A short story I wrote while I was in Iraq
CLASSIFIED
It was a dark and stormy night.... shots had been going off for what seemed like forever. Sitting in the back of his Caiman their leader of second platoon fumbles with a small container while recalling his first mission; the fear, anxiety, knowing that someone was and would always be watching you, and waiting for a time like now, as the young dirt stached leader swallows the cyanide pills he feels no remorse, he did his best, and was the best that the ROTC had to offer a reservist bridging company while having no previous experience or enlistment. He looks in the vanity mirror stashed underneith his seat and lightly trims one last time, "such moments were meant for forever, yet it seemed that forever is always trapped in moments like these" he thinks before his body slumps foreward, proceeding to hot mic.
Once knowledge of the loss of their leader spread the remaining of the second platoon element that had not yet thrown their weapons into the water did so, as a sign of surrender. Remorse spread amongst the platoon, hearded like cattle on the near shore, knowing that if they had only respected their most valuable asset, SSG Butler would be there. At age 22 Butler was a former Adjudent Chef in the French Foreign Legion and had recieved a red belt in Jiu jutsu, Butler was rumored to have left the unit being hand picked for Operation Neptune Spear. As they wait for their fates to be determined a smile is cracked in the midst, and the thought jumps from one to the next, this will make a pretty bad ass story to stretch and tell when we get home, but for the time, they would only pray.
A dark figure can be seen stripping body armor, while running down the road. After hearing shots it seemed that Owens had reflected back to a few weeks before where a few fellow soldiers attempted to commit fratricide by flipping a boat even though they all knew he couldn't swim. The plans of fratricide were thwarted though, clearly the one who had plotted the tretchery Dirt Squirrel jumped immediately onto the bridge, but as Sgt Mamba couldn't swim, and seemingly had forgotten what the exact plans were, stayed on the boat as it overturned. Sgt Airbourne, swam back under the capsized boat, not knowing who was who, grabbed both Owens and Mamba and swam them to shore even stopping to save as many sensitive items as he could.
The only thing that these shots could be, was another set up, there were two options now unlike on the boat, either run, or he knew that he was going to die, just give up like that day on the boat, not today though. dropping his armor and newly issued weapon Owens ran down the dirt Haji road, just to get away, since he slept through all of the ride, and most of the mission up until this point, looking for anything he recognized lost any importance, and even if he had been awake to know the route, why would he go back only to be hunted again?
Having missed dinner and believing that he may have gotten away Owens stops at a house and asks if they had some creatine, a combination of not understanding his broken english, and as a tradition the family offers him a tray of bread and soup smiling unusually widely, which is a normal thing for Hajis. Knowing that the only thing that will truely keep him strong and fill his hunger is creatine, Owens using a combination of annoying phrases, hand jestures and head bobs turns away the offer. Greatly offended the man of the house follows him to the door and knocks him in the head with a brick and drags his body to the basement. Waking up some hours later, Owens hears a light crunching sound, pushing around he notices that his body is encased and cannot move, looking forward Owens finally realizes that it was the Hajis who had sabotaged his boat, and Sgt Airbourne had saved his life. For his last seconds of seeing light, only the Haji smile is seen shaking his head and smiling the only words the man says can be roughly translated to have said that the man could not let him go, in a joking yet sad tone Owens pleas, "Relax man, be cool, I gotta get out, yo?" ending his labour the Older Haji forces the last brick into place and plasters it up..
Luck had came upon the company as the two most high speed soldiers were in the RG waiting for the inevitable strike of the stealthy Iraqi terrorists, despite the driver and passengers pleas to these soldiers "Dirt Squirrel" and Cliff "The Gunna" ventured out into the storm of bullets, using everything as cover, but not returning fire, as that may give away their position as they moved to recover the interpretor asset known as Travis, although the vehicles made for horrible hard cover, these high speed super soldiers, as some may call them, made due.
As they pushed on using a buddy team bounding sequence, Travis was finally found with a group to include the current security element leader, who despite his previous deployment, stared shallowly at the two and in a sobbing undertone stated that he had no idea what was going on, and that he only enlisted to see some action, claiming that if the two got down and waited the dragons requested in McCoy would show up at any second, clearly delusional, Dirt Squirrel convinced the overburdened SSG back to a truck, leaving our heros with the task of fending off the enemy while accounting and providing that all soldiers were safe.
Along their trek they led many other soldiers to the safety of the RG while putting themselves in harms way by waiting outside the vehicle watching for others in need of aid or cover, one such soldier D-Nova was said to have been cowering helplessly in the fetal position for hours as the gunfire stormed overhead, with nowhere to move to "gunna" Cliff drug him to safety using only his own fecal matter as camoflage to keep D-Nova hidden from the sniper cell.
The facts of medics being on missions are arguable by some and are usually left unrecorded unless the medic had previously been awarded, letting them be recognized, armed with the knowledge that in any combat situation that may come with any kind of valor, medics are virtually invisible, Medic one throws down her m-16, mainly because it was really annoying and kept getting caught in her armor, casually stormed down to the near shore, finding that somehow Wagon, the second medic who had recently been recorded recieving an award that no one will remember but that he definitely got, had diagnosed every member of the platoon as being heat stroke victims rather than just in shock and fear over the loss of their once couragous leader, and nearly bled out half of the platoon giving improper IVs.
Explaining Wagons ignorance Medic one proceeded to give blood transfusions to the half that were slowly slipping into peripheral hypoperfusion, and some cases of delerium, after currently being recognised Wagon lost the ability to not be seen in the time of distress and was bled out by the remaining half. According to a record kept only by the medic 58 full blood transfusions were given by the end of the assault, as well as one butterfly stitch for a more unprepared soldier who passed out walking to the water and buttstroked their teeth through their lip.
Unable to find their aid let alone remember what had happened many wondered how they had recovered from their loss of blood and if Wagon had fixed his misdoing why did he have so many bags of blood with him? Although the firefight was near shore to far shore a small village just east and uphill of the near shore was found two days later to be empty, on a closer inspection sixty three villagers were found scattered through their homes all having suffered from class IV hemorrhages. Medics names still remain unknown and facts are still debated as to if Medic one was even on the mission, or even made it in country yet at the time.
After the frivolous assault there were only two bodies that even remained intact of the assailants, some people say that one of the Iraqi fell into a body of water north of the village and the other into the river after being shot by several 7.62 by the 240B but in truth both Clifford and Cassell were not seen during the times of the tactical assault after leading the soldiers to safety, some say that the first was drug into the river by Cliff himself, and if the second body wasn't destroyed upon being found you would realize that there are no bullet wounds, and in fact the second had crawled to the water after being stabbed sixteen times by our second hero..
Unknown to most others despite his fall into a deep sickness, Humpty Dumpty had been hard at work making sure all of his soldiers were still alive and not captives of the deranged psychopaths, using not only his headset but also a recently recovered SSG Stiamo, who was finally coming down from three grams of bath salts he had snorted earlier that day, Dumpty vigorously shouted until all soldiers were safe and accounted for, only two things kept him from his goal, a missing chupacabra and a very annoying hot mic, in dumpty’s sickening stupor he wallowed in his own diminishing self content only regulated by the cabbage patch kid that he spoke to as if infatuated, resting his head dumpty spoke insinuating that he may lie, or cuddle with his doll. As dumpty lie in his daze Spc. Wrong was forced to man the BFT and take action in place of the cracked egg. Under the condition Wrong gave command to search for remaining platoon assets to the security element. An hour later the location of the missing diego was leaked by a rogue Colombian spy, it seemed that the platoon ginger had feigned ailment after hearing word that his sister was being held as a moral boost, giving complimentary blowies in the missing soldiers truck.
Tragically the unit took one casuality, Hack was rumored to have been seen during the firefight running wildly through the weeds choking on tears while screaming "It is just like the training!" Proceeding to jump in the river.
On other accounts most members of the line platoons and support platoon were on the site, members of the support platoon that were not on the job site at the time were later found restraining Colonel Saunders a non organtic brought into the company, when asked for a reason behind the much needed restraint to a very satisfied looking specialist, it was said that after the initial shots, the Colonel pounced and began beating a local national passing through on his way home screaming "You'll never get the special blend from me" Colonel Saunders is expected to be sent before JAG and properly sentenced delaying his return date.
Satin, a member of support who had been unaccounted for, was found in full battle rattle along with Pellet, both in the kneeling position at the high ready under orders from a balled up Ramrod, who remained snugly in the corner occasionally revealing his eye pro covered eyes to scan the door area. The remaining support members were found asleep in their 9-16s post attack, excluding Snicker who immediately began letting people know the conspiracy of the night being a set up. "Think about it" he says, "Specialist Kinsdude said he would do anything for us to do this, and it just so happens that the last time we check up on it, it snaps, coincidence? We also have the best travel record keeping CABs out of reach for us, and by chance we have one last chance to just so happen to get a CAB, just think about it, besides why else would anyone let Ramrod and Deme come out on a mission that wasn't already set up? Just let that sink in and think about it."
With one year comes six months, as the 299th's endeavour comes to an end, there are not many that may be worthy enough to stand in their place, but as it may seem, the army prevaled, in finding a unit who could not only follow each and every order and rule blindly, and yet also manage to achieve such a level of blatant idocy.
A brief history shows that the 47th MRBC has it's own line of disposable heroes, on one particular MJB "Bridge Pull" a man who clearly did not meet company standards dropped a panel on his fingers while lowering the part, a second soldier was said to have jumped in to help, while deadlifting the panel and retrieving the first soldiers fingers, managed to pull the part over his own legs, dropping the part, and trapping himself. Once the underexperienced were weeded out, the 47th left for Iraq...
Immediately leaving home an intricate system of temporary leave was formed, by putting soldiers on suicide watch. Not only relieving soldiers of work and most duties, the five to ten soldiers that would be on this system at a time, would be guaranteed the time they needed as well as most resources to feel as close to home as possible.
When first in Iraq, the 47th immediately took over, starting complex drills and on base missions to assure the soldiers would be ready for anything, beginning with a recon mission, a 240B was left on a random bus and was almost immediately tracked down by a four man team and a terp. With the drill misunderstood by the Military Police on base, the 47th were forced to abandon any recon drills, and were recommended to claim the weapon was left on a bus by a soldier. In a second attempt to prove superiority over the current "reserve" unit, the 47th not only snuck a PLB out after a recent mission, knowing that none of their soldiers would have the PLB on them, the 47th were placed on lockdown and doors were casualy opened and a quick "not here" was remarked to keep suspicion down among any other soldiers that may have been around. After tearing everything out of all of their bags in the barn, the PLB was finally located, having been placed on the second platoon leader.
If there is anything we may learn, is that the only great combative to boredom is stupidity..
Air Assault, Carry on...
Stay Rugged..
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Readers Notes-
("Hack" was a special soldier who managed to "die" during every mission simulation, in country.)
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/operation-neptune-spear-code-name-for-killing-osama-bin-laden/2011/05/05/AFjnvJ0F_blog.html)
(In the medic area I really wanted to make sure the reader knew that any instances of Medic two being recognised would quickly be forgotten or mistaken for another person, Wagon having been awarded thus recognized to a higher standard may be mistaken for anything achieved by any other medics since they are still "invisible")
(The Humpty Dumpty paragraph was a lot longer with more detail and probably a few more interesting exploits but being held to a promise the remainder of this story will wait to be put up/finished until post deployment :P)
(Rumors were spread about "Colonel" Saunders return from leave being delayed due to a fight that landed him a few days behind bars, thus delaying his return from the states.)
