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War is a collection of small, inconsequential series of things that happen. A weaving of personal stories that often don't have a point, a purpose, a triumph over evil. Over the course of a decade, soldiers in the US Army alone have collectively spent 1.5 million years in the desert. This thread is for simply writing out your experience Background: I was in Afghanistan in 2011 in the farmlands surrounding Marjah. The year before, the battle of Marah had taken place as Marines took a Taliban stronghold. By 2011 the heavy fighting was over and we were tasked with rooting out the smaller remaining elements. My firefights were small. It was my squad getting into firefights with squad or fireteam sized elements. Towards the end my deployment we had a decisive victory in our immediate area when we got into a firefight while an apache and drone were in the area. The drone got eyes on followed by two apaches going buck loving wild on hostiles in the open. After that we only encountered a few ineffective IEDs. Uncoordinated combat I'm tall, awkward, and trip over my own feet. As a kid I hated those nylon warmups because eventually I would fall and the friction would cause areas around my knees and elbows to melt. In Afghanistan, farming is done directly adjacent to a ditch or canal of water. You take a small section of land, surround it by a foot high mound of dirt, and then flood the fucker like a redneck preparing to go mudding. On patrol, and we're crossing an open field. All of sudden the poo poo kicks off. I'm at the back of the patrol still in the tree line, but the front is in the open coming under fire from machine guns, grenade launchers, and rifles. The back of the patrol takes cover in the treeline while the front takes cover behind a three feet high berm. After a few minutes the fire has calmed down and now our turn to be the idiots in the open. We start sprinting and we're trying to swing out wide to the north west since the fire was coming from the north west. The path that I chose has me sloshing through a loving flooded field. My boots now resemble a giant cake of mud and as I'm stomping through the desert trying to get to cover my gear belt holding NVGs, water, and med kit falls down around my. My belt and caked boots cement my feet to the earth as my forward momentum causes me to face plant into the mud hard. I struggle around in the mud trying to get my loving belt back up and get to cover. I eventually cross the field and realize my friend saw me eat poo poo and squirm around in the mud because he had a scared look on his face. So there I was, in a firefight, covered in mud, laughing my rear end off because my friend thought he had just seen me die. It was the funniest thing in the world.
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Feb 17, 2017 19:39
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:11 |
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Did anyone ever try afghan dip? Keep in mind that I smoke extremely rarely and had only tried pouches twice before that. I think it was tobacco, but it also might have been cow poo poo laced with opium for how bad it tasted and how hosed up I got. I can't remember if I actually threw up or if I just dry heaved.
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Feb 20, 2017 01:02
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Genocide Tendency posted:Fun Fact: AQ and Taliban fighters couldn't aim mortars for poo poo in 2002-2003. I had a "welp there go my testicles" moment when I looked down and saw a mortar round between my legs. It turned out to be an illum round dud but there was a solid five seconds between my monkey brain recognizing a mortar round and then recognizing the white body of it.
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Feb 20, 2017 04:43
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So the funniest poo poo I saw was this drone feed from when another squad got in a firefight. It was like 3 dudes taking a few pot shots and then running. Anyways we have a drone in the area and it gets eyes on and it's just following this one guy for 5 minutes just waiting, like a horror movie where the guy with the chainsaw is slowly walking towards someone too scared to run so they're crawling away. Eventually the dude runs into the middle of a herd of sheep and that's when the predator decides to fire his hellfire. The guy got up and started running and there was just dead sheep everywhere lol. Supposedly he bled out eventually but the video cuts off before that. I kinda hope he lived though just so he could tell his friends how much we don't give a gently caress.
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Feb 20, 2017 16:54
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That switchblade story is kinda terrifying.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:42
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oh man speaking off dudes on motorbikes, someone in my battalion evidently chased down an IED planter on a dirt bike and ran him over with a mineroller lol
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Feb 21, 2017 05:24
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:11 |
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MaxPowers posted:Yo 2011 marjeh bro, did you get to see that house we blew up? The patrol found wires and poo poo and disabled 2 IEDs just entering the compound so some dude was like " Yo nuke this thing, we'll make sure no one goes in or out. " we slammed 3 himars and 6 600pound GBUs into that fucker, was like god drat fourth of july. You could see the secondaries going off from the feed. only thing left standing was a side wall hahaha I wasn't in Marjah just in farm land near there. One of the companies in my battalion was though.
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Feb 22, 2017 22:04
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