I'm gettin too old for this

So we went on an Air Assault mission. We went to an "area", to cordon off the area while another ongoing mission would try to flush out the Taliban and push them into the "area". Historically they liked to come to this "area" when things go sour for 'em.

Um ya.

This time?

This time we pretty much just became the bait. It was supposed to be a 2+ day mission. Those who get paid more than I do cut it short.

Why?

Because all we were was fucking fish in a goddamn barrel.

We took indirect fire 3 times, and on the 3rd and final time we had to MEDEVAC our wounded soldiers. We couldn't go anywhere, because our mission was to hold the area.

This isn't exactly the Ardennes Forest. This isn't Bastogne.

And it was so predicatable too. The enemy didn't fire on us until our birds left to refuel. It was like clockwork. Our overhead protectors leave, and boom boom boom...Incoming.

Thank god the injured wasn't life changing. Just shrapnel and concussions. I helped put the injured on the MEDEVAC blackhawk. I had so much anger and frustration in me I could've cried. But I couldn't show weakness. Not in front of my guys. It's absolutely strange, but they look up to me and go off how I am, so I have to be strong, whether I'm scared or sad or angry. I have to keep calm so that they know that things will be alright.

My son is a little over 7 months old now. He looks amazing, and I miss him so much. But what I do is that 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day I forget he exists. It's too much of a distraction. It's when I can relax, be on my own, that I think about it.

and it hurts that I can't be there with him, for him.

He's crawling now :)

but I'm not there...

This is the only was I can deal with this...

Oh, ya.

The weather's getting warmer.

The indirect fire is getting more accurate.

Good times ahead indeed

7 more months till R&R

Whenever we're on patrol the only thing on my mind, like a broken record that keeps skipping and repeating itself:

Is this it?

how about now?

Is this where I'm going to step and set off the IED?

It's not like a debilitating thought or anything. It's more of a matter of fact kind of thing.

Being in the front and stepping in fresh soil is unnerving, but there's only so much one can do.

95% of the patrol my head is looking to where I'm going to step next. Sometimes I just pucker up and step over what may just be my last step, or it may just be a random indentation in the field.

It's just one of those things one has to deal with.

The prospect of life itself is so trivial sometimes.

I've already told my squad that if It was my time, then they are instructed to burn everything I have here.

My Laptop.

My Camera.

All my ACU's

Everything.

I don't know why, but I just feel like it's the right thing to do.

We were QRF for another platoon a few days ago, and alas we were called out. So we went and I got to do some shooting. I leveled a building/store with my .50 Cal BMG. I was in the turret for this one because we were running a bit shorthanded.

There were to Taliban fighters all Alamo'd up in the shop, so we leveled the place, but somehow they managed to squirt out, but our friendly rotary winged friends cut short their escape.

One of em had balls of steel. Here we are laying 2 50. cal's at them and one of em still had the balls to spray some AK rounds out of the hole that we blasted in the front wall of the shop.

It took almost 7 years, but this is the deployment I joined up for.

My life is hard and unforgiving, but I'm happy.

Disturbing news

Beer contains female hormones! Yes, that's right, FEMALE hormones!

Last month, Sydney University and scientists released the results of a recent analysis that revealed the presence of female hormones in beer.

Men should take a concerned look at their beer consumption.

The theory is that beer contains female hormones(hops contain Phytoestrogens) and that by drinking enough beer, men turn into women.

To test the theory, 100 men each drank 8 schooners of beer within a one (1) hour period..

It was then observed that 100% of the test subjects, yes, 100% of all these men:-




1) Argued over nothing.

2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong.

3) Gained weight.

4) Talked excessively without making sense.

5) Became overly emotional

6) Couldn't drive.

7) Failed to think rationally, and

8) Had to sit down while urinating.




No further testing was considered necessary!!

Rocket man

Incoming rockets sometimes sound like A-10 flying low...I learned that the hard way yesterday.

My chain of thoughts...

"Sound of loud noise...sounds like a plane."

"Sounds like an A-10 flying low and towards me."

"Why is an A-10 flying towards me?"

"Aww..fuck my life..that's not an A-10"

BOOOOOM!!!

Now I'm running to a bunker.....

"That was fucking close"

"Stupid A-10 sounding rocket"

Ended up landing about 150-200 meters to where I was.

Good times

My life

is filled with rage right now.

In the pit of my stomach.

The mother of my child is batshit insane who tries to use my son as a weapon against me.

Dishnetwork is a money hungry law breaking enterprise.

....maybe the Taliban aren't so bad after all? They won't try to steal my money, NOR will the use my 7 month old son against me.

All the want to do is kill me.

Ring my bell. Ring my bell. My bell.

So at least 2 of our guys almost died today. We were finishing up a dismounted patrol, heading outta the village when an IED blew up. One got knocked the hell out by the force of the blast, one caught some shrapnel to his face, and one was a little dizzy from the concussion. I was maybe thirty five meters behind the blast, I was squad leader of our second section fire team.

It was definitely a command wire detonation, the trigger man wait for the ANA to pass, and then detonated the IED when soldiers were around it. One guy was 2 ft from the blast, and two were in front of it, and two were behind it.

One enemy on a bike at the intersection maybe 70 meters in front of the blast fire a couple of rounds and then booked it, we fired at him, but he had decent cover on his exile, we think he was the decoy, to give the real trigger man time to get away.

One of my joes saw what we think was the real trigger man, running back towards the town we just left.

These fucking people….

We really are in the shithole of the province. I can't see any possible way to convince these people to become pro-government.

We MEDEVAC'd the three guys showing symptoms of TBI.

They were lucky. No doubt about it.

If the bomb was just a little bit bigger, or a buried a little more shallow. The injuries would've been a lot worse.

It was a HME IED. Homemade Explosive. I remember the acronym ANAL. Ammonium Nitrate and some kind of Aluminum mix. It was maybe a 3-5 pounder. Hahaha...Anal

All I know what when that bomb when off and I saw that dust cloud, I thought immediately that someone is either dead or dying.

Thank god I was wrong.

That cloud engulfed all of 1st section and I thought the worst, and when 1st section squad leader got on the radio; he was walking point, called for a medic, I thought my fears were confirmed. I yelled back as loud as I could

MEDIC!

It was eerie, because I've seen it plenty of times in all those hollywood war movies, where someone yells for a medic, but I never thought I'd have to do the same…

I hope I never have to do it again, because next time…

next time I don't think we'll be as lucky.

Winning the hearts and minds of these people is doing nothing but make us more vulnerable. There are so many stupid fucking rules that we have to follow as required by ISAF.

This is definitely NOT Iraq.

In Iraq, if a person is bad, an he's in that house. we TAKE that house.

Over here?

We have to knock and ask if we can come in.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

We're being sacrificed. Plain and simple. We're being sacrificed in the short term (1-2 years) so that hopefully it pays off in the long term (2- ?? years)

I'm just glad my guys are ok. Even if I think they're shitbags, lol.

….On a good note. EOD here is fucking kickass. It doesn't take 9 millions hours for them to show up, unlike Iraq, where you wait for 10 hours, and then wait some more.

Over here, when you want em, you get em. And the one's I've encountered a complete professionals, unlike some of the lazy fobbit douchebags I've met in Iraq.

I almost blew 2 local teachers away too. It was funny after the fact.

Pretty much they came towards us on a red motorcycle (the decoy was on a red motorcycle, he dropped it and ran, the bike was gone when we came back after MEDEVAC'ing the 3) and my SAW gunner yelled

WADAREGA!! (Stop)

but they didn't stop

WADAREGA!!

still nothing.

50 meters away…

So I pop up on one knee, point my weapon on them, put the selector switch to semi and yell

WADAREGA YADI WILLUM (Stop or I will shoot)

They stopped on a dime.

I called the terp over…and pretty much I felt like a dick.

What happened was that the motorcycle driver heard the initial yells for STOP, but he had a helmet on so it was a bit muffled, and also he didn't see/hear where it was coming from, because my SAW gunner was cover/concealed pretty decent.

So pretty much he had the shit scared out of him when he saw me pop up and yell that I was pretty much gonna blow his head off.

So I told the tap to tell him I'm sorry (I really was…I felt bad) and talked a little bit, and sent him back (we had the area cordoned off for a 2nd possible IED)

Oh, and leading the way back to the IED site after the MEDEVAC sucked. It's normally the ANA in front, leading the way, because we want every mission to have an AFghan face on it (But we're happy mainly because they'll be the ones to step on the trip wire/pressure plates).

But on the way back, I was leading it, not ANA. It was Myself and the Terp, THEN ANA, THEN the rest of my platoon. When we started walking I pray to god in English, Arabic, and say a little "hey buddha..please watch over me" and said fuck it and started walking.

Talk about puckered buttonhole.

The funny thing about all of this?!?!

This is just another typical day.

Yay.

Is it September yet? Is it time for my R&R ?

ha...

Do you really want to hurt me?

Do you really want to MAKE ME CRYYYY.

I wear my sunglasses at night
so I can
so I can

I'm on an 80's bender.

So tonight I wasn't subjected to taking indirect fire while nekked and showering. This time I was on the awesome end of a 50. cal BMG sending life changers downrange. I told you that they weren't gonna get away with stealing my sleep away.

I definitely reached out and touched someone tonight, and good lord it felt good.

The point of impact on all this enemy indirect fire is an amazing site to see though, I'll give em that. Hollywood can never recreate it, no matter how advanced their special effects get...

...They did get a bit closer tonight though, this time within a couple of hundred meters of my position.

It's all good though. I have faith in the world :)

Good times, good times.

Mortars, Mortars, Mortar....

And always seems to be at the most inconvenient times. Twice they fired indirect 30 minutes before my wake-up. And tonight when I was buck naked in the shower. So here I am nekked like the day I came into the world, contemplating whether or not to just wrap a towel around me and run back 150 meters to my gear, or take time and put on my clothes while we're catching indirect fire.

I chose the latter.

It was cold outside.

Plus, the towel was tiny.

These Taliban fuckers keep testing us. I swear they're just finding out our TTP's. I just know it.

No one steals sleep time from me and gets away with it.

Third times the charm. This time to Afghanistan

So after days and days of military base jumping and waiting and flight delays, I'm finally in my AO with 1 more rotary flight to go till I'm finally at MY base.

After talking to the guys in my platoon who are already there, they've been taking indirect fire daily, but thankfully it's not accurate.

I've got a day or so to go till I get there, and good god I can't wait. I'm so sick and tired of sitting in "limbo".

There's something that's funny to me in a "aw crap" way. Any time someone who's been here in A-town (Afghanistan) overhears our conversation about where we're going the conversation usually goes like so:

Joe 1. = You guys are going to ***** ?
Me = yup
Joe 1. = (Laughs) Have fun.

Good times ahead...

U.S. Officers Executed Iraqis, Statements Say

This is an article written in the NY Times by PAUL VON ZIELBAUER.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/middleeast/27abuse.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

And for the record. I completely agree and support the executions of those 4 detainees.

It's unfortunate the three men were put in that position.

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.


After the killings, the first sergeant — the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company — told the other two to remove the men’s bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times.

The statements and other court documents were provided by a person close to one of the soldiers in the unit who insisted on anonymity and who has an interest in the outcome of the legal proceedings.

After removing the blindfolds and handcuffs, the three soldiers shoved the four bodies into the canal, rejoined other members of their unit waiting in nearby vehicles and drove back to their combat outpost in southwest Baghdad, the statements said.

The soldiers, all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, have not been charged with a crime. However, lawyers representing other members of the platoon who said they witnessed or heard the shootings, which were said to have occurred on a combat patrol west of Baghdad, said all three would probably be charged with murder.

The accounts of and confessions to the killings, by Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sgt. Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D’s senior medic and an acting squad leader, were made in January in signed statements to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany.

In their statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy each described killing at least one of the Iraqi detainees on instructions from First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads. Sergeant Hatley’s civilian lawyer in Germany, David Court, did not respond to phone calls and e-mail messages Tuesday.

Last month, four other soldiers from Sergeant Hatley’s unit were charged with murder conspiracy for agreeing to go along with the plan to kill the four prisoners, in violation of military laws that forbid harming enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody.

In an Army evidentiary hearing on Tuesday in Vilseck, Germany, two of those soldiers — Specialists Steven A. Ribordy and Belmor G. Ramos — invoked their right against self-incrimination. Reached by telephone, James D. Culp, a civilian lawyer for one of the other two soldiers charged, Staff Sgt. Jess C. Cunningham, declined to comment. A lawyer for the fourth soldier, Sgt. Charles P. Quigley, could not be reached.

In their sworn statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy described the events that preceded the shooting of the Iraqi men, who apparently were Shiite fighters linked to the Mahdi Army militia, which controlled the West Rashid area of southwest Baghdad.

After taking small-arms fire, the patrol chased some men into a building, arresting them and finding several automatic weapons, grenades and a sniper rifle, they said. On the way to their combat outpost, Sergeant Hatley’s convoy was informed by Army superiors that the evidence to detain the Iraqis was insufficient, Sergeant Leahy said in his statement. The unit was told to release the men, according to the statement.

“First Sergeant Hatley then made the call to take the detainees to a canal and kill them,” Sergeant Leahy said, as retribution for the deaths of two soldiers from the unit: Staff Sgt. Karl O. Soto-Pinedo, who died from a sniper’s bullet, and Specialist Marieo Guerrero, killed by a roadside bomb.

“So the patrol went to the canal, and First Sergeant, Sgt. First Class Mayo and I took the detainees out of the back of the Bradley, lined them up and shot them,” Sergeant Leahy said, referring to a Bradley fighting vehicle. “We then pushed the bodies into the canal and left.”

Sergeant Mayo, in his statement, attributed his decision to kill the men to “anger,” apparently at the recent deaths of his two comrades.

Sergeant Leahy, in his statement, said, “I’m ashamed of what I’ve done,” later adding: “When I did it, I thought I was doing it for my family. Now I realize that I’m hurting my family more now than if I wouldn’t have done it.”