.Combat Blue Balls
"This expression, in this particular context, is not one that I made up. I read it somewhere, and lemme tell ya, it's a dead-on description.
I sat on a cooler up in my tower, miserable and sweating. I'd pull on the neck of my body armor and feel heat steam up from my chest. My Gatorade was piss hot within minutes. Minutes dragged on and I cursed all who were responsible for putting me on this detail.
"Hey," my Ugandan counterpart broke the silence, "That ambulance is coming down the wrong side."
I looked down the entrance and sure enough, there was an Iraqi ambulance with lights flashing heading down the military lane. I snatched my M4 up and chambered a round (I don't chamber one until I dismount or need to fire) and waited for him to reach a point that justified a warning shot.
"Wait, call it up first," the Ugandan Tower Guard Veteran advised. I grabbed the radio with my free hand.
"[BossMan] this is [TowerDude], we've got an Iraqi ambulance attempting to enter [EntryPoint]."
"....Say again, over?"
Ambulance slows as a couple Iraqis near the gate try to tell him he can't come in this way. Thing is, when the insurgency first kicked off, they'd use ambulances to get through checkpoints and ambush people. When I saw it coming with lights a-flashing, it flipped that Activate Infantryman switch. I sent the report up again, cursing this guy on the other end.
"Roger...well they aren't supposed to come in through that gate. Do you have an interpreter? If you have an interpreter, have him tell them--"
Is he fucking SERIOUS?!
"--that they need to go to [OtherPlace]."
I dropped the radio on the cooler and waited for the ambulance to come closer, ready to rock. It turned around and left.
There is such a thing as Combat Blue Balls. It occurs when something kicks off and your adrenaline starts rushing and you're more than ready to get it on and all you need is that final go-ahead, whatever it may be.
And that go-ahead never comes. Gets canceled. Disregard that. Negative. Return to FOB. Cease fire. Stand down. Abort. Pull out, Goose."
The Unlikely Soldier
I just have to wonder if it has anything to do with blogging.
I sat on a cooler up in my tower, miserable and sweating. I'd pull on the neck of my body armor and feel heat steam up from my chest. My Gatorade was piss hot within minutes. Minutes dragged on and I cursed all who were responsible for putting me on this detail.
"Hey," my Ugandan counterpart broke the silence, "That ambulance is coming down the wrong side."
I looked down the entrance and sure enough, there was an Iraqi ambulance with lights flashing heading down the military lane. I snatched my M4 up and chambered a round (I don't chamber one until I dismount or need to fire) and waited for him to reach a point that justified a warning shot.
"Wait, call it up first," the Ugandan Tower Guard Veteran advised. I grabbed the radio with my free hand.
"[BossMan] this is [TowerDude], we've got an Iraqi ambulance attempting to enter [EntryPoint]."
"....Say again, over?"
Ambulance slows as a couple Iraqis near the gate try to tell him he can't come in this way. Thing is, when the insurgency first kicked off, they'd use ambulances to get through checkpoints and ambush people. When I saw it coming with lights a-flashing, it flipped that Activate Infantryman switch. I sent the report up again, cursing this guy on the other end.
"Roger...well they aren't supposed to come in through that gate. Do you have an interpreter? If you have an interpreter, have him tell them--"
Is he fucking SERIOUS?!
"--that they need to go to [OtherPlace]."
I dropped the radio on the cooler and waited for the ambulance to come closer, ready to rock. It turned around and left.
There is such a thing as Combat Blue Balls. It occurs when something kicks off and your adrenaline starts rushing and you're more than ready to get it on and all you need is that final go-ahead, whatever it may be.
And that go-ahead never comes. Gets canceled. Disregard that. Negative. Return to FOB. Cease fire. Stand down. Abort. Pull out, Goose."
The Unlikely Soldier
I just have to wonder if it has anything to do with blogging.
posted by madtom at 11:01 PM
2 Comments:
you skipped the best part of his post.
Can't get a healthy dose of what you came here for.
Hearts and minds? Come on, we never thought anything about that when we were signing up, when we were packing our gear, when we were eating Chicken Freezedried Bleu on the plane. No, we had all that action and insanity on the brain. That's what you enlist into the Infantry for. Young, dumb, reckless assholes like myself wanting to wreak some havoc on some bad guys. The hearts and minds thing, that only comes in small doses, when you have those occasional moments out in sector that make you want to ooooh and watch LifeTime for a month, that's just not us.
i appreciate his honesty. one of the advantages of working w/ 'Young, dumb, reckless' is they get a hard on for killin'.
Wow annie, did you just discover that infantry guys sign up to break thing and kill people? And I skipped nothing I usually post the first few paragraphs. It's up to the reader to follow the link and read the rest.
What ever happened to that legendary reality you were boasting about?
I hate to tell you but this isn't news. But your right counterinsurgencies is not something that the Army was prepared for or trained very well for, much less the troops signed up for. But as you well know that is changing.
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