So Much For Pathos
By The Judo Madonna on 5-4-07
Let me preface all of this by saying that I’m not one of those "rah-rah! war!" guys.
This is a league game, Smokey
No, in fact, I'm much closer to a "war, what is good for?" person.
That being said, I do believe what is to follow is a story worth telling.
This is not my story, this is Chad's.
Or, as he is better remembered...
Can you tell how drunk I am?
Chad is a really good friend of mine, and has been for a long time. We met when I was a freshman in high school. He went to a different school, but was dating a girl from my school, who was practically my sister. She wanted to get him something special for his birthday, and asked me for tips on giving him a HJ. So I sat in Spanish class and jerked off her finger, thereby cementing the foundation of one of my oldest and strongest friendships.
I'm sure all of you went to high school with an Army-Lifer. You know, one of those kids that never outgrew GI Joe, joined ROTC, and whose life's dream and goal was to be in the military. Whatever reason those kids have, now is neither the time, nor the place, and I shant speculate.
Suffice it to say, Chad was never one of those kids. In fact, he was, mostly, quite the opposite.
Halfway through my sophomore year of college however, Chad announced he was not going to finish college, as he was going to enlist in the army instead. He's always been a smart kid, with a healthy distrust of the government, so it took me and all of his friends completely by surprise. As best I can figure it, he saw an angle, and he played it. "Man's gotta do ... " and all that.
He now works for Army Intelligence, and is also qualified as a paratrooper. Apparently, in Jump School, you practice landing on someone else's parachute in mid-air, running across the top of it, jumping off, and continuing your jump. Bad ass. But I’m getting sidetracked here ...
Last year, he was deployed to Iraq. I've never had a close friend put in any kind of situation like that before, and it was not fun, especially not with King of All Retards at the helm. Fortunately, as Intel, his job would be, for the most part, off the front lines of combat.
What the fuck is the Internet?
A few weeks ago, after serving seven months in Iraq, he came to stay on my couch for two weeks of leave, before shipping back for four more months (Now seven, after those soulless suckers of Satan's cock people in Washington extended everyone's tour).
Sitting on my couch, he told the story that I am about to reproduce. These are his words, not mine.
Kevlar: Not just for cops.
So, for those that don't know ... this is how the story of luck really goes.
Al Abarrah, Diyala Province, Iraq (2245 05 March 07)
After testing and establishing communication lines, and the equipment that we planned on placing in the field, our nine man element left the Iraqi Army compound for our 2-kilometer "hump" through the palm groves of North Eastern Baqubah, Iraq. The mission was pretty straightforward, SSG Linnemeier and I would be installing some surveillance equipment to monitor traffic patterns and foot paths throughout neighboring villages in preparation for our upcoming mission into the city.
We stepped off, much like many other nights, in expectation of a rather docile evening with some heavy rucksacks and our body armor being the biggest impediment along the trek.
Illumination was around 100 percent with the moon practically full and visibility out to about 150 meters without any Night Vision Goggles (NVG's) on.
For those of you that haven't had the joy of walking through a palm grove in Iraq, it's not a straight shot. There are walls, canals, and vineyards that break up the normal flow of foot traffic about every 25 meters. In lieu of this, we scouted ahead and discovered the most passable route. Unfortunately for us, our senior scout missed the turn by 200 meters leading us farther south than we had anticipated.
As we came around the corner of a wall in a staggered column formation, we heard someone shout ahead of us. Everyone scrambled towards the wall on our left side. Immediately machine gun fire erupted from our 12 o'clock position (due south). The point man in formation was hit almost immediately. Our medic was fortunately second in line behind the point man. As we scrambled to find cover, we were pinned between a canal on our right and a 12-foot wall on our left with no cover in front of us. We sporadically returned fire.
Lying in the middle of the road hugging the wall as tightly as I could, scanning ahead for muzzle flashes or the possibility of a man moving ahead of us, we could hear the first man that was hit screaming for help and the medic calling for anyone that could offer a hand to come up. Every time that someone began to move again, we came under increased fire. There was nowhere to move. We were pinned down by heavy machine gun fire (PKC) and AK-47 fire from at least four people directly in front of our position.
As I was lying in the dirt returning fire, the man immediately to my rear fell on my legs without a sound. My only thought was that made two people either injured severely or dead. He wasn't moving, there was no sound, I couldn't tell what was wrong with him other than he was hit, and probably badly. It took time to muster courage to move into a position to be able to get out of the line of direct fire. I remembered the safety of the corner 10 meters behind me, but first, I had to move the man on my legs.
"Hey! Who is this?" I asked kicking my legs just enough to warrant a response.
"SGT.xxx", he screamed back at me. "I'm hit in the neck, but I'm okay. We have to get off this wall. Get my bag off of my back, I can't move."
Fuck, fuck, fuck, he can't move, I'm pinned down, fuck. I have to get behind him to get him off of me so I can get us to safety. There was nothing left but to get up and get him out of the way. I still didn't know how badly he was actually hurt. I just had his word, and with the adrenaline that I felt, it made me question his senses. I rolled onto my side, and felt an explosion of pain in the side of my head. "God dammit! God Dammit! My fucking ear, shit!", was all that I could think. I was sure that a round hit the wall next to my head and it caused a ricochet into my ear virtually destroying my hearing and the actual ear.
I rolled over the rest of the way sliding behind the man on my legs to begin moving behind the corner. I dropped his pack and we both pulled around the corner to ensure we were finally out of the line of fire. The rounds were still slamming into the wall next to us and the ground immediately in front of my body.
We rounded the corner to link up with the four other members of the patrol making for six around the corner and three along the wall still in the open. We couldn't do anything about them at the moment though. As I turned the corner and finally dropped my rucksack in front of me for added cover, I realized that we weren't just under fire from one direction, but from all three. We were under fire from the South (the initial location) the West (a palm grove across the canal) and to the North (from a building top). We were literally pinned down with nothing heavier than a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) that fires the same rounds as my M4 leaving us completely outgunned in every aspect of the word.
I finally thought to check on my ear to see if it was bleeding. It hurt like a bastard, but I just figured that was pretty standard. I rubbed it damn near four times to make sure my eyes weren't playing a trick on me. It was fine, there was nothing wrong at all. I was completely okay.
We finally managed to suppress the fire coming to our position enough to pull the first injured man from the front line. The medic and our senior scout pulled him back. His screams were still wracking the night. We were still coming under sporadic fire from the rooftops and from the palm grove, but the heavy machine gun had finally stopped firing at us. We finally got QRF (Quick Reaction Force) to our location, but they couldn't find where we were. After finding our position, they began firing the .50 caliber machine guns into the general area that the bad guys were shooting from. We evacuated the one injured personnel (the gunshot wound to the neck was superficial but damned painful to the man to my rear) back to the Iraqi Army compound to air evacuate him to a trauma hospital near Baghdad.
We had no idea what had happened. We only knew that we came under fire and had no reason, no understanding of who it was or where it came from. Just that we were lucky to have only suffered one severely wounded soldier (that would end up living).
Only now, four days later do we know the whole story. After we missed our turn for the patrol, we came upon 5 Anti-Iraqi Forces (AIF as we call them) setting up an ambush on the Iraqi Police checkpoint in the area. Apparently, they didn't want us to stop them and began firing on us before we could even see them. As they fired, we of course returned fire, making the Iraqi Police think that we were in fact attacking their checkpoint. It turned out to be about 14 people to our South firing on our location (the initial gunfire was from the south) 2-3 persons in the palm groves to our West, and at least two people on the roof of a building behind us (to our North).
The next day, I pulled my Kevlar off (helmet) and was sitting on a bench along side of the Iraqi compound and saw how close I had really come to getting hit. The bullet grazed my Kevlar to the left side of my head less than an inch from my head. It was a shock. I hadn't even thought it was that close previously, it was just insane.
That night (06 March), we loaded all of our gear back up, took 11 total men on patrol, and began our walk to emplace our equipment again. This time, with no real problems. It's amazing how luck can come into play during a gunfight. We had one serious injury, we killed two and wounded another two after we were initially ambushed. Thankfully, Iraqis are very bad shots. :-)
– Chad
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So, for many of us*, i think, we get so caught up in being pissed at the government (or in general), about how awful the war is, how unnecessary it is, and how mismanaged it has been, that we forget that there are thousands of real people over there, who had nothing to do with the decision to invade.
*- excluding of course, ZubazPants' own, soulless sucker of Satan's cock Republican Michael Lucinski (I kid, i kid.)
Hearing this story sort of gave me a new perspective. These people are friends, spouses, children to many others, and many of them joined for a variety of reasons, not to just play Rambo. I hate to be cheesy, but now when I see a soldier home from leave, I'm left in a kind of awe. I mean, I still think the war was a horrible idea, and Dopey Dope and the Fucky Bunch should be publicly hung
The funniest part is, this isn't photoshopped
But man, those soldiers have some big giant superhero balls.
If you'd like to tell Chad how envious you are of his elephant balls, or thank him for doing what he's doing so you don't you get drafted, send it to TheJudoMadonna@gmail.com, I'll make sure he gets it.
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