[Relaps]

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.

[Benjaman]

Your dad is a really good writer.

[Relaps]

Originally Posted by Benjaman36

Your dad is a really good writer.

Well, yeah, that's his job, technically. He's a cartoon writer.

[Benjaman]

Originally Posted by Relaps

Well, yeah, that's his job, technically. He's a cartoon writer.

Then I see where you get it from, haha.

[Relaps]

Pyrotechnics is something he does on the side.


It's a hobby that pays itself.

[Shmuh]

I think we can all agree that Relaps' dad is fucking awesome.

[Jiggz]

That's quite impressive. Very eloquent.

So is he there to assist with the pyrotechnics aspect of the training, or is he military?

[Chriz]

Relaps Dad is in my top 5 heroes did you know, he paved the way for so many childhoods.

[Jiggz]

What comic did your dad write for Relaps?

[Relaps]

Not comics, Cartoon shows.

http://imdb.com/name/nm0287482/

[Stealth Prawn]

Wait, so your dad blew up some U.S. soldiers?

[Relaps]

No. This is training.

The "bombs" were just cork board, dust, and a concussion blast.

Its really loud and throws debries, but doesn't hurt you.

[Infammo]

Like me when I'm drunk.

[Jiggz]

Wow, Relaps your dad is my hero. Beast Wars! I loved that show! Brave Star AND He-Man! Holy crap.

Your dad practically brought me up. We're like brothers.

[Chriz]

Told you. No one ever listens.

[Tyler_Legrand]

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show?!

[ne3]

Now, that's where Relaps got his awesomeness from.

[Relaps]

Here's an update:

_____________________________

9-3-07

Hi!

Well, for those who didn't figure it out from the last letter, I'm
still here in Victorville as part of a team helping to train soldiers
for Iraq. The idea being to give them sound grounding in the cultural
differences and a sensitivity to the Iraqi community while at the same
time keeping an eye out for us on the pyro team, because we are
lurking in the background trying to kill them. I personally blew up
seven Strykers yesterday, which really ought to be some sort of a
record. Especially since two of those involved suicide carbombs, and
you're really not supposed to be able to do those more than once.

The soldiers have been really nice to us, and although they have tanks
and guns and grenades to play with, they nonetheless dig what we do
and are always hanging around afterward asking how they can get cool
jobs like this. I've personally grown fond of the MREs (Meal Ready to
Eat) that are the soldier's rations. A far cry from the old C-rations
that I tried once as a teenager, MRE's are actually pretty damn good.
They come in a khaki plastic pouch about the size of the next Harry
Potter hardcover, and they are all over the place. I've seen the
soldiers using them as course markers for a Stryker driving test. The
dark green plastic pouches are piled around wherever you look and
we're encouraged to eat them. The Chicken with Salsa was only fair,
but the Roast Beef and Vegetables was quite good, and the Cheese
Tortellini was excellent. There's all sorts of menus and we've been
collecting pouches in our cars, because they're a great comfort during
the long waits while embedded (stuck in a house waiting for a convoy
to go by so you can kill some soldiers.) I've got a Cajun Jambalaya
with Sausage waiting for tomorrow. The packets contain other
essentials too, like cookies, crackers, cake or applesauce, cheese or
peanut butter, a spoon, a heater, toilet paper, salt, coffee, sugar,
creamer, powdered drink mix, Chicklets, and a teensy bottle of
Tabasco. All in one pouch. I suppose one does get used to it, and
probably tired of it after a while, but I'm still in the phase of
delving into the MRE pouch like a child into a Christmas stocking.

It's a very temporary gig, but they put us up in a hotel, and pay us,
and pay for our mileage, and give us daily pocket money to boot. And
let us blow stuff up. So even though we are occasionally forced to
hide in sweltering dusty closets for longer than it would take to fly
cross-country, no one is complaining. And we think the training is a
Good Thing. We had a scenario the other day where some soldiers were
interviewing the local Iraq police chief, whose son had been reported
as an insurgent. At that point we hit them with two mortar shells,
and the chief's son ran out with an AK-47, firing at the soldiers.
They shot him. The police chief, aghast, grabbed a cardboard mailing
tube and began hitting the soldiers. They shot him, too. Then the
locals rioted and threw things, and we dropped another mortar into the
mix, and the soldiers, by now totally flustered, mowed down the crowd.
At which point the OC threw up his clipboard and yelled "That's it!
We're all going to jail!" The soldiers have to learn to keep their
cool even in high-stress situations and the only permissible shooting
was the first one. It's better to let them learn this here, where
everyone gets up afterwards, than in a place where the bullets are
real and the bombs have shrapnel in them. But to make it work, we
have to be as real as possible, and the soldiers who have seen action
are very complimentary. They say our RPGs and mortar hits are just
like the real ones except nobody gets hurt. And the Arabic actors are
glad to be doing it for the same reasons – they are helping train our
boys not to freak out and shoot innocent civilians, one of whom might
possibly be a relative. It's rather satisfying fun, and although I
will be glad to go home again where it is merely 105 degrees rather
than 115, I've enjoyed the time here. Just a few more days.

____________________________


Crazy.

[Jiggz]

It's abit crazy that he's having so much fun, training people for something so serious.

Does your dad still write for cartoon series at all? What does he do besides play army games?

[Relaps]

Originally Posted by Jiggz

Does your dad still write for cartoon series at all? What does he do besides play army games?

It's just a two week thing. He's never been to any army games before.

The cartoon industry which he works for sucks hard right now, which is why he's doing what he's doing.