re: Who here has seen combat?

Thanks for what you did, bro.

Thanks to you as well man!

One long run on sentence by one of my fellow machine gunners.

It's been 26 years ago this week, and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and so I will break the code and tell you one war story! This one I like to call "the best fireworks display I've ever seen". This takes place TODAY but a long time ago. And to give a little lead up, 3/23 was assigned to 2nd Mar Div and after breaching thru the mine fields on 24 Feb and having an interesting and grand ol time during the ground war portion of Desert Storm we finally we're coming out of the trackless desert into some areas of human habitation west of Kuwait City. At this point we were still waiting for the "other shoe to drop" and run into the main line of resistance and the mother of all battles as Saddam had promised us. At some obscure point on a map we ran across a compound with bunkers around it and a bunch of Iraqi armored vehicles parked out back. In the early evening as darkness fell, we received orders to destroy those armored personnel carriers etc, as we did not want to bypass this area and let these things sneak up on us from behind. And so on a clear star lit night (the wind was with us, and the smoke from the oil well fires was luckily blowing away from us, for ONCE!), a platoon of Lance Corporals was assembled from TOWS and Heavy Guns. While the Hummers and higher ranking NCOs provided overwatch, the little makes shift force struck out on foot silently through the sand dunes, armed with AT-4 shoulder launched rockets (pretty much a modern day bazooka). And so you really thought there were not scary things going bump in the night! Try a bunch of 20 yr old young Marines armed with anti tank rockets! And to make things a bit more nerve racking the TOW gunners were picking up human heat signatures in the compound on their thermal sights, supposedly. Anyway, we finally made it to the target area and fanned out in an arc around this parking lot of tracked, armored vehicles. Somehow I was in the center of this arc and so got smacked on the back of my Kevlar helmet with the words " nobody fires until Thompson- when he fires everybody open up" (no pressure here!) and that came from a SSGT Sexton from TOWS who was in command of our little force. By the way, Sexton was one gungho Marine, nutty as squirrel turd but in a good way- you wanted this guy on your side. So at this point I dropped on one knee and raised up my AT-4, exactly like the green plastic soldier bazooka man you played with as a kid. I cocked the weapon, lined up a fat juicy BMP in my sights and proceeded to press the trigger. Now let me stop right here and tell you that a lot of things happened real fast all at once. First of all this supposed recoiless weapon kicked like a mule. I felt like I had been punched in the face by Mike Tyson and was stunned and seeing little birdies flying around my head. Secondly I failed to have my earplugs installed, and the explosion off of my right shoulder was so loud I really did think my ear drums were burst, all I could hear was a high pitched bizzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And so as I fell back punch drunk, my missle arced up and over the turret of this armor, missing by a micro-millimeter. I like to think its trajectory brought it down into a foxhole full of Iraqi soldiers thinking they were about to whoop some arse. To my right, Gautreau fired immediately and his missle hit home. Your eyes play weird tricks on you in such situations and I swear I saw that steel armor plate shatter like black glass silhouetted by the fiery explosion behind it. And then everyone was firing. It was immediately obvious that we were way too close, as a spectacular series of secondary explosions cut loose and these things would NOT STOP BLOWING UP! Apparently some of these vehicles served as mobile ammunition dumps and we were soon witness to a hurricane of steel, shrapnel, small arms rounds cooking off, illumination rounds and explosions so severe they could surely be seen from SPACE! And all the while all I can hear is Bizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! As a a hatch about 2'x3' in size flew through the air to my left trailing flames like a comet, I looked saucer eyed at (I think) either John Graves or Marc Wilson we both tried to "turtle" up into our Kevlar helmets and become flat as notebook paper while sheltering behind this tumbleweed type of vegetation. My BMP to the front was shredded and the entire top was peeled up like a sardine can, with illumination rounds cooking off inside with bright white and pink light shining way up into the sky like a spot light searching for airplanes. All the while shrapnel and small arms ammo was pocking the sand around us like little geysers. It really was a shitstorm of flying steel. In the light of the explosions I saw SSGT Sexton silhouetted on top of a dune firing an RPG which was apparently picked up off the ground, and two Marines dragging off a lifeless looking Johnnie Lee Woodall (because no one single Marine was gonna carry that giant man anywhere!) Woodall was a gentle giant dark green Marine, and I thought he was hit and dead! And all the while Bizzzzzzzzzz. At some point Gunny Holmes sent in the Corporals and Sergeants to get us out of there and I don't even remember backtracking to the safety of our perimeter. All I remember next was Smitty and Toupsta trying to talk to me and laughing their asses off because I couldn't hear a thing and was like "What?? What?? What???? Screaming at the top of my lungs not realizing they could hear just fine. Doc Kevin Aikman was the only one who loved me and was genuinely concerned about my ragged condition and checked me out and fixed up my battered face. I was delighted to see that Woodall was indeed alive and not dead after all, he had just gotten caught and knocked out in the backblast of an AT-4. That was not the last time I thought Woodall was dead- but that's a different story for a different time! I don't have the vocabulary or writing skills to describe the severity of the explosions and craziness of this incident. There's no logical reason no one was hit or killed that night, I mean we were right on top of this, no explanation other than the hand of God himself came down and shielded us from harm, it's that simple. And so this happened on a random night 26 years ago, and I posted this photo of myself taken a day or two later with this story and that scrape on my cheek was caused by my scuffle with an AT-4 that tried to whip my arse, and in this pic I can assure you that STILL all I could hear was bizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, and I have tagged some Marines that were there with me and can vouch for and add to the accuracy of this story. That is all. Semper Fi

Extremely brutal and frightening.

Gunfights in North BR are deadly. You feel a sense of emptiness seeing someone shot down.

I can't explain the terror in your mind watching someone bleed out. People crying out over thirty fatal injuries with entrails and blood spilling, it just does something awful to your mind.

Nam, Hue City.

What did you do?

The realization that other intelligent beings are actively stalking you with the single purpose of ending you is sobering and very motivating

There is high speed video floating around of a medic or a Doc from 256 taking a round to the chest from an enemy sniper. Hits his plate and knocks him to the ground. 256 guys find and wound the sniper and then the medic performs life saving first aid to the very sniper that shot him.

My hats off to the medics and medical personnel who do great things in the shittiest of scenarios with minimal equipment and supplies in combat scenarios

quote:

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There is high speed video floating around of a medic or a Doc from 256 taking a round to the chest from an enemy sniper. Hits his plate and knocks him to the ground. 256 guys find and wound the sniper and then the medic performs life saving first aid to the very sniper that shot him.

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That is a true story, I think the medic was from the 69th (NY)and they were attached to 256.

It's like banging your mom with my friends watching.



That's a stupid question to ask on TD.