This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: War Stories

  • My Thoughts on Memorial Day

    I wrote a piece for Business Insider which was published today. It’s about the memorial at Camp Pendleton and my visit there in 2007. There is a cross there, along with rocks signifying fallen comrades. I’m not a religious person, and the cross is not the real point of the memorial — at least for me. It is about the dog tags, the rocks, the liquor, and the left mementos.

    At the top of the peak, they dropped their heavy packs. They dug out a small site. In a hole close to the edge, they placed the cross. At the base of the cross, they put down their rocks. Their friends would never be forgotten.

    As combat in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled in the following years, the memorial grew. Marines started bringing new rocks to the memorial. A squad from 1/4 brought up the largest rock at the site for PFC Juan G. Garza. It weighed over fifty pounds. Other Marines brought bottles of liquor, drinking with their fallen brothers and leaving the rest for them at the site. Between rocks, there were dog tags, Purple Hearts, battalion t-shirts, and photos.

    Three of the original seven later died in combat. Their brothers probably carried their rock to the top of the mountain for them.

    It wasn’t constructed by an architect or an artist. The memorial didn’t have tourists coming through it like Arlington Cemetery or the Vietnam Wall. It was a closed site, built and maintained by Marines. Hundreds of rocks had been carried there. Each week, Marines would carry lawn mowers up and groom it.

    After deployments, battalions would go there to honor their fallen warriors.

    Read the whole thing.

    Quite inevitably, there are already comments left from dipshits who take issue with the cross and another who compares our fallen friends to nazis.

  • Interview with Scott Waugh

    Our buddies at You Served just posted their interview with Scott Waugh, the guy who made “Act of Valor”, at the Milblog Conference last weekend. It’s almost 40 minutes long, so you might want to wait until lunch time so your boss doesn’t get upset. But here it is;

  • David “Hollywood” Bellavia

    I’m sure you’ve read the book House to House written by our buddy David Bellavia, who is also running for Congress in Upstate New York. Well, according to Buffalo News, he’s also going Hollywood on us, too.

    The Republican congressional candidate from Batavia has just signed a film deal with an Oscar-winning director to tell the story of winning the Silver Star during the intense battle for Fallujah in 2004.

    Bellavia thinks the time has arrived for the nation to reflect on the controversial and deadly conflict.

    “It seems that every Iraq movie has been poorly received because the war was so fresh,” he said. “But with bin Laden’s death, we start to see where people are into positive stories.”

    Yeah, I was blown away by the book and by the fact that blogging has put me in contact with people like David. I have faith in Bellavia that this will be a movie worth watching. According to the Buffalo News article, the movie won’t be out for at least two more years, but it ought to be well-worth the wait.

    For those of you looking for a book to read, the guy who wrote House to House with David, John Bruning, also co-wrote the new book “Outlaw Platoon” – and it’s on par with Bellavia’s book. I’ve had conversations with Bruning and he truly supports the troops even though he hasn’t served himself. I’m in the middle of Outlaw Platoon, and it’s so hard to put down – read it.

  • 6th Engineer Battalion HHC Arctic Sappers jump in Alaska

    The 6th Engineer Battalion HHC Arctic Sappers put some pictures of their jump the other day at Malamut DZ in Alaska of their Facebook page. They let their families watch;

    I jumped twice in Alaska in support of Operation Jack Frost in January 1976 to test the readiness of the units there to defend the new Alaska pipeline. We were the aggressors. It was probably one of my most miserable times in the Army. First, I joined the Army with the intent to get away from Upstate New York winters, so my first winter in the Army, they sent me to Alaska.

    It was a nine-hour flight from 62 degree weather in Charleston AFB, South Carolina to minus 30 degree Fort Wainwright. We had inflight rigging which means we donned our parachutes and equipment in the aircraft. It was the only time I got airsick.

    Then we jumped out over Fort Wainwright’s airfield. There was three feet of snow on the airfield, so I aimed for the runways, which were cleared because I didn’t want to hump all of my equipment through waist deep snow, and I hit like a ton of bricks. Someone lost their M1911 while they were in the air, so the whole battalion was on line searching for the pistol in the ass deep snow. Miraculously, we found it after an hour or so.

    The second jump was on Husky DZ, somewhere near Fort Greeley. I don’t know, because I’ve never seen the DZ. I was the first man in the door with the platoon’s radios and M60 tripod in the WICI (CIWI?) bag which is just a big square canvas bag for the heavier, bulkier equipment. Since I weighed like 128 pounds in those days, they put me at the front of the stick (jumping order) because I couldn’t walk through the aircraft with the bag to get to the exit. Anyway, after my exit, I steered for the DZ, but I didn’t make it and went into the trees with the WICI bag in one tree and my canopy in the other, so I had me a big hammock. I had to deploy my reserve and use it to climb down to the ground. Thanks, Alaska National Guard pilots.

    That began our five day field problem to attack a pumping station on the pipeline. We humped 500-pound ahkios (a big sled that we pulled like Iditerod dogs) up and down mountains to get to our objective. Meanwhile, our fellow aggressors, the SEALs, jumped on their objective without any humping.

    Yeah, it was scenic, but not while you’re making tracks through the scenery.

    Anyway, I’m glad for the families of that Engineer unit who got to see a nice Hollywood jump. But my memories of Alaska aren’t as pleasant.

  • Infantryman’s pride

    StrikeFO sent us a link from a blog Knottie’s Niche where a Gold Star Mom republishes from a Facebook post by someone (whose name is lost to the interwebs apparently) explaining why infantrymen are so arrogant. It’s several months old, but I haven’t read it before, so you get it on a Saturday;

    The pride of the infantryman comes not from knowing that he’s doing a job that others can’t, but that he’s doing a job that others simply won’t.

    […]

    That’s why the infantryman carries himself with pride and arrogance. He’s aware that America has lost respect for him. To many he’s a bloodthirsty animal. To others he’s too uneducated and stupid to get a regular job or go to college. Only he knows the truth.

    […]

    It’s a job most Americans don’t understand, don’t envy, and don’t respect. That is why we have pride for the infantry.

    I remember after the shooting was pretty much over after the first Gulf War, we were moved up two days drive into Iraq to screen for the Shi’ites who were trying to escape Saddam Hussein’s wrath. We had no tents other than the ones we gathered up from the retreating Iraqis. We were sleeping on the ground among the gerbils and dung beetles, our medics had long ago run out of Kaopectate, the nearest pack of cigarettes was two days drive away.

    Somehow we got a weeks old Stars & Stripes and they had a feature story about some “hero” truck driver who stayed on the road moving supplies to the troops (obviously not to us). But he mentioned in the article, that he was glad to be on the road, because the troops he was supplying “were living like animals”.

    I looked up from my newspaper reading and surveyed the scene around me with my troops sacked out in the sand, with only a hole with an MRE box for a toilet seat, happily munching on unhydrated pork patties. It’d been weeks since our last opportunity for a freezing cold shower. Yeah, we were pretty much living like animals, but I don’t think they would have had it any other way. I don’t think there would have been any volunteers to be a truck driver in that war.

    But you should read the whole piece at Knottie’s Niche.

  • Act of Valor; my review

    So, I went to the movies today, along with the other senior citizens who go to the Saturday matinee because it’s cheaper. I never go to the movies – the last time I went was to see “Thor”, but the media has been calling me for my opinion because of the post I wrote a few weeks ago, so I figured I’d better go see it.

    Yesterday, I read some reviews that warned me that the movie was anti-semitic. I didn’t get that feeling, sorry, and I’m as pro-Israel as a non-semitic person can be, I suppose. Although the story did try to stay away from Semitic Muslim terrorists, the terrorists were motivated by Islam, even though they were generally Filipino or Chechnyan Muslims. And the Mexican drug cartels that were helping the terrorists sneak into the country, which I think is an eventuality that our government isn’t taking seriously enough. The only Semitic terrorist was a rich Jewish playboy-type. So you have to deal with that while you watch the movie.

    The movie was very good, but not as good as “Black Hawk Down” or “We Were Soldiers”. The live fire scene was everything it promised to be, but it was much too short. But I do love it when the cavalry shows up at just the right time and turns around the battle in favor of the good guys. And miniguns tear up the bad guys.

    Roselyn Sanchez had top billing, but speaking as a connoisseur of little brown women, her part in the movie was way too brief for her position on the marquis. She still looks mighty fine even when her face is all bruised and swollen up.

    Thinking back to my concerns about the movie telling our enemies how to counter SEALs or other forces, I don’t think they gave away too much information in the movie. Nothing that anyone who ever read a Tom Clancy or Brad Thor novel wouldn’t already know.

    The hardest part for me about the movie was having to sit still. I wanted to jump out of my seat and run through the hallways and tunnels right alongside the SEALs, but that’s my problem, not the movie’s fault. I’m sure the folks sitting around me were made a little anxious by my flailing antics.

    Over all it was a very good movie, and I’m sure it’s destined to be a classic, like the other movies I mentioned. It’s also destined to inspire some stolen valor criminals. But you should see it while it’s in theaters and not wait for the DVD or Netflix, if for no other reason, the big screen does make the live fire sequence better than it might be otherwise.

  • Incident in New Baghdad

    Our pal and frequent commenter Doc Bailey has been interviewed by The Washington Post.

    Incident in New Baghdad’: What happened in Iraq?

    On July 12, 2007, during a long, hot mission, American soldiers searched houses in a ruined maze of a neighborhood in east Baghdad. The largely routine effort came to a violent conclusion: An Apache helicopter circling overhead spotted several men carrying weapons. The chopper stalked the targets, then opened fire. Among the 11 killed were a Reuters photographer and his driver. Among the wounded were two young children.The Army investigated. No one was publicly found at fault.

    I’ve been following the story on FB here: 2-16, (and 4th IBCT) Vets for Truth.

    On the face of it this is a story about the fog of war, but there’s more. Toss in Wikileaks, an potential Academy Award, and old wounds are being torn open.

    First, a classified video of the action as seen from the Apache was released by WikiLeaks in April 2010. Now a 22-minute documentary of the “Incident in New Baghdad” by director James Spione is up for an Academy Award at the Oscar ceremony Sunday.

    Yet for all the documentary evidence — video doesn’t lie, does it? — collective truth remains elusive. Nobody, including the Pentagon, disputes the authenticity of the video. What it means, however — and what happened before, what happened after, what were the intentions of the actors — those are different questions.

    I can’t relate directly this event, but I CAN relate to the aftermath… Snippets of time, scenes from larger events, taken out of context and amplified.  Maybe used with good intentions, or maybe driven by some hidden agenda?

    Every Nam vet can empathize.

     

  • NOT Just Another Day.

    Commenter Doc Bailey and I have been swapping emails about this and that. I was rather surprised to learn that we have some things in common even though shifted 40 years in time.

    But he mentioned a coupla things I couldn’t directly relate to so I asked him to expand on them.

    Here is the first, in his words. Thanks Doc.

    —————————-

    Here is my account of 25 June 2007, and the events that happened to me that day. I have to put it out there because people have to know. please understand these events are painful for me to recount.

    It was a normal day like any other. We were all excited to be getting back, but i was exuasted having pulled a 6 hour gaurd shift right before getting off. We all sat around and joked. I could hear people laughing about the game “company of heroes” that Craig and WillieBo had played. They’d gone for 5 hours only to get their asses kickedby the germans. I was fretting over Jubi. I was a little upset, because he was supposed to have been evaced the night before for (what i would find out later) a slipped disk. I had given him morphine right before i thought he was going to go, he didn’t and i was bracing for the ass reeming i was going to get. I had spent all night fretting about a patient, and in the end i was pretty damm tired, everyone else on the otherhand were lively in a way only the loose cannons can be.
    Like always we had details to do, and things that needed to get done. Clean the pisser, sweep and mop, make the “gym” look pretty, Mop the mats, sweep the sleeping bay, and of course pick up cigarette buts. we did these, with the usual amount of bitching complaining and griping. It came time to load up and off we went.

    (more…)