I love this soldier in Iraq and, boy, can he write. Check out the first sentence of his latest, a description of chasing down a mortar-lobbing crew in his Stryker while reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which he bookmarks before the action starts. Is that cool or what? I've taken the liberty of formating for easier reading. I'd be his editor for free:
Mad Mortar-men Goose Chase
Today we drove around somewhere to do something.
All of us in the back of the vehicle brought a book to read during this ride. I brought George Orwell's, Homage To Catalonia tome. The New York Times refers to it as "perhaps the best book that exists on the Spanish Civil War." Our Combat Medic brought a thick ass book called The History Of Western Philosophy, and the other two brought a George Carlin book and the other a paperback vampire ghosts and goblins Ann Rice novel.
The Medic was telling us that Ann Rice novels all have suggestive "gay" overtones to them. I've never read Ann Rice so I wouldn't know, nor do I care. To me books on Vampires are right up there with Sci-Fi romance novels. Not my cup of tea.
I got a lot of good reading done on this ride, when all the sudden we all heard a loud explosion, which made all of us stop reading and bookmark our places to find out what's going on. Over the radio, they said a huge air burst mortar went off over the FOB. Then a couple minutes later, the FOB got hit with four mortar rounds.
We had a Pvt from Minnesota up in the back air guard hatch, and he shouted down to us that he heard the direction from where the mortars were fired from, so we turned the vehicles around and headed full speed to that direction. I asked him if he wanted to trade places from the airguard hatch, just in case we come into contact. He just smiled at me and confidently said, "I got this one." Cool. We were now in hot pursuit to catch some crazed mortar men. So I opened up my book and continued reading. I was on page 92, the part where Orwell was frantically chasing down a fascist with a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Read for a bit, then when we got to the area where we thought was the point of orgin for those fired mortars, I stopped reading and bookmarked my place in the book, and we dismounted in this really third world area of Mosul that had this really bad stench of rotten milk lingering in the air. Tons of trash littered all over the place, and a bunch of cows and stray chickens roaming around freely.
Lots of little kids also came out of nowhere to stare at us. We talked to some of the locals to see if they saw or seen anything. Then something happened, and well all raced back onto our vehicle and burned rubber outta there. And we were now in hot pursuit of these mad mortar men the same way a cop races to an armed robber call in his police car.
I opened up my book and continued to read. That fascist, that Orwell was chasing down with a bayonet fixed rifle, got away from him, and I was now at the part where Orwell injured some guys with a grenade of sorts, and was ready to kick some serious ass, when all the sudden we stopped suddenly, and I had to close the book back up because the back ramp dropped and we were told to dismount.
We had a car pulled over to the side of the road with four middle aged Iraqi men inside, all wearing that white traditional dress thing that they wear. These guys were extremely co-operative and they gladly let us search their vehicle, we didn't find shit, then we searched this other car, didn't find shit in that one either. Then we loaded back up and went somewhere, and then we stopped and dismounted.
We were now in the same area where a couple months ago we had a mounted patrol through here, and we were driving around slowly, and we were the trail vehicle, and my AG and I were sticking out of the back air guard hatches. And we were being followed by literally 100's of little kids, they were hooting and hollering, clapping and saying stuff in Arabic. So my AG looks over at me and with a mischievous smile says, "Watch this!" and then he starts chanting: "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" over and over again, next thing you know all these little kids, 100's of them, started chanting U-S-A!! Over and over again, each time a little loader. We were both laughing and thought this was all funny until I saw the reaction on the older people faces on the side of the road. They didn't look too thrilled about that, once I immediately noticed that, I said, "Dude, that's not cool! Make them stop yelling that shit!" But it was too late, these kids were having too much fun chanting U-S-A!
Next thing you know I saw an older middle eastern lady wearing all black pick up a rock and throw it at us, which of course started a huge chain reaction of rock throwing at us. We got out of that neighborhood in a hurry after that. Lesson learned. Anyways, we were now back in the same neighborhood where the infamous U-S-A incident took place.
We dismounted and searched another car, didn't find shit again. Tons of stray kids hanging out on the street corners here observing us with a watchful eye. Like I said before, every kid here in Iraq looks like those kids you see on those TV commercials where they say "for only .99 cents a day you can help feed this starving child". A real low income part of Mosul.
My Sqd Ldr was trying to talk to a crowd of little kids, asking them if they saw or heard anything, and while he was asking them this one kid comes running up to us with an old empty brass 105 artillery shell, and then this other kid comes running up to us with another expired artillery shell. Both demanded money for their discovery. "Give me Dollar!" they said. Then this other kid came running over to us with an RPG fin and a handful of dirty .50 cal bullets. These kids were just finding this crap off the streets. Amazing.
Then all the sudden this really skinny Iraqi kid comes running up to us with a fucking HAND GRANADE in his hand. "HOLY SHIT!!! DROP THE FUCKIN HAND GRANADE!!! DROP IT NOW!!!" We all started yelling! The little kid, still with this proud smile on his face that said, "Look what I just found" just dropped the grenade on the ground, and walked over to my squad leader and said, "Give me money!" It was an old pineapple grenade that was all dirty and rusty, it looked like something left over from the Iran Iraq war. We asked him where he found it at, and innocently he pointed to this old abandoned house that was in the middle of a field that looked like a junkyard.
We secured the area, and searched the house. Didn't find shit. Then the kids pointed to another house, this one owned by a wife beater undershirt wearing Iraqi with a massive facial beard and more body hair than teen wolf. We searched his house, again didn't find shit.
Finally four blue and white ICP trucks showed up packed with Iraqi Police dressed in blue khakis and strapped with AK47's. They dismounted and asked where the hand grenade was, we pointed to them to where it was and they went over, picked it up, and they like kinda laughed at us, like "You're kidding, you guys called us over here for this?!" I could hear one ICP say in broken English, "This, No-good." They took the grenade and drove off. And we did the same. My Sqd Ldr then explained to me that when the 101st was here they would give the little kids in that area money and/or MRE's if they found weapons and UXO, which is why every time when they see US Forces they always drag over shit like that and say, "Give me! Give me!"
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing"
-Albert Einstein |
