Grandpa’s War – Part 28 – Life in Iraq

I was sick for several days when I got back to my unit. I was allowed to lie around and basically do nothing.

On the fifth day I started feeling OK. OK is a relative term separated by “I think I’m going to die” and “I wish I would die.” But at least I was getting up and about. I still felt awful and had occasional sweats. The first time I tried walking to the chow hall; I spent several minutes coughing so hard I threw up.

But I was trying to get back into the swing of things.

While I was convulsing, someone had found an table in an abandoned bunker. A leg was broken, and it seems John Wheery and I were the only ones that had any carpentry skills. So, we fixed it.

We all called it the “Stamisch table” after the special tables in Germany. This is where the guests of the management were allowed to sit. We set it up in a tent and that became our dinning/rec room.

Things got pretty routine there for a while. Here’s a few pictures from our time in Iraq.

 One thing I didn’t mention was the daily airshows we received while parked at that airbase. Almost every day several A-10 Warthogs would show up and simulate bombing and strafing runs on the airfield.

As the planes came in twisting and diving, we watched. We shook our heads, and said, “That looks like way too much fun to be work.”

We forgot that these same pilots had braved a sky full of machine gun fire and shoulder mounted SAMs not long before. Their mission was to knock out tanks and disrupt enemy operations. That made things easier and safer for us.

To the Air Force guys, thanks!

There was still a lot of things to do, and one of them was ensuring our own safety. And some of that happened in a most unexpected way.

We’d pitched a small tent that we were using as a latrine. Why? Because the main latrines were several hundred yards from us.

So, when you had to go, you found yourself walking or running a distance to get it done.

SSG Hahr always seemed to be the guy who discovered strange stuff. He went into our small latrine, dropped his pants, and discovered he had company in their with him. A large snake was in there and it was none too happy about sharing the tent with him.

He came flying out of there, and we grabbed our weapons to go find the snake.

Iraqi snakes seem to be rather bright. It decided it had seconds to move on (and did). But using the tent was out of the question.

John and I grabbed the tools, scrounged lumber, and we built our own “Snake Proof” latrine. While it saw use, the snake part was never tested so we don’t know how proof it really was.

There were actually a couple of pieces of business still to do. One was to get rid of our ammo.

The decision was made to get rid of everything except a basic combat load.

And they were going to let us do it in style. There were several dozen abandoned trucks and tanks not far away. What better way to get rid of it, but let us have some live fire practice.

I mean really, how often does a soldier get to fire off a real live AT4? For an MP that’s almost never. And those of us who carried M-203s were looking forward to a little friendly competition. Sgt. Greg Bradley and Cpl Eric McArtor were the Kings of the 203.

We’d gone to the range in Germany. Our targets there were old M-48 tanks. These had been used for target practice a lot. We were dropping paint rounds on them. Greg and Mac could drop rounds into the hatches each and every time. I did hit the gun barrel once and everyone commented how hard a shot that was. In the real world, the grenade would probably have bent that barrel, putting the gun out of action.

Of course I took in the admiration of my skill in stride, knowing it had been pure ass luck.

But our live fire exercise wasn’t going to happen. We went out there and someone noticed a camp not two miles away.

The concern was that a stray from our fun could cause a lot of devastation for them.

We simply turned in our ammo and that was the end of it. Maybe someone else got to shoot it off.

There was a rather funny aside concerning the ammo.

When we’d been issued our ammo, we’d had to sign for it. We’d been told along with threats of court martial that we would have to account for each and every round.

Sure, I thought. “We used 156 rounds in that engagement, Sir. I know, I counted each and every one of them. And here’s the brass to back it up.”

Right.

We’d made a sort of rack  by spacing sandbags for ammo up on the turrets. The idea being that if the gunner needed to reload, the TC wouldn’t have to hand him up another box. While handing a box of ammo up made sense, in practice proved to be difficult. A full box of ammo was heavy, and handing it up proved awkward. And the TC might be rather busy.

It made more sense to have it already up there. Each rack would hold four boxes.

The rack for one team leader’s (no name’s please) vehicle didn’t work very well. Every time the Humvee hit a bad bump, a box of ammo would be jolted loose. It would fall from the turret and hit him. After this had happened about a million times, he grabbed the box that had just fallen down. He opened his side window and tossed it into the desert.

He confessed he was worried about explaining where that box went.

As it went, he didn’t have to worry.

No one was keeping count.