War Stories

[mustynutz]

We were thrilled as hell when our team finally received the two armored Chevy Suburbans we'd been promised. They would provide us with a measure of safety when we were out and about in the lovely sprawling slum that was Kandahar. Little did we know just how fortunate we were to get them when we did.

On the third day after the Suburbans arrived, we were returning to the house after another long dusty day. We were truly traveling in luxury. We actually had air conditioning and a CD player, not to mention armor plating and bulletproof windows. Riding in the right rear seat of the monstrosity, I felt like the member of a hugely successful third-world rapper's entourage.

I was shaken from my Arabic hip-hop musings by the sound of gunfire. Instinctively ducking, I saw two smears appear on the glass right by Adam's head, who was sitting in the right front passenger seat. I immediately began scanning the crowd for our attackers. I saw a young Afghan, maybe 19 or 20, astride a bicycle with a Makarov pistol raised at our vehicle, calmly squeezing off rounds. Two more rounds impacted on the armored flanks of the Suburban, right against my door.

"Son of a bitch!" Adam hyperventilated.

"Where's the shooter?" Jimmy Two-Guns was screaming from behind the wheel.

I pointed the kid out, who was now high-tailing it down a narrow road between rows of mud-brick houses. Jimmy whipped the wheel around with a snarl, scattering the teeming Afghans who were too daft to start running when the shooting started. We tore ass after the kid, who was pedaling for all he was worth.

The Suburban was bucking like a bronco over the bumpy rock-filled street, and our side-view mirrors were scraping showers of dried mud from the houses on either side. The kid made a sharp right down an alley, and there was no way the truck would fit in after him. I was out of the vehicle before it had come to a full stop, Adam right behind.

Our orders from Brigade were clear: the Joint Interrogation Facility (JIF) in Bagram needed prisoners. This little fuckstick would do nicely, provided he didn't end up making us put a round or two in him.

Fortunately for us, when he made the turn our would-be assassin caught a protruding stone with his front tire and went down into a ditch. He was up and scrambling down the alley on foot as I was jumping out of the truck. I could immediately see he was going to get away. A 200-pound guy wearing body armor and carrying 30 pounds of weapons, ammo, and a radio is not going to catch a skinny Afghan running for (he thought) his life.

I lucked out (so I thought) when he caught yet another jutting rock with his flashing Afghan sandals and went down in a tumble. I was only three feet away from him when he rolled over on his back and drew down on me.

I was staring right down the barrel of that fucking Makarov.

With my momentum, there was no way I could stop and try to get a round off at him before I was on top of him. Time seemed to slow (yes pricks, just like in Max Payne, but that shit sometimes really happens) and I could see his finger tightening on the trigger.

At that moment I jumped forward, landing on the little bastard with my full weight, my rifle smashing into his upper chest. I felt the muzzle of his pistol pressing into my side.

"Great," I remember thinking, "right where my vest doesn't cover."

Then the kid's head snapped back into the dust as Adam's rifle stock cracked him in the forehead. Jimmy arrived then, and helped Adam pull me up. I was feeling a bit weak. We rolled the kids over and zipped some flex-cuffs on him. It was then I noticed the pistol lying in the dirt with its slide locked back. The little fuck had been out of ammo.

We shipped him off to Bagram, and I'm pretty sure he ended up in Gitmo after that. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is we went back to the house, and after I was done puking, we tied one on in the most righteous manner.

Go Iranian vodka-in-a-can!

 

[mustynutz]

It was the end of yet another hot and dusty day in the picturesque, shit-smelling city of Kandahar. All in all it had been a successful day, by which I mean no one had tried to kill us. We were relaxing in our rather cramped quarters. I was sitting with Sid, Lee and Adam around a rickety milk crate, playing a heated game of spades.

Our evening was about to get a lot more interesting.

The sound of gunfire split the night, like God himself violently opening his zipper. Close gunshots, fired off at full automatic. After two months in country, it was easy to recognize the stutter of an AK-47. In this case, it was several AK's going off, sounding like a full-fledged battle was taking place just outside the house. We could hear rounds impacting on the wall outside our room as we scrambled into body armor and grabbed our rifles. We were under attack. I was on Adam's heels as we dashed out the door to our firing positions overlooking the market outside the house.

As we knelt behind the stone balustrade and looked out over the marketplace, we could see it was mostly deserted now, as the few remaining people on the street ran for shelter. I searched anxiously for targets and saw none. Gunfire continued to erupt, and I realized it was coming from the other side of the palace. We held position, in case an attack came from our side. I heard no return fire coming from the other side of the house, and wondered why.

A minute later the gunfire petered out with a final desultory burst. Adam and I held our positions until the all clear was given, and went down into the courtyard to find out what the hell had happened.

After a quick foray to the scene of the gunfire and an even quicker investigation, we found out what had happened. And I realized why we had defeated the Afghans with such relative ease.

Across a narrow street from the "palace" in which we resided was a mosque. There are hundreds of mosques in Kandahar, but this one was special. It was known as The Mosque of Mohammed's Shirt, because it apparently held a scrap of a shirt once worn by the Prophet himself. Pretty impressive, especially to the Afghans. Impressive enough that the mosque had its own force of guards, armed with those ubiquitous AK-47's.

Our residence also had a force of local guards assigned to provide us "security". Turns out a guard from our residence had bought himself a watermelon. A guard from the mosque tried to steal it, and stinky Afghan fisticuffs ensued. Violence escalated until a dozen guards from both sides were involved in the smelly brawl. Then one of the geniuses decided it was time to up the ante, and fired off a clip at the other side. The brawling factions separated to opposite sides of the street and proceeded to open up on each other. Over three hundred rounds of 7.62mm fire were exchanged at full automatic, with both sides separated by less than a hundred feet.

One guard was lightly grazed on the ankle.

"Harry, you're alive!!!! And you're a horrible shot!"

Another great day in the Smelly Sandbox. So we headed up to the roof and ended the day like we always did when it all went to shit.

 

[mustynutz]

It was another hot and dusty day in Kandahar. The wind blew in over the mountains, but did not provide relief. When it passed over you, it felt like someone had opened a giant oven door. We were on our way back to the palace after another successful mission. As I was still the new guy in country, I was once again riding rear security, sitting in the back of the pickup, M-16 at the ready to fend of ambush or assault. As I baked under the sun, various smells floated on the wind, all of them somehow managing to remind me of shit. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and shifted, trying to get comfortable.

Driving (or riding) in Kandahar was always an experience. There were no traffic rules, and the roads were clogged with trucks, bicycles, rickshaws, donkeys, and motorcycles. Pulling rear security in such an environment was difficult. The traffic crowded around you, and the streets were always packed. You had to watch at least a dozen people around you at once, not to mention scan the rooftops for snipers.

I noticed one young teenager on a bicycle staring at me as he pulled even with our slow-moving truck. He gave me a big grin and a wave. "How nice," I thought to myself. "Someone around here doesn't want us dead!"

He kept smiling as he edged his bike closer to the truck. Something about that smile was beginning to make me nervous. In a sudden movement, he reached beneath his shirt and pulled something out small and round.

Everything else happened in less than four seconds.

"Allahu Akbar!" he shouted, throwing the object into the bed of the truck.

It was a grenade.

The grenade skittered around the bed of the truck as we rattled over the road. I would never be able to reach it in time to throw it out of the truck.

As I'd been trained, I screamed, "Grenade!" at the top of my lungs and vaulted over the side of the still-moving truck. As I fell prone and rolled towards the ditch at the side of the road, the truck skidded to a stop and the doors flew open as Jimmy Two-Guns, Lee and Sid de-assed the vehicle. I lay prone and tried to get a bead on the little asshole as he pedaled away.

He disappeared into the crowd before I could get off a shot. Jimmy fell on top of me as he dove to cover in the ditch. I couldn't see Lee or Sid.

Jimmy was breathing hard into my ear, saying "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" over and over again.

Long seconds passed. I now could see Lee and Sid, ducking in the ditch across the road. The smell of the ditch began to assail my nostrils: it was even more shit-like than the smell of the wind. The crowd, which had gathered at a safe distance from our pending fiery demise, began to dissipate.

Soon it became apparent our truck wasn't going to explode after all. We climbed out of the ditch, dripping with some unnamable slime, and cautiously approached the truck.

I peered in the bed with trepidation.

A rock. The little asshole had thrown a round rock, painted green to look like a grenade.

Son of a bitch.

I couldn't decide if I was relieved or pissed that I didn't shoot the little shit in the back as he rode away. To this day, I'm still not sure.

It was four extremely grumpy men who, stinking of Afghani sewage clambered aboard the truck for the remainder of our journey home.

When we got back we showered and cracked the case of Baltica 9 (Russian beer with vodka) our SAS buddies gave us. I don't remember much after that, but apparently I got smashed and put on our lucky wig (don't ask), grabbed a couple of rifles, and spent the rest of the evening instructing my buddies to call me "Che" and shouting "Viva la revolucion!" over and over.

Viva la Baltica 9!

 

[mustynutz]

The aircraft that preceded mine into Kandahar had taken anti-aircraft fire, so my own C-130 was flying "nap of the earth"; this means the aircraft flies only a hundred meters or so off the ground, following the contours of the surface below, which in this case was quite mountainous. This is a method of flying the airplane jockeys like to call "the vomit disco inferno". They are right. I was grateful for the dramamine I'd taken before we took off from Seeb airbase in Oman. Several other soldiers were getting violently airsick into whatever receptacle came immediately to hand. For the majority, this turned out to be their helmet. These poor unfortunates would soon realize the error of their ways.

For as soon as we levelled out on our landing approach, the flight crew chief began bellowing over the roar of the prop-noise "Helmets on everyone!" Turns out Kandahar airfield had taken some incoming in the last few hours. At first, many resisted, but the burly crew chief was adamant. Freshly loaded helmets were upended over miserable heads--no one wanted to spend the night scrubbing out the interior of the plane. For some poor souls, this led to a second round of stomach gymnastics with less than pleasant results.

We touched down without incident. I for one was glad to get out of the stifling heat of the plane. I was tired of the stares and unasked questions focused at me in my jeans and polo shirt, with my longish hair and sprouting beard. I certainly didn't look like a soldier to this group, though I carried the same duffel bags as they did and was armed with a government issue pistol.

The rest of my team awaited me at the ramp. Jimmy Two-Guns (http://www.ubersite.com/m/42319), Adam, Casey, Lee, and Sid. I was a late addition to the group, as my plane had been delayed in Oman. I was glad to join these guys--I knew them all from Georgia, and they were the finest group of professionals one could hope to serve with in such an inhospitable environment. We carried my bags to our transportation: two beat-up Pakistani-made Toyota knockoff pickup trucks. In a lovely "welcome to the Sandbox" gesture, Sid nominated me to ride rear security: sitting in the back of the trailing pickup, alert for an attack from the rear.

We tore ass out of the airfield, headed into Kandahar city itself, which was about a 30-minute drive. Our destination was the governor's palace, where we would live for the next six months. From what I'd heard, the place wasn't much of a palace, but it did have two showers (for 40 people), so I would be able to bathe with something other than baby wipes for the first time in two weeks.

I was shaken from my reverie by a loud thump from the leading vehicle. I had just enough time to think "Hey, sounds like they hit a major bump..." when our truck, traveling about fifty, hit the same divot in the road. The bed of the truck fell out from beneath me and i sailed through the air towards the tailgate, which had been replaced with a fabric mesh. I landed back on the bed just shy of the mesh and bounced again in an arc that would carry me out over the back.

"What a great way to start a deployment," I thought as I sailed like an ungainly albatross through the air. I managed to hook an arm and a foot into the mesh and fell on top of it, half in and half out of the truck. Apparently, while I was engaged in inner monologue, my mouth was doing some choice exercise of its own. The truck slowed immediately, and the guys dismounted to help me disentangle myself. Jimmy, hail-fellow-well-met sort of guy he is, managed a sardonic shrug and a grin of sympathy, while Sid piped up with "If you're scurt, just say you're scurt!"

I shot them both.

In my mind.

In real life, we made it back to the palace without incident, then headed up to the roof for some whiskey Adam had smuggled from the states and some Cubans I'd bought in Oman.

The good times were about to begin.

Next time: The Kid on the Bicycle: Grenade!


PS. Can one of you wonderful folk break it down to a dumb n00b grunt step by step how to get a picture to appear in the text box here? I know clicking on the attachment is a pain in the ass. Someone said it had to be a Jpeg, but I can't get it to paste in this box, and I'm a computer neanderthal. Thanks in advance!

-The Jack

 

[mustynutz]

As all true military stories begin, "No shit, there I was..."

Kandahar, Afghanistan, 2002. Little did I know I was in store for some interesting experiences. Well, that's not true. Any time lots of people shoot at you for fun, it's an interesting experience.

I was assigned to live in the city of Kandahar itself, about 30 miles away from the nearest main US base. I was on a team of about six guys. Our team leader, "Jimmy", was the man. Here's a guy who was maybe 5'3, 130 pounds, and had gigantic brass juevos.

We called him "Jimmy Two-Guns". Partly because he was a bit Apache or something, but mainly because he insisted on carrying two pistols with him wherever he went. Two-Guns was a Pepsi fanatic. During our first month in country, Jimmy went through serious Pepsi withdrawals; I think he even suffered from DT's once or twice, which would explain him shooting up our room, screaming "Osama's coming out of the walls!!" We knew we had to find some Pepsi, and fast.

With a little luck from one of the dozen or so people in Kandahar who didn't want us dead, we discovered a little Bodega about a mile away that sold cardboard flats of Pepsi imported through Pakistan. However, this was in what we called a "bad" neighborhood. But dammit, Two-Guns needed his Pepsi.

So once a week, we made a Pepsi run. Let me set the stage.

A hot wind sends dust deviling through a narrow street, crowded with donkey carts, beat-up pickup trucks, horse drawn carriages, and bicycles. And people. Lots of people, some of them armed.

Parting the swirling dust like an avenging pair of angels come two equally beat up Toyota landcruisers, which screech to a halt at the entrance to a small store. Five guys de-ass the vehicles and take up firing positions behind the engine blocks (most likely to stop a bullet) and rear tires (lowest ranking guys got these positions, as they didn't stop bullets so good). Jimmy Two-Guns dismounts and with one of us on his six, walks into the store. Five minutes later, he comes out, both guns drawn, six flats of Pepsi stacked in his arms. We dump the Pepsi in the truck, mount up, and get the hell out of there.

As bad as the neighborhood was, no one once ever took a shot at us. Maybe the Taliban likes their Pepsi too.