Look at the worlds greatest Army NOW!
Well, the meat and potatoes of this post are going to be on what I call, 82nd Airborne Greatest Bloopers. I couldn’t believe what had happened and in the end, it ended up being quite hilarious. We were headed out to this one place early in the morning, before sunrise. We were driving through this one neighborhood and we ended up missing our turn. Well we went to loop around to come back to the road that we needed to take, but it wasn’t a route that we normally take. It is now, a road we will probably NEVER take.
As soon as we turned on to this road I knew it was going to be trouble. I was driving and happened to be in the 2nd vechicle in the convoy. Even thought it was nighttime and I had my night vision on, I could easily see what we were about to drive through. Instead of a road, there existed a pathway of shit/mud/water combination. I slowed down on a spot that I found to be solid and waited for the 1st vechicle to get through and to give some room between our vechicles. I knew with our heavy ass uparmored Humvee’s that there was the possibility of getting stuck in this mud because, well, it was thick. Once there was enough room, I told everyone to hold on and I hit the gas, making sure I had enough speed to get through any potentially soft spots. Well, along the way there was this big bump, and yeah, I hit it pretty hard. But I figured hit the bump hard or get stuck…. and well considering that I didn’t want to have to get out and walk around in this shit mud, the choice was simple; I kept the accelerator down. We hit it hard and it was bigger than I expected. It tossed our gunner around like a ragdoll, and I feel bad because he hurt his back. Nothing serious, but he was in pain for a couple minutes. Our LT hit and hurt his elbow. Damn, my bad. Well, at least we made it through.
Unfortunatly one of the trucks was not so lucky. They ended up getting stuck, and pretty good too. Another truck attempted to go back to them and to hook up a tow-bar and pull them out, but they ended up getting stuck. Oh great, this is not looking good. A third truck pulled up and attempted to pull the newly stuck truck out. They wern’t having any luck. I saw the other team leader from my squad out there sloshing through this shit mud, just covered. OMG, you are truely a trooper, I mean that. He ended up having our truck pull up and along with the other truck, we both attempted to pull one of the trucks free. The more we pulled the more the other truck seemed to get stuck. Nothing seemed to be working, and I can only imagine how funny this must have been to the locals in the area. The sun was coming up now and they were waking up to the worlds greatest Army bogged down in the mud. We were in the process of calling for a wrecker to come out when somehow we ended up pulling the right way and getting the one truck out. I guess another truck was helping the initial truck that got stuck, and finally we had both of them free.
In the end, I think we spent almost 2 hours in that shitty street. 3 trucks were coated in this mud, and one Humvee door had been damaged when it was pulled open by another Humvee. The funny, although its not really funny, part of this is that the other team leader who was working so hard at getting the trucks unstuck; the one who was gallantly trudging through this mud, ended up getting hit by this door flying open. All of a sudden we just see him come flying out of seemingly nowhere in the air, feet at his waist and he comes crashing down on his back, yup, directly in the mud. We all couldn’t help it and we just started busting up laughing. It truely was hilarious to see, especially considering that he didn’t get hurt. Once we got everyone safely away from that street we continue on our way.
The next day we were chilling at our outpost. Me and a couple other guys were in the middle of playing an intense game of Axis and Allies, when we started hearing a bunch of gunfire. We went outside to check it out and it sounded like the whole city was shooting at once. I’ve never heard that much gunfire here. Apparently, in a celebratory fashion like a couple days ago, the locals were celebrating another victory by the Iraqi soccer team by shooting thousands upon thousands of rounds in to the air. I even heard a couple machine guns shooting. Wow, you have got to be an idiot. Do they not know these bullets come down somewhere and as our interperator pointed out sadly, “A lot of people are going to die today.” He was referring to the bullets coming back to earth and I guess, its pretty well know that this kills a lot of people. Could you imagine something like that in the US? I know people do that kind of stuff on New Years, but it doesnt even come close to comparing to the volume of fire over here.
The whole time, we just sat outside listening to it, and in a way hoping that some dumb moron would get the balls to shoot at us during this, but it never happened. The next night, some guys drove by an Iraqi Police (IP) checkpoint, just a block over from our outpost and began shooting at the IPs. There was a short little gunbattle, but it was very load because of how close it is. Man, things going on just right around us, yet our lives continue to exist and boredom. Its so crazy how this war can be. Just have to maintain the train of through to ensure that we are ready 100% of the time, for that once chance when things do hit the fan.
Read more stories (Eighty Deuce on the Loose)
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