Relaps
08-29-2007, 12:50 PM
About a week ago, my father left for a military base to assist in a program that is supposed to simulate what battles are like in Iraq. It's not standard warfare, because one moment you have someone shooting at you, they run, drop their gun, and they're a civilian and you cant hurt them. How do you train for this?
Thats what this program is for.
My Pop emailed his weekly family letter detailing this experience. I thought I'd share.
"8-28-07
Allah Akbar!
It was my first day as an Iraqi insurgent and we'd had word that an
American Army Stryker convoy was going to be moving though the gutted
community. And sure enough, here they came, the massive, tanklike
vehicles on their huge rubber tires trundling carefully up the street
amongst the civilian foot traffic.
Suddenly, from outside my place of concealment, I heard the
WHOOOOSH-BLAAAM! of Big Dick's RPG slam into the first Stryker. The
rest of the convoy ground to a halt, .50 caliber mounted machine guns
strafing the gutted building from whence the attack had come. Other
soldiers poured from the machines, pushing civilians back toward the
sidewalks and preparing to storm the buildings.
That's when Turds, Bear and I (good, traditional Iraqi freedom fighter
names, yes?) cut loose with our individual IEDs (Improvised Explosive
Devices) which we'd planted along the roadside, knowing full well this
would be how the hated Yankee invaders would behave. Three thundering
blasts along the convoy, dust and debris and screaming everywhere.
Before the dust had even cleared you could hear the wails and shouts
of the injured and dying. Blood everywhere, as a legless woman fell
screaming from a passenger car, her gory stumps spurting blood and an
Iraqi man waved the remains of a missing arm, shouting "I die! I die
soon!" Yes, we'd killed or maimed almost as many civilians as
infidels, but such is the will of Allah.
The pig soldiers were visibly shaken but trying to rally, gathering
around their own fallen like the selfish cowards they were, but the
people rose up against them, getting well inside their absurd
"personal space" and screaming at them in the tongues of outrage. Our
women were especially vociferous. How dare they ignore the fallen
innocent! This is my brother! Tend to him first, you white pig! And
other imprecations, delivered at full volume to a rattled 18-year-old
Alabama farm boy whose very expression indicated that he had never
signed up for THIS.
But for myself, I was already fleeing out the back of the gutted
hovel. While the "wounded" were all amputee actors and the explosive
debris had been fullers' earth and corkboard, it had nonetheless been
propelled by a four-ounce charge of black powder and accompanied by an
eight-gram concussion salute (about as loud as three M-80's
simultaneously) and though the soldiers now storming my hideout had
rifles loaded with blanks, they were amped up enough to explain the
idea of "that was fucking LOUD in my EAR, dude!" via rifle butt. So
we never stick around. Such is the new-style Army training in
Victorville's abandoned airbase, and for it experienced pyros and
amputee actors from all over the state have been hired to give the
soldiers some experience in semi-realistic anti-insurgent fighting.
We're under the direct command of their officers, who are trying to
prepare the troops for an environment where the enemy does not
conveniently wear uniforms and a sniper can simply drop his gun, walk
around the corner, and be an innocent civilian again, whom you are not
allowed to shoot. And most especially, that every blessed thing you
do will infuriate shrieking Iraqi grandmothers, who will curse into
your stunned, farmboy face until you want to cry.
But the commanders really know what they are doing. We do this
fifteen hours a day, from before dawn until after dark, and towards
the end of the day the troops are so rattled that when confronted with
a couple of snipers shooting from a building also occupied by
civilians, they huddled inside their fortresslike Stykers, unable to
decide what to do.
At which point the Lieutenant gave them a present. Us. I came
screaming around the corner in a VBED (Vehicle Borne Explosive Device)
which sounds fancier than the battered yellow pickup it was. Dust
flying, tires sliding, and Ashef (who has lived here since he was two)
in the passenger seat leaning out the window screaming hatred in Farsi
(which, by the way, is an excellent screaming language.) We howled
toward those stunned farmboys for far longer than either of us
expected, but finally a couple of the gunners shook themselves out of
their dumfounded state and opened up with the earsplitting racket of a
.30 and a .50 brace of machine guns. Cut to shreds, I thumbed the det
button in my right hand and hit the brakes. The explosive charges in
the back of the truck erupted in dust and cork and smoke and noise,
and we, technically a ball of flaming wreckage, skidded to a halt at
the nose of a Stryker and slumped over in our seats.
Cheers! This is what Alabama farm boys signed up for! Not dealing
with pushy grandmothers! They signed up ta shoot wacky Iraqi madmen
driving car bombs and do it in the nick of time, too! The lead gunner
who had faced us down was given "shrapnel in the arm" by the OC and
retired to plaudits from his fellows whose lives had been saved by his
sterling bravery, and the rest of the troops, invigorated, charged the
sniper-infested building under cover fire (which kept the citizen's
heads down) to dispatch the shooters in short order.
And that was one day of training. Only fifteen more to go"
Yep.
Thats what this program is for.
My Pop emailed his weekly family letter detailing this experience. I thought I'd share.
"8-28-07
Allah Akbar!
It was my first day as an Iraqi insurgent and we'd had word that an
American Army Stryker convoy was going to be moving though the gutted
community. And sure enough, here they came, the massive, tanklike
vehicles on their huge rubber tires trundling carefully up the street
amongst the civilian foot traffic.
Suddenly, from outside my place of concealment, I heard the
WHOOOOSH-BLAAAM! of Big Dick's RPG slam into the first Stryker. The
rest of the convoy ground to a halt, .50 caliber mounted machine guns
strafing the gutted building from whence the attack had come. Other
soldiers poured from the machines, pushing civilians back toward the
sidewalks and preparing to storm the buildings.
That's when Turds, Bear and I (good, traditional Iraqi freedom fighter
names, yes?) cut loose with our individual IEDs (Improvised Explosive
Devices) which we'd planted along the roadside, knowing full well this
would be how the hated Yankee invaders would behave. Three thundering
blasts along the convoy, dust and debris and screaming everywhere.
Before the dust had even cleared you could hear the wails and shouts
of the injured and dying. Blood everywhere, as a legless woman fell
screaming from a passenger car, her gory stumps spurting blood and an
Iraqi man waved the remains of a missing arm, shouting "I die! I die
soon!" Yes, we'd killed or maimed almost as many civilians as
infidels, but such is the will of Allah.
The pig soldiers were visibly shaken but trying to rally, gathering
around their own fallen like the selfish cowards they were, but the
people rose up against them, getting well inside their absurd
"personal space" and screaming at them in the tongues of outrage. Our
women were especially vociferous. How dare they ignore the fallen
innocent! This is my brother! Tend to him first, you white pig! And
other imprecations, delivered at full volume to a rattled 18-year-old
Alabama farm boy whose very expression indicated that he had never
signed up for THIS.
But for myself, I was already fleeing out the back of the gutted
hovel. While the "wounded" were all amputee actors and the explosive
debris had been fullers' earth and corkboard, it had nonetheless been
propelled by a four-ounce charge of black powder and accompanied by an
eight-gram concussion salute (about as loud as three M-80's
simultaneously) and though the soldiers now storming my hideout had
rifles loaded with blanks, they were amped up enough to explain the
idea of "that was fucking LOUD in my EAR, dude!" via rifle butt. So
we never stick around. Such is the new-style Army training in
Victorville's abandoned airbase, and for it experienced pyros and
amputee actors from all over the state have been hired to give the
soldiers some experience in semi-realistic anti-insurgent fighting.
We're under the direct command of their officers, who are trying to
prepare the troops for an environment where the enemy does not
conveniently wear uniforms and a sniper can simply drop his gun, walk
around the corner, and be an innocent civilian again, whom you are not
allowed to shoot. And most especially, that every blessed thing you
do will infuriate shrieking Iraqi grandmothers, who will curse into
your stunned, farmboy face until you want to cry.
But the commanders really know what they are doing. We do this
fifteen hours a day, from before dawn until after dark, and towards
the end of the day the troops are so rattled that when confronted with
a couple of snipers shooting from a building also occupied by
civilians, they huddled inside their fortresslike Stykers, unable to
decide what to do.
At which point the Lieutenant gave them a present. Us. I came
screaming around the corner in a VBED (Vehicle Borne Explosive Device)
which sounds fancier than the battered yellow pickup it was. Dust
flying, tires sliding, and Ashef (who has lived here since he was two)
in the passenger seat leaning out the window screaming hatred in Farsi
(which, by the way, is an excellent screaming language.) We howled
toward those stunned farmboys for far longer than either of us
expected, but finally a couple of the gunners shook themselves out of
their dumfounded state and opened up with the earsplitting racket of a
.30 and a .50 brace of machine guns. Cut to shreds, I thumbed the det
button in my right hand and hit the brakes. The explosive charges in
the back of the truck erupted in dust and cork and smoke and noise,
and we, technically a ball of flaming wreckage, skidded to a halt at
the nose of a Stryker and slumped over in our seats.
Cheers! This is what Alabama farm boys signed up for! Not dealing
with pushy grandmothers! They signed up ta shoot wacky Iraqi madmen
driving car bombs and do it in the nick of time, too! The lead gunner
who had faced us down was given "shrapnel in the arm" by the OC and
retired to plaudits from his fellows whose lives had been saved by his
sterling bravery, and the rest of the troops, invigorated, charged the
sniper-infested building under cover fire (which kept the citizen's
heads down) to dispatch the shooters in short order.
And that was one day of training. Only fifteen more to go"
Yep.