letters home , and then I cleaned my weapons and sorted my gear. Now I a m here writing and thinking about going to bed early. If I go to bed now, I wi ll get a good seven hours of sleep before I need to get back up for the midnight shift. This will be the first time I ha ve gotten more than four hours of sleep in almost two weeks. I guess that means, “ Good night. ”
March 14, 2003 :
It was raining again, so it made for another long, lonely night keeping watch in the OP. Around seven o’clock this morning, a bicyclist got hit by a car, along the west wall of the compound, right in front of my position. The bicyclist did n o t appear to be hurt too bad, and he ended up provoking a yelling match with the driver of the vehicle. Before long, it erupted into an all out brawl between the two of them. Within minutes, there were eight or nine other guys joining in the fight. They were all just random people on the street , and they started joining the fight.
A group of us exited our OPs and gathered along the wall. Half of the goal was to get into a ready position in case this fight was a distraction for something bigger about to happen, and the other half was to just watch the fight. Very quickly, the powers that be decided the brawl was too close to the compound and presented too much of a security risk, and we were ordered to disperse the crowd immediately. We threw two canisters of CS gas into the crowd and as soon as the gas hit the crowd, they scattered.
After shift , my squad was assigned a mission that took us towards the Pakistani border. The Pakistani government is supposed to be an ally of the United States, but the people of Pakistan see things much differently. The road leading out to our destination is very dangerous and goes right through some very hostile areas. Several convoys have taken enemy fire recently on this route, by snipers supposedly train ed in Pakistan.
After about two and a half hours out of Kabul, the ride was very boring until the road began to follow the path of an old dried-out riverbed. The road curved through a pass with ten to fifteen foot rock ledges on either side of us. Our convoy consisted of six HUMVEEs, and I was the gunner for the third vehicle. I knew that entering the pass was dangerous as shit, but we had no way around it.
Half way through the half-mile- long pass, the lead vehicle stopped and I heard a burst of shots ring out. The lead vehicle was mounted with a fifty caliber machine gun, and the sound thundered through the pass as the gunner returned fire. They were around a slight bend, and we could n o t see exactly what was going on. My field of fire was to the left side, and I kept my mounted M249 fixed upwards at the top of the rock ledge.
As the fifty caliber stopped firing, I could hear the squad leader on the radio yelling, “Move, move, move! Don’t bottle up in here. Get the fuck out!” The trucks started moving through pass, as fast as we could. As we pulled through the curve, I could see two men , with cloths covering their faces, about one hundred feet to the left of the convoy. Every gunner in the convoy began firing, and the two snipers pul led back to behind an old wall. It was obvious that we ha d n o t hit them. The Sergeant made the call not to chase them down because they could be luring us into a greater trap, and we had a mission that needed to be finished.
I still can not believe that a bomb was no t placed for us in the pass. Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters love using improvised explosives during their attacks. They make their bombs out of old rocket s, mortar shells, or landmines.
The whole thing happened so fast, it was over before I knew it. As we pulled out of the pass, it took me a minute to really believe what had just happened. Every vehicle checked in over the radio, announcing no injuries and no damage, so we pressed forward and continued on with the mission. It was kind of surprising how the incident was n o t very frightening at all ,
March 14, 2003 :
It was raining again, so it made for another long, lonely night keeping watch in the OP. Around seven o’clock this morning, a bicyclist got hit by a car, along the west wall of the compound, right in front of my position. The bicyclist did n o t appear to be hurt too bad, and he ended up provoking a yelling match with the driver of the vehicle. Before long, it erupted into an all out brawl between the two of them. Within minutes, there were eight or nine other guys joining in the fight. They were all just random people on the street , and they started joining the fight.
A group of us exited our OPs and gathered along the wall. Half of the goal was to get into a ready position in case this fight was a distraction for something bigger about to happen, and the other half was to just watch the fight. Very quickly, the powers that be decided the brawl was too close to the compound and presented too much of a security risk, and we were ordered to disperse the crowd immediately. We threw two canisters of CS gas into the crowd and as soon as the gas hit the crowd, they scattered.
After shift , my squad was assigned a mission that took us towards the Pakistani border. The Pakistani government is supposed to be an ally of the United States, but the people of Pakistan see things much differently. The road leading out to our destination is very dangerous and goes right through some very hostile areas. Several convoys have taken enemy fire recently on this route, by snipers supposedly train ed in Pakistan.
After about two and a half hours out of Kabul, the ride was very boring until the road began to follow the path of an old dried-out riverbed. The road curved through a pass with ten to fifteen foot rock ledges on either side of us. Our convoy consisted of six HUMVEEs, and I was the gunner for the third vehicle. I knew that entering the pass was dangerous as shit, but we had no way around it.
Half way through the half-mile- long pass, the lead vehicle stopped and I heard a burst of shots ring out. The lead vehicle was mounted with a fifty caliber machine gun, and the sound thundered through the pass as the gunner returned fire. They were around a slight bend, and we could n o t see exactly what was going on. My field of fire was to the left side, and I kept my mounted M249 fixed upwards at the top of the rock ledge.
As the fifty caliber stopped firing, I could hear the squad leader on the radio yelling, “Move, move, move! Don’t bottle up in here. Get the fuck out!” The trucks started moving through pass, as fast as we could. As we pulled through the curve, I could see two men , with cloths covering their faces, about one hundred feet to the left of the convoy. Every gunner in the convoy began firing, and the two snipers pul led back to behind an old wall. It was obvious that we ha d n o t hit them. The Sergeant made the call not to chase them down because they could be luring us into a greater trap, and we had a mission that needed to be finished.
I still can not believe that a bomb was no t placed for us in the pass. Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters love using improvised explosives during their attacks. They make their bombs out of old rocket s, mortar shells, or landmines.
The whole thing happened so fast, it was over before I knew it. As we pulled out of the pass, it took me a minute to really believe what had just happened. Every vehicle checked in over the radio, announcing no injuries and no damage, so we pressed forward and continued on with the mission. It was kind of surprising how the incident was n o t very frightening at all ,
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