack up their shit so we could move in a hurry if we had to. As the sun came up we saw our first Hadji come through the area. I've done enough surveillance over the last 13 years to know when it's being done on me. It started with one guy just walking along a trail maybe 30 meters from us.
Within a half hour we all had seen enough to know they were working a pattern on us. Four guys with shovels would walk by on one side only to come right back on another side a minute later. Once again I was on comm passing what I saw. We never ID'd weapons. The type of people who were watching us started to change too. Instead of scraggly farmer types we started seeing nice clean looking guys in track suits walking real close (within 20 feet) all the while trying real hard not to look directly at us. I would be whispering on the comm and I could tell how close they were by looking at Blonder. I would ask without talking "How Close" as another one came by and he would look and just make a face and lower his head. I wanted to get some pictures or film of what was going on because I was going to call for emergency extract and I knew I would need to explain myself. I only got one quick picture of Blonder looking at a Hadji.
Yerkes and Ridings got a positive ID on a track suit guy who was carrying something small and black with an antenna on it. Our count was around 15-20 different Hadjis all around our immediate position when the final straw was a motherfucker about 55 with a grey man dress on and a white beard. He had a huge knot on his forehead too. How did I get such a good look? Because the bastard walked right up to where Ando was sitting and looked at me then walked down the trail. That was it for me. I told the higher ups we were in trouble and we were leaving. They sent us an extract bird and a mixed section of choppers to cover the area. Once again they were there quick but time has a way of going so slow in a situation like that. The birds ID'd us as we moved through the brush to a hasty extract zone. The old fucker with the knot on his head was standing on a trail by the hasty LZ we extracted from. There were other Hadjis around and they were doing their best to pretend like we didn't exist (just like the fuckers that had been walking all over our position). Even as a Huey dropped smoke right next to them to mark the zone they continued to hoe the field as if nothing was going on. That old fucker just smoked and looked right at me as we ran past him. Blonder gave him the finger. The 46 pilot who landed in the zone was great and as the bird touched down it blew the old fucker's man dress right off of him. We made it back to base where I knew the questions would be waiting for me. There is a type of person who sits behind high walls in a safe, sandbagged building and passes judgment in hindsight on people like me. Certain individuals who criticize my decisions and actions yet they have never done anything but sit behind a desk and watch a radio while they sip coffee. All that matters is that we got back in one piece with some actual Intel for the higher ups. In the weeks that followed we would do a hit on a house in the same area and I would find myself helping to haul off belligerent young Hadjis that were part of the local terrorist cell wearing clean track suits and staring at me with unmistakable hatred.
As I started walking around the base we're on it wasn't hard to find vehicles with bullet holes in them. The Army took pity on us and gave us some up armored HMMVs so we could get from one place to another and actually have a chance of surviving. The area we're working in has IEDs found on the main road every day. The grunts got mortared at a check point on the road and in the field where they were patrolling. The area is littered with all kinds of things to remind me it's still a war zone.
Day and night EOD is always disarming little surprises like this along the route we drive everyday. I've never gotten used to hearing the bomb tech in my vehicle say "We just pulled 3 IEDs out of this spot yesterday" as we drive by. Before we punch out on jobs there is always a report of something that just got discovered. Sometimes while we're out we hear that there was something discovered right as we left and we have to adjust the way we come back in. On our very first town job the convoy we were in got hit up front on the way back to base. The explosion was loud enough that everybody heard it and the mushroom cloud was big and white. We pushed up and I can't begin to explain what it feels like to get out of an armored vehicle after an IED has just fucked one up and look around for the bad guys who did it. The guys who got hit were from Weapons Company and before we left the base the chaplain just happened to give the cross off his collar to a guy in that vehicle and he told the guy to bring it back to him after the job. The gunner had just dropped down in the turret when the bomb went off so they were all OK. The vehicle was done and it got towed back to base . If it had been a hillbilly vehicle I don't even want to think about would have happened to those guys. The chaplain is somewhat of a rock star around here. He was on some chopper that had issues then all of a sudden fixed itself in the air. I had a talk with him and didn't have the heart to ask him to pose for a picture. I snapped this one in the dark as he prayed for our convoy like he always does before we leave the nice safe gates. This is a shot of our gun turret which is officially protected by the chaplain. He doesn't know we did it and I felt stupid asking him to pose by the vehicle for a picture.
One of the things I didn't realize about Hadji was they shoot at us when we're in the air too. One night as we were unloading gear from some choppers I saw a couple tracers go up as the choppers took off. The times we've been in choppers and took pot shots I didn't even know and it's probably better that way. Some of the pilots are awesome. The skipper was on a flight that took fire and the pilots drove right at the assholes and followed them back to their house.
I have one funny story that helps explain the difference between the Army and the Marine Corps. One day EOD blew off a big clean up shot outside the back gate. They didn't tell anybody. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion that shook the whole base. I was talking to the skipper on the road by our barracks and I heard it break windows in the buildings around us. The skipper didn't miss a beat. He kept talking and barely glanced in the direction of the mushroom cloud forming in the distance. We bust his balls about his broken bones from all the fights he's been in but he's absolutely fearless. I learned later that in the chow hall all the Army and civilian people jumped under the tables in absolute terror and every fucking jarhead in the place grabbed their guns and ran outside. No fucking clue what they were going to do but maybe there was something to shoot at. That's the attitude that kicked the shit out of Hadji in Fallujah and Najaf and Hadji remembers it well. God bless all my friends who suffered in 120 degree heat and spent 9 month in this shithole letting Hadji know he could not kill our friends without paying dearly for it. The desert palm telegraph travels fast and they know Marines are here. Marines just being near the area have caused things to slack off a little. Some of the Iraqi National Guard guys still wear masks because so many of them get killed, sometimes by their own family members simply for doing their jobs.
I regard this place the same way I regard the ramp of an airplane that I'm about to jump out of. What the fuck am I going to do? Worry about it? If shit is meant to be there isn't much I can do to change it. I have a job to do. A job I've trained at for a long time and I have men around me who are better, stronger and smarter than me that put their balls on the chopping block just like me every day. As always I have found a way to get the same guitar I've taken all over the world in here and played one night for the hell of it. We've been real busy and if we haven't been doing one mission we've been planning for another one. All the people who fucked with us on ship have backed off because they have their own things to worry about but they are waiting with baited breath to fuck with us some more as soon as we get back on ship. I don't think they comprehend how many short timers are in this MEU. It should be an interesting ride back. I can only imagine what will happen when they finally let these bastards loose for libbo in a place besides Hadji land.
One thing that never seems to change is the bullshit I deal with from certain admin jackasses who have a death grip on my men's lives in the paperwork department. It was a bad day when the Marine Corps invented Marine Online and MyPay. Now instead of getting a piece of paper every month that tells me and my men how much leave we have on the books or what money the Marine Corps took from us this time, the standard answer I get from certain admin fuckers is "Check your Mypay account online". Yeah, I'll get right on that tough guy....we've got one computer for 27 guys and it never works. The network is always down. On top of that you can die of old age before the MyPay website will come up. Not all admin people are like that but the ones that are just make me want to throw a flash bang in their office before I come in so I can get them off their outlook messenger chat sessions and talk to me like a person. I take it all in stride and just smile while I feel like a total jackass. Half the time I'm dead tired and in between missions. I just want an answer to my guy's admin issues, not a fucking smart ass comment about checking MyPay online. At this point if I did go off on one of these people what are they going to do? Fuck up my paperwork and pay? Shit they do that all the time anyway. When I get back to the big PX some new admin smart ass in my parent unit will take over fucking my shit up where these guys left off while simultaneously telling me I'm spoiled and bitching about nothing because I "Make all that extra money anyways!"
I brought my field stove and enjoy my little rituals like my tea and cigar at night. It's just like home except for intermittent gunfire outside the walls and the occasional explosion. There's even a cat to bother me that hangs out in the building. I miss my old lady and she sends me pics from home to check out like this one by looking at this picture it's not hard to figure out which little psychotic furry demon recently took a shit in the kitchen sink. I've been sick since I got here and it's always fun to amuse myself in the shitter reading the graffiti as I pass a lot of time in there dealing with Hadji Bootie. The Army takes graffiti to a new level. According to the shitters there seems to be a number of people on this base who would like to "Fuck the living shit out of"... "Donkey kick".... or "Take a shit on the chest" of some chick named Hansen because apparently she likes it like that.
Recently I decide to just let caution to the wind, scare women and children and drop down to my shorts and let my "Fish Belly White" pasty body cook in the sun while I drank hot coffee and smoked a Cuban cigar in the blazing morning sun Why not? I'm sure it's not real healthy but IEDs aren't too healthy either. I haven't PT'd for a month and I don't give a shit. There are guys in the platoon who think this isn't shit. They have been through much worse in the war. I'm no war hero, I'm no bad ass. I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut. I have nothing to gage this experience off of. This is what I've seen and done, told as objectively and honestly as possible. Maybe I'm a pussy, maybe I'm a jackass. As always I don't give a shit either way as long as we all get back in one piece with all our fingers and toes. Age has mellowed me out and I see things from a different perspective than most of the men in my platoon who are easily ten years younger than me. I can't wait to get back to my old lady. I can't wait to watch our half breed kids grow up and I can't wait to watch my crazy cat jump off the wall chasing a piece of 550 cord.
As long as there are people on this earth there will be individuals somewhere trying to kill each other. This is my job and I've always regarded it as an honour and a duty to those who have gone before me but I will be moving on when I get back to the land of the big PX. War will never move on. You may not like it but it's a reality and men like these amazing individuals I walk amongst daily are not only a necessity, they are a rarity and everyone of them deserves the utmost respect and courtesy. A blowjob from a really dirty woman wouldn't hurt either.
Now I have to go, I've spent too long writing this and there's another mission coming down. Some kid sent me an email about the web page and said he was headed this way soon. He asked for any advice. All I could think to say was, "Be Safe"
Link (http://www.jimmystare.com/)
One minute we were facing a very long and painful float of doing nothing but getting fucked with by the Navy and the next minute we were told to get up and get ready because we were going into Iraq. So we began another painful process of getting off that god damned ship. Here is a poor bastard in the grunts carrying his whole life on his back. You can't even see the guy because his pack is bigger than him. God bless BLT 1/1. Those fuckers endure the worst bullshit you could ever imagine. Eventually we got on another whistling shit can of death CH46 chopper. I had to get a picture of the crew chief asleep on the tail of the bird as we flew. Apparently he didn't get enough of his mandatory 8 hours crew rest. Randy shaved his head in anticipation of the things to come and then when he found out we would be driving through IED country (Improvised Explosive Device) in our very own USMC death mobiles he looked like this.
Here's a shot of the Death Mobile in question. Notice the nice wide open spots where there should be armor. When we finally got to our final destination the Army laughed at us and called our HMMVs "Hillbilly Vehicles" and said everybody inside one of them would be killed if hit by an IED. Prior to driving across the border we worked on our vehicles. We discovered that we had so much fucking gear on our bodies that we didn't fit in the vehicles unless we removed the seatbacks. We then had to make our own with sandbags, Fast Tac and green duct tape. The driver of our vehicle is Ando and he managed to put the blunt end of a large sewing needle through the palm of his hand the day before we left. That night in his sleep Ando's unconscious mind seemed to be completely in tune with the dangers that lay ahead and he began preparing himself mentally. While we were at a nice safe base nowhere near the border the poor young grunts had to erect a sandbag bunker to protect them from nothing really.
For us there was some last minute training in the desert where we got hit by some really wonderful sand and rain storms.
Here is Yerkes making sure nothing blew off the morning after a storm. This is a shot of the Skipper trying to find Iraq on the map but that didn't work out. After an hour he eventually found north.
At night we had a fire and the Skipper took watch for most of the night and studied his maps.
During the day he would also watch the vehicles for us. Then the day came for us to head across the border and into the bad place. There are a number of small Army bases along the way where we would refuel. The food at these places seemed to get better the closer we got to danger. One thing the Army can do is build a base and they don't fuck around when it comes to a chow hall. Every one of these bases kind of looked like something out of Apocalypse Now. The graffiti was both funny and disturbing.
At the last safe base we were at there were Army guys telling some of us about where we were headed. "Fuck that place man, nobody in the Army wants to go up there!" It was the first time I began hearing the words "Be Safe". Not said in an arrogant way. A simple phrase put out there by people who have seen friends blown to pieces. Don't be a hero, don't be John Wayne, don't be a bad ass, don't be crazy, just Be Safe. The other thing they asked us was "What the fuck are you stupid motherfuckers driving those god damned hillbilly vehicles for?" The last leg of our journey would be the worst. About an hour before we took off the Army towed in a civilian truck that had been hit by an IED 30 minutes up the road in an area we would be driving through. A HMMV got hit too but it was one of the nice up armored Army ones, so it was fine. The platoon stood around and made nervous small talk with the IED truck right next to us. That was when I started noticing a lot of guys in the platoon who never smoked before start lighting up. I checked my GPS with the grid I got from the Army guys where the IED went off and when night fell we pushed on. Like clockwork right as we got in the area where the IED had gone off one of our fucking vehicles broke down with a blown radiator. We got out of our vehicles and took up security positions off the road. As our awesome mechanic Torres fixed the damn thing with an MRE sleeve and green duct tape I heard two bursts of automatic rifle fire in the distance behind of our convoy. Later I would learn that the LAR guys could see five bastards under a bridge but could not ID weapons. Torres had our broken vehicle fixed in ten minutes but it seemed a lot longer at the time and we got out of there. Five minutes down the road I saw two assholes off to the side of the road messing with a 55 gallon drum. One of the guys had an AK 47. I couldn't tell if they were Iraqi police or not. Around midnight or so we finally got to our final destination. The place was rainy, cold and miserable. As the sun came up there was an explosion outside the walls and the crack of rifle fire. As always the grunts got fucked with shitty tents to live in. They had a small lake for a floor.
As we took our tour of the area I had to get a shot of this poster still hanging on the wall from when this place was an Iraqi military base. After living like sardines on the ship where we were crammed six dudes deep and three sausages high in a space the size of a walk in closet, we were given rooms that were supposed to fit two people. We put seven men in them with all their gear. It was like moving into a castle as far as I was concerned. The guys wasted no time decorating the place with pictures of naked women. The town outside the walls is your basic third world, war torn version with farm fields surrounding it. Not too far away is the famous Tigris River.
We started working within a few days and never stopped. Our first job was something I thought I would never do over here. A live recon patrol looking for bad Hadjis and weapons at suspected sites. Thirty minutes after we inserted on our patrol there was an explosion and gunfire to our west about 600 meters. There was gunfire in one direction or another all night long. I became acutely aware of how alone we were, walking in Hadji's back yard with six guys and not much else. There was a section of Apaches flying around that I was able to get on the radio. They did some looking around for us as we found some fresh footprints and digging at a suspected cache site. As they signed off to leave the pilot came across the net and wished all recon teams good luck and once again "Be Safe". I found out later he was a former enlisted Marine. He singed off with "Semper Fi". As the night went on our team was always near somebody's house trying in vain to avoid the endless parade of dogs that barked and yelped incessantly. If it wasn't a nearby house or dogs than it was some sewage cluttered irrigation ditch or canal we had to cross. Harper fell down one of those canals and his NVG halo cut a nice gash in the top of his eyebrow. At one point as we were crossing a canal I had my first experience with that "Creepy Feeling". The team was spread out and Blonder was across already when I saw light through my NVGs coming from the open door of a house about 60 yards to our left. A couple of dogs had been barking for 40 minutes as we worked our way through the area. I could hear my guys trying to quietly get through the canal but there was the cracking of dry brush that could not be helped. My throat went dry and my stomach felt like I was heading down a tall roller coaster as I heard some kind of weapon being loaded and before I could think a single shot range out. It was so close that Ridings later told me he thought it was me shooting at a dog with my suppressor (which is actually loud as hell and basically useless). As we spent more time here I would learn the area we were in is considered a hotbed of activity right now. Was it a bad guy who heard us or a simple farmer trying to scare away whatever he heard and make his dogs stop barking? What would you do? Light up the dark with indiscriminate gunfire and kill possible innocent people? You're tired, cold, wet and you've been awake for the last 20 hours planning and patrolling...you have about 30 second to make a decision. Blonder already had his sniper rifle out. My guys held tight and it was my call. All around us was wide open farm field except for the canal we were in. To the right a few hundred meters was another house that was lit up like a Christmas tree with another pack of dogs barking. There were some thick trees 500 meters to the west. With shaking hands I got on comm and called for Apaches to cover us as we moved into the only wooded area I could see. The birds were on station in ten minutes but it felt like an eternity. As they came overhead they ID'd my mark and stayed with me on the radio as we moved across the open field. They were awesome and hovered right over the house then asked if that was the place. As we got into the woods I heard another shot from our unfriendly farmer and two bursts of automatic fire from the south west. I had the birds do a wide sweep then come back around so I could hear what was going on in the night. They stayed as long as they could and when they signed off it was around three in the morning. We were soaked and freezing. We got our comm up and passed our reports. We were fucked as far as terrain went. To our east we were boxed in by the Tigres. Our cover was a simple overgrown orchard with many trails running through it. All around us were wide open farm fields. The Hadji prayers started at 0450. Blonder and I decided to move the team into some slight ditches before sunrise and I had everybody pack up their shit so we could move in a hurry if we had to. As the sun came up we saw our first Hadji come through the area. I've done enough surveillance over the last 13 years to know when it's being done on me. It started with one guy just walking along a trail maybe 30 meters from us.
Within a half hour we all had seen enough to know they were working a pattern on us. Four guys with shovels would walk by on one side only to come right back on another side a minute later. Once again I was on comm passing what I saw. We never ID'd weapons. The type of people who were watching us started to change too. Instead of scraggly farmer types we started seeing nice clean looking guys in track suits walking real close (within 20 feet) all the while trying real hard not to look directly at us. I would be whispering on the comm and I could tell how close they were by looking at Blonder. I would ask without talking "How Close" as another one came by and he would look and just make a face and lower his head. I wanted to get some pictures or film of what was going on because I was going to call for emergency extract and I knew I would need to explain myself. I only got one quick picture of Blonder looking at a Hadji.
Yerkes and Ridings got a positive ID on a track suit guy who was carrying something small and black with an antenna on it. Our count was around 15-20 different Hadjis all around our immediate position when the final straw was a motherfucker about 55 with a grey man dress on and a white beard. He had a huge knot on his forehead too. How did I get such a good look? Because the bastard walked right up to where Ando was sitting and looked at me then walked down the trail. That was it for me. I told the higher ups we were in trouble and we were leaving. They sent us an extract bird and a mixed section of choppers to cover the area. Once again they were there quick but time has a way of going so slow in a situation like that. The birds ID'd us as we moved through the brush to a hasty extract zone. The old fucker with the knot on his head was standing on a trail by the hasty LZ we extracted from. There were other Hadjis around and they were doing their best to pretend like we didn't exist (just like the fuckers that had been walking all over our position). Even as a Huey dropped smoke right next to them to mark the zone they continued to hoe the field as if nothing was going on. That old fucker just smoked and looked right at me as we ran past him. Blonder gave him the finger. The 46 pilot who landed in the zone was great and as the bird touched down it blew the old fucker's man dress right off of him. We made it back to base where I knew the questions would be waiting for me. There is a type of person who sits behind high walls in a safe, sandbagged building and passes judgment in hindsight on people like me. Certain individuals who criticize my decisions and actions yet they have never done anything but sit behind a desk and watch a radio while they sip coffee. All that matters is that we got back in one piece with some actual Intel for the higher ups. In the weeks that followed we would do a hit on a house in the same area and I would find myself helping to haul off belligerent young Hadjis that were part of the local terrorist cell wearing clean track suits and staring at me with unmistakable hatred.
As I started walking around the base we're on it wasn't hard to find vehicles with bullet holes in them. The Army took pity on us and gave us some up armored HMMVs so we could get from one place to another and actually have a chance of surviving. The area we're working in has IEDs found on the main road every day. The grunts got mortared at a check point on the road and in the field where they were patrolling. The area is littered with all kinds of things to remind me it's still a war zone.
Day and night EOD is always disarming little surprises like this along the route we drive everyday. I've never gotten used to hearing the bomb tech in my vehicle say "We just pulled 3 IEDs out of this spot yesterday" as we drive by. Before we punch out on jobs there is always a report of something that just got discovered. Sometimes while we're out we hear that there was something discovered right as we left and we have to adjust the way we come back in. On our very first town job the convoy we were in got hit up front on the way back to base. The explosion was loud enough that everybody heard it and the mushroom cloud was big and white. We pushed up and I can't begin to explain what it feels like to get out of an armored vehicle after an IED has just fucked one up and look around for the bad guys who did it. The guys who got hit were from Weapons Company and before we left the base the chaplain just happened to give the cross off his collar to a guy in that vehicle and he told the guy to bring it back to him after the job. The gunner had just dropped down in the turret when the bomb went off so they were all OK. The vehicle was done and it got towed back to base . If it had been a hillbilly vehicle I don't even want to think about would have happened to those guys. The chaplain is somewhat of a rock star around here. He was on some chopper that had issues then all of a sudden fixed itself in the air. I had a talk with him and didn't have the heart to ask him to pose for a picture. I snapped this one in the dark as he prayed for our convoy like he always does before we leave the nice safe gates. This is a shot of our gun turret which is officially protected by the chaplain. He doesn't know we did it and I felt stupid asking him to pose by the vehicle for a picture.
One of the things I didn't realize about Hadji was they shoot at us when we're in the air too. One night as we were unloading gear from some choppers I saw a couple tracers go up as the choppers took off. The times we've been in choppers and took pot shots I didn't even know and it's probably better that way. Some of the pilots are awesome. The skipper was on a flight that took fire and the pilots drove right at the assholes and followed them back to their house.
I have one funny story that helps explain the difference between the Army and the Marine Corps. One day EOD blew off a big clean up shot outside the back gate. They didn't tell anybody. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion that shook the whole base. I was talking to the skipper on the road by our barracks and I heard it break windows in the buildings around us. The skipper didn't miss a beat. He kept talking and barely glanced in the direction of the mushroom cloud forming in the distance. We bust his balls about his broken bones from all the fights he's been in but he's absolutely fearless. I learned later that in the chow hall all the Army and civilian people jumped under the tables in absolute terror and every fucking jarhead in the place grabbed their guns and ran outside. No fucking clue what they were going to do but maybe there was something to shoot at. That's the attitude that kicked the shit out of Hadji in Fallujah and Najaf and Hadji remembers it well. God bless all my friends who suffered in 120 degree heat and spent 9 month in this shithole letting Hadji know he could not kill our friends without paying dearly for it. The desert palm telegraph travels fast and they know Marines are here. Marines just being near the area have caused things to slack off a little. Some of the Iraqi National Guard guys still wear masks because so many of them get killed, sometimes by their own family members simply for doing their jobs.
I regard this place the same way I regard the ramp of an airplane that I'm about to jump out of. What the fuck am I going to do? Worry about it? If shit is meant to be there isn't much I can do to change it. I have a job to do. A job I've trained at for a long time and I have men around me who are better, stronger and smarter than me that put their balls on the chopping block just like me every day. As always I have found a way to get the same guitar I've taken all over the world in here and played one night for the hell of it. We've been real busy and if we haven't been doing one mission we've been planning for another one. All the people who fucked with us on ship have backed off because they have their own things to worry about but they are waiting with baited breath to fuck with us some more as soon as we get back on ship. I don't think they comprehend how many short timers are in this MEU. It should be an interesting ride back. I can only imagine what will happen when they finally let these bastards loose for libbo in a place besides Hadji land.
One thing that never seems to change is the bullshit I deal with from certain admin jackasses who have a death grip on my men's lives in the paperwork department. It was a bad day when the Marine Corps invented Marine Online and MyPay. Now instead of getting a piece of paper every month that tells me and my men how much leave we have on the books or what money the Marine Corps took from us this time, the standard answer I get from certain admin fuckers is "Check your Mypay account online". Yeah, I'll get right on that tough guy....we've got one computer for 27 guys and it never works. The network is always down. On top of that you can die of old age before the MyPay website will come up. Not all admin people are like that but the ones that are just make me want to throw a flash bang in their office before I come in so I can get them off their outlook messenger chat sessions and talk to me like a person. I take it all in stride and just smile while I feel like a total jackass. Half the time I'm dead tired and in between missions. I just want an answer to my guy's admin issues, not a fucking smart ass comment about checking MyPay online. At this point if I did go off on one of these people what are they going to do? Fuck up my paperwork and pay? Shit they do that all the time anyway. When I get back to the big PX some new admin smart ass in my parent unit will take over fucking my shit up where these guys left off while simultaneously telling me I'm spoiled and bitching about nothing because I "Make all that extra money anyways!"
I brought my field stove and enjoy my little rituals like my tea and cigar at night. It's just like home except for intermittent gunfire outside the walls and the occasional explosion. There's even a cat to bother me that hangs out in the building. I miss my old lady and she sends me pics from home to check out like this one by looking at this picture it's not hard to figure out which little psychotic furry demon recently took a shit in the kitchen sink. I've been sick since I got here and it's always fun to amuse myself in the shitter reading the graffiti as I pass a lot of time in there dealing with Hadji Bootie. The Army takes graffiti to a new level. According to the shitters there seems to be a number of people on this base who would like to "Fuck the living shit out of"... "Donkey kick".... or "Take a shit on the chest" of some chick named Hansen because apparently she likes it like that.
Recently I decide to just let caution to the wind, scare women and children and drop down to my shorts and let my "Fish Belly White" pasty body cook in the sun while I drank hot coffee and smoked a Cuban cigar in the blazing morning sun Why not? I'm sure it's not real healthy but IEDs aren't too healthy either. I haven't PT'd for a month and I don't give a shit. There are guys in the platoon who think this isn't shit. They have been through much worse in the war. I'm no war hero, I'm no bad ass. I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut. I have nothing to gage this experience off of. This is what I've seen and done, told as objectively and honestly as possible. Maybe I'm a pussy, maybe I'm a jackass. As always I don't give a shit either way as long as we all get back in one piece with all our fingers and toes. Age has mellowed me out and I see things from a different perspective than most of the men in my platoon who are easily ten years younger than me. I can't wait to get back to my old lady. I can't wait to watch our half breed kids grow up and I can't wait to watch my crazy cat jump off the wall chasing a piece of 550 cord.
As long as there are people on this earth there will be individuals somewhere trying to kill each other. This is my job and I've always regarded it as an honour and a duty to those who have gone before me but I will be moving on when I get back to the land of the big PX. War will never move on. You may not like it but it's a reality and men like these amazing individuals I walk amongst daily are not only a necessity, they are a rarity and everyone of them deserves the utmost respect and courtesy. A blowjob from a really dirty woman wouldn't hurt either.
Now I have to go, I've spent too long writing this and there's another mission coming down. Some kid sent me an email about the web page and said he was headed this way soon. He asked for any advice. All I could think to say was, "Be Safe"
Link (http://www.jimmystare.com/)