No...this is not me.
This is from JUST ANOTHER SOLDIER . This is one of his later posts right before he was ordered not to blog by his commanding officer. I think he has a wonderful way of explaining a world I know nothing about.
June 27, 2004
How To Blow-Up Trucks, Dogs, and Mosques
Okay, this is going to be a quick entry because I'm lazy. The great thing about being lazy when writing about combat in Iraq is that the facts and photos sorta speak for themselves and you don't really have to talk it up. I tend to elaborate on things because it's cathartic for me. You might feel as though you are reading about Iraq, but in reality you and the several hundred other people reading my screeds are actually my collective of therapists. I don't need therapy today, but I want to share a few quick things because they are interesting.
A couple days ago me and about fifteen guys from my platoon were doing our NAI run ("named area of interest") along with the EOD ("blow shit up") guys. There was an alleged cache of mortar rounds or something near the NAIs that the EOD guys wanted to blow up. So we drove to the first one, dismounted, checked things out, mounted up, and moved out. We came to the area that the cache was supposed to be, but didn't find shit. Then we went to the second NAI.
The NAIs are somewhat large areas of real estate, so each time we go we try to inspect a different part of them. This time when tooling around, we found an abandoned tractor trailer. Abandon vehicles are never a good thing in Iraq, so we usually destroy them when we have the means. This time we happened to have EOD with us who didn't get to blow the cache of mortar rounds that never materialized, so as they say: you do the math.
First we had John, one of our .50 cal gunners, unload a few bursts into it. For the non-killers out there, mounted machine guns have a device on them called a T&E that controls the weapon's traversal and elevation. Basically it's just a thing that keeps the gun from climbing up as you fire it while allowing it to freely swing side-to-side. When John shot the truck, he didn't have the T&E engaged. This is called free-gunning. It's fine that he chose to free-gun it, it was good experience, but it made it so he could only put a short burst into it before it started to climb. We try to be careful about this sorta thing because, after all, there are people living all over the place and collateral damage from errant bullets isn't cool. Anyway, I only mention this for the guys that read this who will be manning .50 cals in Iraq soon. Free-gunning is cool when you need the freedom of movement, say for a close-range engagement, but if you want to actually put lead into something accurately with nice long bursts, use the damn T&E.
I have some super-crappy footage of this if you want to see what I mean. The .avi is about 3.9 megs. Here's the link: http://www.justanothersoldier.com/50cal01.avi
After shooting the truck, EOD decided to blow it up. They had several bricks of some Russian explosives they wanted to expend, so they put the whole shit in the cab of the truck on a timed fuse. We then drove several hundred meters away and waited patiently. "Thirty seconds!", the EOD guy yelled. So we're all watching the truck, waiting for the fireworks display, when, Hey, wait a second, is that a dog? Oh, shit! What are you doing? Get the fuck away from there you stupid mutt!
A dog had wandered toward the truck right as it was about to explode. I've never seen so many dogs get fucked up in my life as I have over here. This one had the luckiest day of his life, though. However, I don't think he'll be answering to any more whistles. The truck blew right next to him then he tucked tail and ran. Aside from the fact that innocent animals (almost) dying is not cool, it was pretty damn funny. My buddy, Yanko, got it all on tape, but I don't have the software to get the footage off his camera, so I took some screen shots of the display screen. The quality sucks, but it's enough to get the point. I also got some footage on my little camera, but you can't see anything. It's funny, if for no other reason, to just hear the guys talking about the dog. The .avi is about 3.8 megs. My hosting company may have a heart attack when they see my bandwidth usage for the month, but here's the link to that movie: http://www.justanothersoldier.com/dog_truck01.avi
Then on the way back while we're driving through a little neighborhood, I notice all these bricks and rubble strewn across the road. I thought to myself, Hmm, what's all this shit? I look out the front of the Humvee (I was in the back seat, so my sector of fire was out the window) and thought, Is something missing? Holy shit! That one mosque is gone!
This small village had a mosque that was now no more. We stopped and got out to investigate. It was handy that we had EOD with us because they were able to poke around the rubble and determine that the explosion came from the inside (as opposed to an air strike or an exterior detonation). The locals who came out told us that someone was seen planting the bomb that destroyed the place. It must have been a good amount of explosives, because this place was leveled. As you may well know, I'm no fan of religion, but it still made me really sad to see this. The mosque was Shiite. What's strange too is that this area is considered to be less-than-friendly to us, so for it to be a retaliatory strike against the local people for being sympathetic to the coalition doesn't make any sense. The mosque and the village are within the boundaries of a different unit's area of operations, so we reported it up and headed home. We may never know what the story was. What can I say? The Iraqis are as busy being assholes to each other as they are to us.
June 27, 2004
How To Blow-Up Trucks, Dogs, and Mosques
Okay, this is going to be a quick entry because I'm lazy. The great thing about being lazy when writing about combat in Iraq is that the facts and photos sorta speak for themselves and you don't really have to talk it up. I tend to elaborate on things because it's cathartic for me. You might feel as though you are reading about Iraq, but in reality you and the several hundred other people reading my screeds are actually my collective of therapists. I don't need therapy today, but I want to share a few quick things because they are interesting.
A couple days ago me and about fifteen guys from my platoon were doing our NAI run ("named area of interest") along with the EOD ("blow shit up") guys. There was an alleged cache of mortar rounds or something near the NAIs that the EOD guys wanted to blow up. So we drove to the first one, dismounted, checked things out, mounted up, and moved out. We came to the area that the cache was supposed to be, but didn't find shit. Then we went to the second NAI.
The NAIs are somewhat large areas of real estate, so each time we go we try to inspect a different part of them. This time when tooling around, we found an abandoned tractor trailer. Abandon vehicles are never a good thing in Iraq, so we usually destroy them when we have the means. This time we happened to have EOD with us who didn't get to blow the cache of mortar rounds that never materialized, so as they say: you do the math.
First we had John, one of our .50 cal gunners, unload a few bursts into it. For the non-killers out there, mounted machine guns have a device on them called a T&E that controls the weapon's traversal and elevation. Basically it's just a thing that keeps the gun from climbing up as you fire it while allowing it to freely swing side-to-side. When John shot the truck, he didn't have the T&E engaged. This is called free-gunning. It's fine that he chose to free-gun it, it was good experience, but it made it so he could only put a short burst into it before it started to climb. We try to be careful about this sorta thing because, after all, there are people living all over the place and collateral damage from errant bullets isn't cool. Anyway, I only mention this for the guys that read this who will be manning .50 cals in Iraq soon. Free-gunning is cool when you need the freedom of movement, say for a close-range engagement, but if you want to actually put lead into something accurately with nice long bursts, use the damn T&E.
I have some super-crappy footage of this if you want to see what I mean. The .avi is about 3.9 megs. Here's the link: http://www.justanothersoldier.com/50cal01.avi
After shooting the truck, EOD decided to blow it up. They had several bricks of some Russian explosives they wanted to expend, so they put the whole shit in the cab of the truck on a timed fuse. We then drove several hundred meters away and waited patiently. "Thirty seconds!", the EOD guy yelled. So we're all watching the truck, waiting for the fireworks display, when, Hey, wait a second, is that a dog? Oh, shit! What are you doing? Get the fuck away from there you stupid mutt!
A dog had wandered toward the truck right as it was about to explode. I've never seen so many dogs get fucked up in my life as I have over here. This one had the luckiest day of his life, though. However, I don't think he'll be answering to any more whistles. The truck blew right next to him then he tucked tail and ran. Aside from the fact that innocent animals (almost) dying is not cool, it was pretty damn funny. My buddy, Yanko, got it all on tape, but I don't have the software to get the footage off his camera, so I took some screen shots of the display screen. The quality sucks, but it's enough to get the point. I also got some footage on my little camera, but you can't see anything. It's funny, if for no other reason, to just hear the guys talking about the dog. The .avi is about 3.8 megs. My hosting company may have a heart attack when they see my bandwidth usage for the month, but here's the link to that movie: http://www.justanothersoldier.com/dog_truck01.avi
Then on the way back while we're driving through a little neighborhood, I notice all these bricks and rubble strewn across the road. I thought to myself, Hmm, what's all this shit? I look out the front of the Humvee (I was in the back seat, so my sector of fire was out the window) and thought, Is something missing? Holy shit! That one mosque is gone!
This small village had a mosque that was now no more. We stopped and got out to investigate. It was handy that we had EOD with us because they were able to poke around the rubble and determine that the explosion came from the inside (as opposed to an air strike or an exterior detonation). The locals who came out told us that someone was seen planting the bomb that destroyed the place. It must have been a good amount of explosives, because this place was leveled. As you may well know, I'm no fan of religion, but it still made me really sad to see this. The mosque was Shiite. What's strange too is that this area is considered to be less-than-friendly to us, so for it to be a retaliatory strike against the local people for being sympathetic to the coalition doesn't make any sense. The mosque and the village are within the boundaries of a different unit's area of operations, so we reported it up and headed home. We may never know what the story was. What can I say? The Iraqis are as busy being assholes to each other as they are to us.
posted by Gavin Elster at 1:54 PM
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