Try, if you can to describe a loved one in his last hours of life. The light of Life in his eyes. The last moments that you saw him animated, sun filled hallway, the tile gleaming under his booted feet. A man, a boy, a Soldier you have know for years. You know his wife, his daughter-remembering the day she was born  and the happy look in his eyes - you know the trouble he has been through, with his wife with his father. Not knowing what to tell him, this young man with a family, since you don’t have any of those things but this Soldier looks up to you as a Leader, looking for help. 

Like a son you have tried to help him, mentor him, sat for hours with him in a tower in Kuwait and listened to him, his worries and fears, his hopes and dreams. This boy was… This boy, this man… was all the mistakes you could have prevented as a youth. He was the Hope you once had. He could do It with the right advice, the right words. You loved him but you didn’t know it at the time, oh, maybe you did, but it wasn’t real… It wasn’t Real. Death could never touch us here. Not here, not standing in front of the 1SGT as his squad leader, defending your best Soldier, as he admitted why he spent a weekend in jail. “But get him away from the civlians, Top, and the man shines…”

He comes over to your apartment and talks about his life, his wife, his daughter, his love, the light of his life. You drink beer with him as he folds laundry and never calls you by your first name because,”It wouldn’t be respectful, you know? I can’t call you Mike, Sgt D.” You cry infront of him, tell him that there is a great hole in your soul that needs to be filled but can’t be. You need Hope but it’s not there. He tells you to hold on that he loves you in the words that men cannot say to each other.

A year and half later, he is dead, his heart shattered by a sniper and you don’t know it yet, hoping it’s some IA or IP, but you have already heard the name over the radio. Duplaintier. Thinking you will see him back at Falcone so you can give him shit about being shot, but he’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

You will never see him laugh again, never sit with his little girl again and try to draw Spiderman for her as the leadership of the squad tries to figure out the new hand and arm signals for LOA and ACE reports.

The last time you see him is in a black bodybag, intabation tube in his mouth, eyes glassed over, skin waxy, like a dead fish in the market. Touch his hair,cut short to the scalp like your own, expecting him to sit up and tell you it will all be ok, it was all a joke. He is still alive.

But the skin is cold, lifeless. and you think of that morning, the last time you saw him alive and wish you would have stopped, for one second, and asked him how he was doing, how his Leave was.

Only now it’s to late.

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General

I head this song this morning and felt compelled to post this. In so many ways this song is/was intertwined with my experiences and what I still go through day to day. I plan to make my own compilation of pictures and this song. Enjoy it, even I had a few tears.

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General

9:11pm EST.
The soldier from Lawrence Mass was not the soldier who was found today. Sources close to the family say it was a man from California.

I’m sure the MSM will begin pouring this out soon.

11 Comments
General

I shot at a man once for driving his vehicle towards me in Iraq. He was off the road and at an accelerated pace. He was within 100 meters before I shot him and even then it would have been too late if he had set off his charge. The scenario played out in my head over and over after and even to this day I think about that day.

I wondered if he was just a pawn trying to test our limit and how we would react to that situation. The terrorists we fought against were testy little pricks. It was almost like a game of cat and mouse sometimes. They knew our ROE (Rules of Engagement) and always seemed to reach the point of almost getting killed. However, on this day it played out a little different. I never tried to go out of my way to hurt anyone. Sometimes you had to be rough and other times it wasn’t needed, but you never gave an inch. This particular day was like any other day in Ramadi. It was morning time and curfew was just coming off. We were doing our rounds in and out of the city. Keeping the main roadways clear and sustaining a watchful eye of people stopping and dropping. This was a common method to drop IED’s when a vehicle comes to a stop and they just drive on. One thing that was a challenge in the city was the amount of traffic in the morning. It would build up and despite having an up-armored vehicle you couldn’t move an entire column of traffic. You could bump and grind at times but things always seemed to bottle neck at certain points. You tried your best to not fall in those situations. My crew and I decided to keep at the lower part of one road. There was a Bradley at the other end so they could also watch for people dropping things from their vehicle.

I decided to stop a car to inspect it. It was lowered in the rear and 9 out of 10 times the weight is from tires, bad shocks or just random items in a trunk. You can never be too careful. So I had my other truck pull security in front of us by pulling ahead of the suspicious vehicle and my gunner turned around to ensure no other vehicles came towards us. I always tried my best to provide 360 degree coverage. Anyway, the search was routine. Most are when you have guns pointing in your general direction. I was looking under one of the seats when I heard one of my guys yell, then a shot rang out. I jumped out and saw this vehicle moving towards us fast.

Now, I know this sounds crazy but I remember in some situations, things seemed to just go in slow motion. This was one of them. I raised my weapon up and fixed the vehicle into my reflex sight. Here is how it broke down.

- There was already a verbal warning.
- Visual warning.
- A warning shot.
- The vehicle was still coming.

All of this had been done within a few seconds. I estimated that the vehicle was about 100 meters give or take from us. I squeezed my trigger and a single shot, found its ways into the driver’s side window, center mass….

The vehicle turned a little and finally came to a rolling stop….

If the vehicle would have blown up, my men would have been killed most likely. 100 meters with a VBIED is sure death. The Rules of Engagement are a guideline and you do your best to ensure you follow them in the order prescribed. Sometimes you have to go from waving them off to a disabling shot or even a kill shot. Every time you pull the trigger, you question your decision, which is reality. You have mere seconds to decide if you will kill someone or hesitate. You develop these instincts in war that seem to heighten the will to survive.

The point of this entry is to give you a glimpse of what reality can be like when faced with such tight rules that can cost you your life. Like I said, you develop the instinct and learn it at an accelerated rate from trial and error. Seeing your buddies hurt or killed is that accelerator. The ROE is your worst enemy in war. However, it can be your best friend when you rationalize the decision to kill someone.

33 Comments
General

At 10:07pm EST, a person from Indianapolis Indiana hit the half a million mark for this site. Not to shabby!

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General