Hello, Mr. Flash Bang!

Flash Bangs are essentially grenades without the shrapnel. Lots of sound and light with little to sear through any of your tender bits. Lest anyone get the wrong kind of idea, it is definitely not a good idea to hold on to one of these whilst it makes the pretty colors or noises, but you can be relatively close to it with little harm. They will scare the bejeezus out of you, even if you are expecting it, though.

My first experiences with these neat little devices came in training. Towards the end of one of my work-ups, we had the opportunity to do some simunition training with them. Simunition is basically 9mm paintball-on-crack, but that is entirely another story.

One memorable incident was when I had the opportunity to watch one squad leader develop the mother of all attack plans, violating the KISS principle that I had already learned the hard way. Naturally, everything went awry just about at the word 'go'.

The plan (as I understood it) was that the base of fire would lay down covering fire while the assault elements would take up positions around the building. With not enough radios, the squad leader would coordinate with the base element, and they would begin throwing 'grenades'. As soon as the flash-bangs went off, the base element would cease fire, and the assault team would make entry. [Mistake #1, probably a better idea to have the actual assault team toss the flashbangs]

What happened was that the three different assault elements discovered that there was only one way to access the building [Mistake #2, Intell? We don't need no stinkin' intell!]. That way was currently being 'covered' by the base of fire team, so it was a no-go. Therefore, the three elements congregated in a nice tight group right in one of the kill zones of the building [Mistake #- Aw, heck, you get the picture]. The instructors started tapping Marines on the head, screaming 'SNIPER, YOU JUST GOT SHOT, ASSHOLE!!! LAY DOWN!'.

Squad leader, realizing that this was somewhat less than ideal, tried to establish communication with the base of fire element by waving his arms. Those guys, recognizing the pre-arranged signal, started chucking the flash bangs. The assault elements started taking flash bangs to their group, and attempted to force their way into the building. The instructors were pissing themselves with amusement at the picture definition of the phrase, 'goat rope'.

Sheeeit, I would never be caught in THAT situation....


When we got in country, the unit there before us had a few established standard operating procedures. They ran a lot of convoy ops, stayed mainly on the road, and didn't worry about civilian traffic in the convoy. They had never really been hit by a suicide vehicle-born improvised explosive device (SVBIED). After some new intel, a couple of bad days, and a little common sense, we figured to put a stop to civilian vehicles weaving in and out of our convoys, but we needed a way to communicate with the locals, and a means to discourage the stubborn and the stupid.

We started to talk to the local imams and mayors, telling them to pass the word that we would not allow civilians to approach our convoys. We also started handing out pamphlets in English, Arabic, and in pictures for the locals to stay away from us when we were on the road.

After a while, the new SOP became standard, and most in the area would avoid getting too close. Eventually, some info from another area drifted to our ears. Someone was passing the word that if local-Joe was driving along lost in his own thoughts, a way to get his attention and strongly suggest that he keep away from us was with flares and flash bangs.

They managed to get EVERYONES attention.

We wrote it into our SOPs for machine gunners. If a vehicle approaches too quickly, or at a high rate of speed, make every effort to; signal for them to stop with hand and arm signals or verbal commands. Shoot flares or flash-bangs. Use your weapons. Everyone was very clear that everything other that opening fire on a suspicious vehicle was if there was enough time.

There were more than a few memorable incidents with the flares and flashbangs. It definitely get the heart going pitter-patter when you watch one of your vehicles turn a corner or crest a hill when all of a sudden, you hear BOOOOM!!!! Every damn time I thought that they had hit another IED, but it would usually turn out to be that the gunner had to throw a flash bang.

At one (yeah, *snort*, just one) intersection there were these little children that always came running out to beg for candy. 'Meester, meester, candy meester!!!' Those little buggers could run pretty fast, too. Marines would sometimes save candies or unwanted MRE components to give to the them.

One afternoon there was not enough time to stop to chat with the kiddos, we had to blaze home for some reason or the other. Approaching the intersection, I was on the radio with higher, and keeping an eye out so that we didn't squish any of the crumb snatchers. Running at an angle to the hummer was this really pretty little Iraqi girl, begging for candy. 'what the hell, might as well', I thought to myself as I extended the half-eaten bag of M&Ms to her. My gunner atop the Hummer had a higher perspective and was able to spot a vehicle seemingly disregarding all of the other stopped traffic to approach us from the cross road at a high rate of speed. Just enough time to do something, but apparently not enough time to advise me, he shot off a flare...and a flash bang or two.


Flares make a really loud whooshing sound, especially when the sound is reflected off of the turret armor.


Girl - Meester, Meester!!!

Me - Here you go, salaam!

Girl - Thank you meester, than-

WHOOOOOSHBOOOOMM!!!!

Me - Fuck Me! RPG!! RPG!!

Girl - AAAaaahhhh!!!

Me - Aaaaaahhhh... .... ....?


Remember how I mentioned that we were approaching the intersection?

Well, after the gunner tossed everything he had up there, we had just enough time to get to the intersection before the second and third flash bangs went off...at a distance of about 3 feet from my door.

It had the desired effect, in that it got noticed by EVERYBODY, and the driver of the civilian vehicle decided that it might be a good idea to stop lest the Marines stop being so nice.

I'm for the moment blind and deaf, the gunner is about 1/10000 of an ounce of trigger pressure away from making this guy have a Really Bad Day, and the little girl is probably traumatized for life. I didn't even mind screaming exactly like that little girl, I was just happy it wasn't actually an RPG.

Dating Follies: A Continuing Saga...

Early one evening, sitting at home navel gazing, when-

*briing...briing...*

Aha! Somebody loves me!

ME: [muy suave] 'Lo?

Kinda Hot, Definitely a Little Bit Freaky, and Currently Available Girl (KHDLBFCAG): Hey! You're home! Listen, *giggle* I was having a little get-together tonight, and um...

This was where I started to have delusions of grandeur. I knew that this meant that my days of hopelessly making an ass of myself in new and creative ways were OVER! Heck, they're calling me up now, baby....

KHDLBFCAG: ... knew you were a bartender, so I was wondering if you knew how to make a White Russian?

ME: Da, of course... [starting my saunter...] What you're gonna need is vodka, Kahlua, & cream... [wandering by the mirror, looking at that handsome devil, ... and me!] Of course you have all the ice, glasses, and whatnot, right?

KHDLBFCAG: Yup! Great, got it! Thanks, bye sweetie!

*click*


...




.....





?!?



Crap.

A Funny Feeling In My Tummy

So, Iraq can be a dangerous place, at times.

Pipe down y'all!

It can be made more... interesting at times, due to the nature of the mission at hand.


There are things that you do in the interest of lessening some of that danger, or at the very least to lessen the consequences of the wort possible scenario. A big part of planning for the worst was distribution of... everything.


Ammo was divided just about equally, save for those vehicles that at times had the only particular type of larger weapon.

We had two guys on our squad that had been volunteer firefighters in a previous life. As tight as they were, they understood my decision to separate them into different vehicles, and not seated with the doc.

Noncoms were distributed amongst the vehicles, not just for the leadership value, but for the continuation of the squad's chain of command, just in case.

Every vehicle had stretchers, fire extinguishers, and tow chains/straps. (Not if, but when...)


Because we were in vehicles, we had the advantage of the thought that if there was something worth putting in one vehicle, chances were pretty good that we could beg/borrow/acquire/pilfer/appropriate/etc. that same item for the other Hummers, without a great likelyhood that we would have to hump our gear back to the FOB.


Dangerous Missions.

I don't really think there was any other type, really. Indeed, the company probably took more casualties from the everyday 'boring' patrols than the Hollywood sexy raids.

Even the chow hall Dr Pepper raids were dangerous, in their own way.

One of the types of patrols that made life interesting were the escorts. Escorting wasn't too bad, in concept; just fill one boat space, take one or more Bubbas from spot A to spot B. Adding rank to the equation wasn't even as much as an issue as I would have imagined, at least most of the time. A few exceptions aside, most Officers or higher ranking Marines recognized that while they did outrank me, I had the experience. I was always happy to listen to advice, but while out in the middle of something was not the place to play 'Who has the bigger pe-pe' game based upon rank.


So, back to and from the title, what gave me the funny feeling this particular story was not the hot chow from the previous night, nor the food of questionable freshness contained in my last care package (Thanks, Mom!). The source was the higher ups (up to and including the Company Commanding Officer) riding along with my squad.

I wasn't afraid of my guys 'getting caught' doing something wrong, or at least not too much. My guys might have gotten me into some stuff when in the rear, but outside the wire, for the most part, they were good to go and did their job. I wasn't even afraid of the Staff or Os finding something wrong in my tactics. I'm one of those types that know there is always something to improve, and welcome criticism on just about anything I do.

What did kind of bother me was that we would have a good portion of the Company's chain of command contained within one squad, for most of one afternoon. This is not an everyday occurrence, and for good reason.

I don't care how hot one squad is, we all know that anything can happen, at anytime, for any reason.

I think there is a law about that somewhere...

At least the C.O. was agreeable to distributing the Staff NCOs and Officers amongst my vehicles. He did insist on taking out another vehicle, and while it wasn't in the greatest shape and would require some creative maintenance and squad personnel distribution, it would add another platform for a big gun.

The reason that the chain was riding along with us was that, if I remember correctly, an Officer was returning to Iraq from the States. He had had either a really bad day and/or a really lucky moment some time earlier, and after the recovery and ok from the docs, was cleared to rejoin the company. He was a great guy, and everyone wanted to get in on the welcome back party.

Everything went fine on the pick up, he was looking good, all got to ooh and ahh over his new scars, and word got passed regarding the guys here and the guys already sent home for recovery. As an added bonus, we even got some how chow out of the deal. Score!

Naturally, this meant that the return trip would get interesting. Sure enough, one of the Hummers died on the return trip.

Give ya a clue as to which one, it wasn't one of my regular Hummers, and was added to my squad just before the patrol...

I had in my squad a couple of tinkerers of the automotive inclination, and those guys could do wonders under a hood. I'm not the most mechanically minded type (stop laughing, you!), but I knew enough to know that if my two vehicle yodas were at a loss for why a vehicle was down, you might as well put a bullet in her and call it a day.

After enough of a delay, I had enough and told my guys that we would tow the dead vehicle to the FOB. It was about this time that the C.O told me that he was going to have a spitball meeting in his vehicle on the remainder of the return trip.

I thought that he was talking about getting together with another Officer. When I realized that in one vehicle (the one getting towed!) we would have numerous Staff NCOs and Officers, driving down the road popularly known as 'the gauntlet' for it's isolation and number of enemy activities, to me, that's the equivalent to thumbing one's nose at Lord Murphy (never a good idea, especially with my squad).

I wandered over to where the First Sergeant was, scowling at pretty much... everything. Nodding over in the direction of the C.O.'s hummer, I asked him, "Hey, Fir'Sergeant... uh, you heard about-" He turned his glare to me and responded with, "Yup".

I don't remember the exact words, but we had a brief conversation regarding who would be the likely candidates to fill the leaderships' spots after what was generally agreed upon as too much temptation for the cruel gods of convoy ops.

Gear Issues

Some lessons learned over the years, as related to gear:


Cold weather + old sleeping bag + rain = Catastrophic Bag Failure

New, high-speed, water-proof sleeping bags, aren't.

New, high-speed, water-proof sleeping bags do a heck of a job keeping water in, once wet.

New, high-speed, water-proof sleeping bags are a mother to carry on a hump, when wet.

Any new pack (MOLLE *cough, cough*) that comes with a video tape to demonstrate assembly is a bad sign of things to come.

When your pack's frame (MOLLE *cough, cough*) snaps EVERY. FRIGGIN'. TIME. you take off the pack, that too, is a bad sign.

The camouflage pattern on military packs is so good, it gets lost on the return flight to the states.

Newer, larger packs can fit more (and heavier) stuff. This is painfully demonstrated on the first hump with the new pack.

When it take more than one Marine to lift one pack, you might want to revise the gear list.

Bees can fit in the water tube of a camel back.

Bees do not taste good.

Camouflage nets are attracted to uniform buttons. And rifles.

New boots have no place anywhere near humps.

OJ and vodka are not officially authorized liquids for use in issued canteens.

Everyone will have Hollywood Sexy gear compared to your own.

Military vehicles can be repaired with zip ties, boot bands, duct tape, and curses.

Issued tents do a decent job of keeping some bugs out.

Issued tents do an amazing job of keeping body stank in.

When driving military vehicles through mud, the red-neck from Texas is a great asset.

ALL vehicles can get stuck in mud. Even when driven by red-necks from Texas.

You can snap rifle hand guards on your shin. It's not highly recommended, though.

As a general rule, new field gear will inevitably be larger, heavier, and less field-worthy than the perfectly good, well used, and definitely older stuff you had to turn in.

Be happy with the newer, larger, heavier, and less field worthy stuff you just got issued lest you get issued even newer, larger, heavier, and less field worthy crap for your troubles.

Deadly force is authorized for use against the PFC who asks the Platoon Sergeant if X item of gear needs to be carried on the hump. (This was usually gas masks, but on occasion was items more cumbersome, heavy, or actually unneeded for the remainder of the field training.)

If given a choice, the amount of cold weather gear left in the rear will have a direct effect on the amount of drastic drop in temperature during the night. (More gear in the rear, more of a drop)

Bringing excessive cold weather or rain gear is the only way to guarantee that it wont be needed.
It will also almost surely tack on another 4 to 5 miles to the hump.

The better the temperature when in the rear during the days leading up to a field training op, the worse it will be in the field.

Cultural Differences, Suspicions, and A Song

Think this is going to be a long one, so pop the top, kick back, and get comfy. Drinks should be good until 'Suspicions'. Hope you like bathroom and ass-humor...


Cultural Differences.

Before we left, we had numerous classes on the cultural differences that we could expect to see in country.

Much of it we already knew more or less, like the position of women in the social structure, bathroom practices, and inadvertently insulting a host by refusing gifts. Most of was details, such as never look at, speak to, or even acknowledge a woman or girl unless specifically introduced or okayed by a male family member. Of course, it was made clear that mission came first and if it came down to it we would have to deal with them, but when it came to females, they made sure that we took every precaution and made every effort to be sensitive to their culture. Other specifics was that if we were offered food or chay (a sweet tea served quite hot), we should thank them profusely and if we could, offer them some food in return... with the right hand, lest we offer any (additional) insult.

The instructors also mentioned personal space. It is a common practice there that if a man and woman are walking down a dirt road, the man will be in front and the woman, behind (because we all know that the ladies never do a booty check). If two guys are walking together, often times you might see them holding hands, or walking arm in arm. They stressed that this was not anything unusual to the rural Iraqi, but just a sign of friendship. They also told us that if they saw any Marines walking hand in hand, it was too late to get out of the deployment, so don't even try it... Seriously though, the concept of personal space to the average Iraqi (like many others, actually) is a lot more close than one is used to here in the States.

They told us about little things like removing your shades before initiating a conversation, or leaving them on if you were a part of a security detail (this might signify to the locals that you were not the one to talk to, they should look for the designated 'talker'). They stressed learning small Arabic phrases, 'thank you, food, water, yes, no', and the like. Have some candy for the kiddos, but make sure that they aren't helping themselves to your pack when your back is turned. They told us the kids were very inquisitive, friendly, and some of them would speak decent English. They noted that if the kids ran away when we arrived in a village, that was never a good sign, or a really good sign that word had gotten out that the Marines were about to get hit and that all children should make themselves scarce.

They told us that most of the stuff we were learning in the pre-deployment work up was to be considered a sort of guide-line, and that we would learn the details when we got to our actual deployment site, from the guys that we replaced.



The Forward Operating Base.

Once we had been in country for a few months and pretty much gotten ourselves situated, we would up at a Forward Operating Base (FOB). The FOB was also an Iraqi National Guard (ING) training center. I'll go into some of the details of the particular adventure that was training Iraqi soldiers at another time. For now just note that the FOB was a small little outpost situated next to a decidedly unfriendly town. Another way of saying this was that our FOB was well within reach of rockets and mortars.

Living with Iraqi solders was an interesting experience. We would eat chow with them, practice one anothers language, and on occasion, train & do missions. We were not the primary point of contact when it came to training the ING, that was left to other Marines, but we did have our moments.

I was able to see that the soldiers were a lot like many of the other nations soldiers, sailors, marines, and commandos that I had trained with before. A lot of differences, of course, but much in common.



Suspicions.

As the FOB didn't have running water more than a slight trickle, someone had set up port-a-johns at various locations. The hills and Hesco barriers (think huge, mesh, sand-boxes) protected the johns from incoming, 'cause who wants to arrive at the pearly gates not from the glories of the battlefield, but the indignity of dying on the shitter?


One day a turd was noticed, not in the port-a-john reservoir, but on the shelf supporting the seat.


This was a delicate situation.


Most knew that the Iraqi solders naturally squatted when... taking care of business, and some suggested that one might have thought that the proper procedure was to secure the door, climb up on the seat, squat down, and do their thing. Improper 'sight alignment, sight picture' could possibly account for why the turd missed it's intended target. I don't know if anything was communicated the first time, probably just cleaned up and brushed out of mind.

When the poos continued to make their appearance, well, something needed to be done.

The first thing that happened was humor, of course.

Walking into the command center to get a brief for my next patrol, I noticed that the Administrative bubbas had treated the mystery of the shitters as a mission intel 'dump'. Someone had taken photos of the offending deposit, posted it up on the wall, and included it in the incoming data information table. With a pen, some had likewise created an 8-digit grid, including the likely Point Of Origin (POO, get it?) and Point of Impact (POI). Like some of the BOLOs (Be On LookOut) that we had running around in the neighboring villages, the Mad Bomber, the Rocket Man, etc. whomever was doing the dirty deed needed a name. I'm not sure who suggested it, but 'The Mad Shitter' was suggested, and it... uh, stuck (Har!).

I think this time the Gunny, prompted by the CO, wandered over to his counterpart in the ING and suggested that the ING Soldiers might take a little more care when in the johns.

A done deal, right?

Riiiiight.

After another deposit, the CO was starting to get pissed. There were rumors of securing the heads at certain times, or placing a guard on them, 24/7.

Late one night or early one morning, we returned to the FOB from another uneventful patrol. We were driving lights out and with our NVGs, so when we pulled around the FOB to hit the fuel station, I noticed a curious sight. I saw what looked like a number of chem lights suspended in the air in a circle around the shitters.

I told my driver to stop, instructed my second to get the vehicles cleaned and fueled up, and the Marines started on weapons maintenance. I told him I was going to check out the shitters, go do the debrief, and get some word on our next patrol.

Walking up to the johns, I noticed that there was one Marine, just kind of hanging out, like.

He was the shit-house guard.

No shit, neither.

As I approached, he gave me the greeting, asked 'One or Two?'. Apparently, the johns now had designations, for ease of guardianship. I politely inquired, WTF? He informed me that the Mad Shitter had stuck again, the CO was pissed, and his platoon had mounted a guard, indefinitely. All persons had to have the guard inspect the johns post use for the time being.

At the risk of repeating myself, WTF?

I did my business (damn that evil MRE Cheese!), got my port-a-john inspected, and continued on with the plan of the day.

Despite the barbed wire, armed guards, and inspections, the Mad Shitter somehow struck again.

This was when he became somewhat of a... not quite a folk hero, but there was definitely a sense of respect for the drive of whatever nasty sumbitch it was, doing the dirty deed against all odds.

Odes were written, lyrics were created, whispered suggestions as to the identity of the culprit (or culprits?) were bandied about. It was a work in progress, for a while, because...


The Army (God Bless'em, everyone of those stinkin' buggers) had decided to install shower tents at the FOB. We had gone for so long without decent regular showers that when they started to set up tents and the rumor spread that we would actually have hot showers soon, I instantly took back every bad thing I had ever said, thought, suggested, insinuated, spray painted, joked about, etc about the fine organization that is the most honorable United States Army. I have never been more excited about washing my crack, that's for sure. That lasted for all of two days, but it was memorable because...

After the excitement of the shower tents wore off... yup, you guessed it, the Mad Shitter stuck again.

This kind of pissed me off. No, when the shower tents were secured (closed for use, as punishment), that really did piss me off. There were those however, that continued to admire the guts (courage, not what they produced) of that sneaky, dirty, bastard with Ninja-like prowess of the night that was the Mad Shitter.

The final product, more or less, of the admiration of the Marines to the still-unknown Mad Shitter, battling the forces of decency, basic cleanliness, risking the ire of all Staff NCOs and Os, and escaping under the cover of darkness to continue the fight another day, went something like the following.

The Mad Shitter
(sung to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home")

The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
The C.O.s pissed and he's gonna find out,
who's been shitting around and about.
And the Corporal says we'll see him,
never again, no more!


The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
Well he left a pile, steaming hot.
When he gets caught, he's gonna get shot.
And the Sergeant says we'll see him,
never again, no more!


The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
He dinna' come to steal and loot,
only to leave a wee lil' poot.
And the Staff says we'll see him,
never again, no more!


The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
The wire is laid and the guard is set,
the house is open, taking bets.
And the Gunny says we'll see him,
never again, no more!


The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
In the middla night and past the guard,
he left his stinky calling card.
And the Cap'n says we'll see him,
never again, no more!


The Mad Shitter struck again today,
Hoorah, Hoorah! (x2)
Well he shit in the showers
and now they're secured.
No more bathing on account of a turd.
And we all say we'll see him,
NEVER AGAIN! NO MORE!

Amazingly enough, I don't suspect that that one is ever going to realize inclusion on the military music CDs or cadence call rolls anytime (ever) in the future...

Humps, Creative Motivation, and Patience

Popeye was this one Marine that developed my near superhuman patience. His name here is Popeye, because that is what he looked like. He had mentioned once that his Drill Instructors, noticing the resemblance, had given him standing orders to do the Popeye laugh on command, for the entirety of boot camp. He could do it pretty good, too.

I don't really remember meeting Popeye for the first time, it just kinda seemed that he was catching hell from the beginning. He wasn't a shit-bird (our name for the Pvt. Pyles of real life), but he had his moments. Good hearted, a little bit naive, a nice guy deep down, but the boy could seriously test my patience at times. A number of times...

One of his particularly memorable moments came during a training hump.

During the course of this particular hump, I found myself in the standard situation. We, as the crew-served weapons platoon were at the rear of the formation. I guess it was meant to shame any riflemen that fell beck far enough to see us suffering under the weight of additional crew-served weapons components. Being at the rear also meant that as the formation naturally contracted and expanded while traveling the back roads and dirt trails, we found ourselves fast-walking or actually jogging down the trails in our effort to stay up with the rest of the company and maintain proper platoon dispersion.

With the condition that we were in (tired), the pace of the hump (kinda fast), and the additional weight (Ung!), it wasn't long before a few Marines began to fall back. I would then slow down until the platoon passed me up and I was on line with the Marine lagging. I would then take his additional weight and advise him that I was going to run to the front of the formation. I figured that if I could run faster than him, with his assigned additional weight and mine, I would then store said additional weight in his butt-hole.

The guy falling behind would usually find the motivation to get to the front, at least just before I did. I would then give him his stuff back, caution him about falling back again, and then go back to the rear to do it all over, with someone else.

Sometimes I would mess with any riflemen that had fallen back. These were the guys that were usually not carrying anything more than a full pack and their rifle.

I would start this by running one of my Marines up to the front of the platoon, hand them back the mortar tube or base plate, and then just... stop.

The platoon would keep on marching.

Just about everybody knew what I did on the humps, so nobody thought I was slacking off or falling back. When the platoon was a little bit up the road, you could see individual Marines that had fallen back from twisted ankles or poor conditioning, struggling to keep up. I would wait until I could see the last Marine from my platoon, or the vehicle that would always trail the hump formation (if one fell back far enough, you had to get in the vehicle. This was only sometimes legit if you had actual bone sticking out of your body. Anything less than that... stand by, the Gunny wants a few words with your poor, pathetic, soon to be dead ass.) As my last bubba would pull up along side with me, I would hold out my hands, and they would hand off their component(s). We would begin to jog to the front of the formation. As we would pass other Marines, I would offer words of encouragement to the other weapons platoons Marines, talk some trash to other guys playing the part of motivators, or down right threaten guys who were continuously falling back. As we would pass some of the riflemen, I would quickly grab another mortar component or two (or three) and run past him, not saying a word, just giving him the stare down as I jogged past him carrying a full pack, one 81mm mortar tube flung over the top of my neck, a base plate in one hand, and with the hand used to balance the tube, an A-bag dangling for extra effect. I would glare from under the mortar tube forcing my head down at his little pack, rifle,.... (and nothing else) and just snort. Sometimes, it actually motivated them enough to speed up and catch back up with their platoon.


Towards the end of the hump, everyone was hurting. The amount of time needed to run people up to the front of the platoon had greatly increased, and I was sucking wind. Falling back once again, I noticed Popeye and another Marine trading off a mortar component. At first I thought that perhaps Popeye had fallen back to help out his team-mate, like I was doing. On another pass I realized that while that might have been the original intent, they were both now falling back more and more. I then fell in step with them and took the mortar part, to help them out.

At this point in the hump there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to run, a fast walk was about all I had in my tank. It was usually at this time of any hump where you just had to grit it out, take it one step at a time, and keep moving. Thankfully, the pace of the whole unit had slowed to that of a casual stroll, albeit one with a full pack, feet fulla blisters, and sleep deprivation.

As we approached the outskirts of the base, everyone began to pick up the pace, in anticipation of finishing this damn hump.

Crap.

Needing to rest my shoulders, neck, and just about everything else, I look at the other Marine. This guy barely looked alive, just plodding along. When I turned to Popeye to see if he could spell me, but he was nowhere in sight. I actually stopped and turned around to see if he had passed out on the road and nobody had noticed as we were literally at the ass end of everything. Where the hell had he gone?

As I did this I heard Popeye, from THE FRONT OF THE PLATOON FORMATION start yelling out "Come on, Cpl., get up here!! You can do it! Don't quit on me now!!!"

The little fucker had left us, literally, in the dust.

When I had taken the mortar piece and slung it over my shoulder he had taken off like a shot. No more extra weight for him!

As he was trying to 'motivate' me to get back with the rest of the formation, one Marine tripped (or passed out and died, whatever) and went flying. As his mortar, weapon, and/or miscellaneous crap hit the deck, a number of my buddies confessed to me that they heard the sound and had a mental picture of me listening to Popeye, finally snapping, and just throwing my shit down so I could free up my hands to strangle the little bastard.

Hmm, a pleasant daydream at times, sure....

Old Farts & A Tribute

Helluva post about bars & their workers, buddies, and the memories they would create here.


"But when we came ashore on liberty, we would rub shoulders with some of the finest men we would ever know, in bars our mothers would never have approved of. Saloons that live in our memories forever."


Pretty much sums up the majority of my thoughts on bars & buddies. Makes me think I should take up blogging about underwater basket weaving or something...

Bull in the Ring

When grunts are hanging out with nothing in particular to do, they tend to get into some trouble. Just one of those unwritten laws of the universe, I suppose.

'Bull in the Ring' was something that we used to fill that time.

Essentially, it is just modified ass-kicking. The platoon will form a circle and a predetermined number of Marines will get into the 'ring'. At first, the objective was to physically toss your opponent(s) from the ring, but as the Corps got more into the martial arts, winning or losing started to be reflected in if one guy tapped out, passed out, or it looked like someone might be killed.

We were able to rationalize this by saying it was not outside the realm of possibility that Marines might have to use some sort of hand to hand, especially when the situation, for whatever reason, does not call for utilizing a .50 on gramps, during some sort of riot or something.

In the beginning, there really wasn't too many guys with traditional fighting/training experience, so myself and some others were defacto teachers. We basically had it covered, I would teach most of the chokes and small joint manipulation, there was a guy with some really good grappling skills, and one kick-boxer in the group. I really liked getting my ass kicked by the wrestler, because I always learned something neat. Painful, but neat. The kick boxer on the other hand, was just painful.


One afternoon out in the field, the Platoon Sergeant decided that we needed training in how to properly construct a mortar pit. With the issued entrenching tools. In the middle of the friggin' summer.

Joy.

To explain, a mortar pit is ideally dug out with a backhoe/bulldozer. It needs to be fairly large, with a number of characteristics to prepare for the possibility of all kinds of nasty situations. By hand, you will be digging roughly... forever, especially with the foldable, around three foot long small shovels that you carry in your gear.

The Platoon Sergeant actually had a method to his madness, though. He wanted to tire us out so that when we did get into the ring, we would have to use more technique than brute strength. After roughly 5 hours (the terrain was a bitch!) we finished the pit. The Platoon Sergeant got up on an empty crate and announced the rules for this particular bout. All grappling, no strikes. Chokes are permitted, throws are not. Submission is decided by physical removal from the ring, a tap out, or by the Captain's decision. Anyone can call anyone else out. Limit of 10 Marines in the pit at once (i.e. team vs. team)

Remember that part about anyone can call anyone else out?


The Platoon Sergeant was the first one called out.

The Captain was the second man called out.

The Platoon Sergeant was the third man called out.

The Captain was the fourth man called out.


They were good sports about it and even did pretty good, but before it could get out of hand the Captain decreed that anyone over E-6 only had to fight twice. After some grumblings my team got challenged by another team.

Starting out 4 vs 4, it was a fairly even match. It went back and forth for a while, but eventually Marines got tossed and it came down to one on one, me and 'Conan'. He was a younger guy, and looked like he had spent some time in the gym. Just a wee bit. No traditional training, but he was a quick learner. I was developed like a nine year old girl compared to this guy. By the time it got down to only he and I left in the pit, we had been going for a while so the Captain called a temporary reprieve, told us to get out and rest, and sent some other teams in the ring.

Much sooner than I really would have liked, the other teams were finished and it was time to get back into the ring. Immediately after the re-start, I dropped to my back. He came charging into my guard, and I almost got him in a choke. Not quite able to finish him off, I remembered back in the day getting my ass kicked by this one judo guy, and tried one of his old moves.

Still on my back, with both of our arms tied up at his neck & struggling, I raised my legs, wrapped them high around his ribcage, and SQUEEEEZED.

Now, I have been playing soccer for most of my life, joined the swim team in high school, and was even a fairly good runner, once upon a time. You could say that my legs were pretty strong. This was evidenced by a slight bulging of his eyes and a garbled 'Oh, shit'! His hands went immediately to my legs, but they were not moving an inch.

"Who's the beyotch, now?"

The only problem with the squeeze is that it does take a huge amount of energy to keep doing. It is not actually too common to see someone finish a match this way against someone who has even a little training. As this guy was all gym beef and no mat experience, I figured that I just might pull it off.

He was still struggling, trying to reach behind him to unhook my ankles, but that wasn't working. I could smell the end of the match when he fell over on his side, me still doing my best python impression. He was turning a quite pretty shade of red in the face, but as he was still actively fighting, the match wasn't called. Tap out, you ass! Or die, just do something, my legs can't take much more of this!


Did I mention that this guy spent a lot of time in the gym and what he didn't have in technique he definitely made up in brute strength?


Did I mention that he was supposed to be tired out from digging all day?


In what I can only describe in a 'Oh. Fuck. Me!' move, he gave up on trying to unlock my ankles from around behind his back. Pushing up off of the ground and still making those delightful wheezing noises, he managed to get to his knees... get one foot on the ground... reach up and got a good grab of my cammies lapels, and physically lift me slowly off of the ground, only to SLAM me bodily down on the return trip.

Now we were both in a 'world of shit'.

His face was a quite pretty shade of purple by this time, but I wasn't even really seeing it through all of the pretty tweety birds that were obscuring my vision. I somehow managed to hold on through three more body slams before someone noticed that we were technically on the edge of the ring, and therefore he won the match. When the fight was called, he kinda rolled out from my legs onto the ground, and we just laid there, me breathing heavy & him happy to be breathing again, for the longest time. We were both so physically wiped out that we were pretty much useless for the immediate future.

Moral? Technique is good. Correct technique is better. Sometimes, the best thing is to power through and slam that bastard (moi) hard. Multiple times. Repeat as necessary.



Should have kept going for the choke...

Pucker Factor, Trust, and A Fast Run

Many of the roads in Iraq are old, cracked, and pot-holed. Same with the bridges. In our area this was a result of a combination of old explosives blasts and poor maintenance & repair. If you were out on the road for any amount of time, it got to the point where you developed a great interest in anything out of the ordinary road-wise. Consequently, when I got back to the land of the great PX, I HATED potholes and bridges (too many options for the bad guys to hide stuff). Hell, I saw a wire alongside of the highway and damn near flipped my car!

Anyways, I'm better now, at least that is what the voices tell me!

Driving in and out of the villages one day, Eagle Eye (and no, his last name was not Cherry) called a possible IED. As I was not currently flying through the air, and no other vehicle seemed to be having a Very Bad Day, that usually indicated that he had spotted another one, pre-detonation. This guy was good. Somehow, sitting in the back left seat of a Hummer he was able to talk some shit, man the radio, and spot an IED on the RIGHT side of the bridge!

As my vehicle was just south of the bridge, I deployed the vehicles and Marines in that area, the other Sgt. took the north. I grabbed Mouth, and instructed him to climb to the top of the hill overlooking the road to provide over watch. My orders were, 'when in doubt, interrogate by fire'. The road had been completely blocked off from traffic and people, so anybody in the immediate vicinity besides ourselves was not going to be girl scouts selling cookies or anything. As it was going to be my ass he was covering, I wanted to make sure that he knew that if he felt the slightest inkling that he might need to take the shot, he had my full, unconditional, I'll be your shower-buddy later, support.

From a ways away, I got on the horn with Eagle Eye, and attempted to locate the IED. Couldn't see it. Got some binos...Nada. As I had issued out ACOGs to just about everyone but me and the doc, I moved forward a little bit, borrowed a rifle...same thing, nothing. He described it pretty good, but as his vehicle was now north of the bridge, and the bridge was temporarily out of order, he had to describe it from memory. I was starting to think that this might be a false alarm... I told him to stay on the radio, grab some binos, and talk me onto where he thought he saw the IED.

I really hated to call EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal, or the guys who actually get paid to 'blow shit up') for a false alarm, as I knew that it involved rousting a QRF (Quick Reaction Force, or the guys who besides being on call for 'Oh Shit!' situations, provide security for the EOD team) that just got bedded down. It also involved avoiding some good-natured ribbing, but more importantly, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't the reason that QRF took longer to get somewhere they were actually needed just because I mistook a pillow for a boom-boom.

After checking the hill to make sure that Mouth was in position, I advanced a little closer. Eagle Eye advised me that I was somewhat less gifted than Stephen Hawking, for getting too close. I advised him that today was the day he might have struck out. Never-the-less, I moved to the right side of the road to get a different angle. Still nothing.

The road itself was on a short berm, about 3 or 4 ft high. The shoulders of the road were dirt, and gradually sloped down to the fence-line of some houses. I got up to the piled-rock fence, scanned the shoulders all the way to the bridge and spotted...zip. My spidey-senses were not even twitching, so I got a little bit closer. I was almost to the bridge, and the stream that ran beneath it, when a number of things happened all at once.

All vehicular traffic had been stopped for about 30 minutes by now, and the lines of trucks and cars were starting to back up. A white pick-up with two males approached the area from the north, saw the lines, and decided to take some back roads to avoid the traffic. Before this, the Sgt. north of the bridge had committed a slightly tactical error. When he directed his vehicle to pull off to the left side of the road, it was because it was in a good position. Good fields of fire, a little bit of cover, over all a good choice for employment. When he sent out his dismounts though, he placed them on the right side of the road, in a likewise decent position. The problem was actually the relationship between the vehicle mounted machine-gun and the dismounts, with the road in between.

The pick-up returned to the road, and bypassed the last of the waiting vehicles. Apparently without noticing the numerous Marines armed to the teeth, they continued towards the bridge. The Marines on the bridge were unable to open fire because there were now too many civilians directly behind the pick-up. The Hummer wasn't able to fire because now the truck was directly between the Hummer and the dismounted Marines, who were by that time doing a fairly decent impression of Superman, flying through the air, if only for the short trip to the ditch. They were unable to exit the lane of fire though, before the pick-up was on the bridge.

Meanwhile, I was stumped. I had finished checking out the shoulders and was walking back to my Hummer. I was already planning out the shit-talking I would give Eagle Eye for getting my heart rate up when I happened to glance down. About 6 inches in front of my boot was a little bit of thin, blue and white twirled wire. I must have uncovered it upon my approach. You could just make out the wire as it traveled to the fence and disappeared through a crack near the bottom. Following the trail of the wire to the road, I discovered that I was in the perfect position, the only position really, to see that it traveled up the shoulder, and ended up wired up to the nose cone of a HUGE. FRIGGIN'. ARTY. ROUND. that just barely peeked out from where it had been hidden.

This was professional work. Nothing is Murphy proof, but this was a great job at Murphy-resistant. Fuck-nuts had broken up the road, dug the hole, placed the round, and then like a puzzle arranged the road top back on top of the IED. All you could see was about 3 inches of the top of the round, hidden amongst some rocks and brush. Really, really 'good' job.

It was also at this time that the pick-up was speeding across the bridge. Mouth politely inquired as to the reason why the gents felt that they couldn't stop at the road-block and requested that they stop their vehicle with his USMC issued M-16 universal translator. He never had that much in the way of Arabic classes, but he got his point across quite nicely. They decided it might be a good idea to stop. Of course, it took longer for me to type the words on the screen here that it actually did for me to go from mph 0 to BALLSTOTHEWALL, answering in my own way Eagle Eye's constant questions over the radio of, 'see anything yet?'.


Guess what my motivational war cry was while running? Not that you would have heard it, because I think I actually broke the sound barrier in my run for cover. Not a retreat, mind you, more of a tactical attack to a position of better cover. Or something.


EOD was requested most ricky-tick.


When they got there, the IED was disabled and moved to a safer local for detonation. When they pulled that fucker from the ground, it looked about as long as my leg. Of course, I was watching all this far away, through binos, and behind both Hummers, their expertise be damned.

It had been prepped and ready to go.

We never did find the guy who left this particular forget-me-not.

An Unexpected Serenade

I don't remember the year I first visited the Stumps, but it was about as fun and glorious as the other trips I made out there. That is to say, not very fun at all. But what the hell, it's desert warfare training, not disneyland. It's not that there wasn't any humerous moments, it's just that they were all so drenched in hot sweaty man stink that it just kind of sucked all the humor away at the time.

Did I mention it got kinda hot over there?


One afternoon we had completed the misery that passed for our training, and gone to the rear. On most civilized bases, 'the rear' was somewhere that looked a little bit like, you know, an actual base. Guess we had pissed somebody off that had the bling bling on their collars, because our rear area looked like some crusty old crew chief had just kicked a bunch of tents off of the rear of a passing helo, and let them land... wherever.

At least our tents were air conditioned. Yup, they had these flaps that you could lift up and tie off, and there you go... pretty good, at least until 0830. After that and before late afternoon, you were just as miserable as anywhere else under the blazing sun. Not that we were hanging out much in the tents in the morning or anything, 'cause, who needs the stinking shade?

So once we had gotten back and gotten all of the various little details taken care of, we got turned loose for a few hours before hitting the rack. My team leader at the time thought it would be kinda cute to give a liberty brief, even though we could walk over to the very generously named 'e-club' or... that was about it, there was nothing else except for sand, everywhere.

Friggin' e-club didn't even have beer, just sweet tea and AC.

My grand plans for the evening consisted of chow, toilets, showers, & sweating. Pretty busy night, considering there was a pretty good chance (about 175%) that I would be standing some sort of firewatch for a few hours during the night).


[heh, rereading this post I realized that it's kind of... bleh. It's actually not all that bad as many Marines will tell ya, but this one seems to be naturally oriented to a bleh setting.]


First up on the schedule, chow.

True to form for the rest of my years in, chow got distributed while I was running around on a working party or meeting or whatever. I returned to my pack to find that I had been alloted 8 identically nasty omlette meals for the next training evolution. Guess which chow was the least desired in the platoon, go ahead, take a wild stab in the dark. If I recall correctly, I was a PFC at the time, and if you had little to no rank and didn't grab 'em when you could, you were pretty much screwed when it came to chow.

So like I was saying, first up on the schedule, the toilets.

Grabbing a roll of life (toilet paper), I headed over to the crapper building. I was pretty excited to actually have a throne to sit down on, rather than having to dig another hole, pop a squat, and do the dirty deed... until I opened the door. The entirety of the building consisted of two lines of crappers, one about arms reach away (and facing) from the other line.

No stalls, walls, or anything between, or nuthin'.

Guts a grumbling from the crappy MREs I had been eating earlier, I said 'fuggit', and and side-stepped past a couple of other Marines to get to an open seat. It goes without saying that it wasn't a normal everyday experience to be 2 feet away from & facing another dude, taking a dump.

Of course, the Gunny decided to strike up a conversation. Gunny had too much rank for us to tell him to let us do our business in peace, so he rattled on... from both ends.

(Yeah, I know.)

Attempting to affect an air of nonchalance like it was no big deal to drop a loaf in a small room full of Marines, I reached into my cargo pocket and pulled out a letter that I had gotten recently. Dear old mom had written, and I had been looking forward to the opportunity to catching up on the family news. I hadn't expected to read it right then, but oh well.

One of the Corporals was yakking now about how, "if you stop to think about it, the Marine Corps is technically paying us to take a dump, right now. Whoa".

What, you thought all conversations were about Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Chuck Norris?



Did I mention that this was around my birthday? Yeah, I had kind of forgotten, myself (not much for that sort of thing).

Slicing open the top of the letter, the birthday card that she had included fell out and opened up. The strains of that tinny birthday tune started up, disrupting the room's conversation. I think it was the Gunny that started it, but when he was finished he had the whole group singing, all of 'em perched on the crappers.

*sigh*

It's nice to be loved.