Photo of the Week of Cute Iraqi Kids Who I Want to Shoot
Something I can not reiterate often enough is how monumentally misbehaved Iraqi street kids are. But some of them are just so darn cute, you can't help but want to squeeze their little faces-- until they suffocate.



"Trust Jesus"
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left."
Matthew 25:31-33
It's good to see that someone involved in the aid process of donating clothing has a sense of humor. You can't see it really well, but this kid is wearing a t-shirt with a cartoonish goat printed on it and entitled, "Trust Jesus". I'll give a prize to anyone who sends me children's-sized t-shirts that have anything to do with pork.



"Nobody Fucking Move!"
You know that scene in so many bad movies where the car is teetering on the edge of a cliff and everyone inside freezes and tries to find a way safely out without tipping the balance of the car and causing it to go over the edge? I can now (kinda) add that to my list of unbelievable things I never thought I'd ever experience. Out on patrol one night, we're driving beside a large canal on a small dirt road when suddenly BANG!, we hit a large outlet from the canal that juts out into the middle of the road. This is just one of the things that can happen when you drive with the lights off, night vision goggles or not. Almost half the Humvee was hanging over the edge, but we weren't quite to the "teetering" point. Regardless, once we came to a complete stop and since I was sitting in the seat at the opposite end of the balance point, I actually had to stop and think about whether or not I should get out. It was a major canal and if the Humvee flipped, everyone inside would almost certainly have drown. Hell, even without being trapped in a 10,000 pound armored vehicle, the body armor we wear alone would cause you to sink faster than Jimmy Hoffa in cement shoes. Thank god we weren't going very fast. All I want is to die in a cool way, preferably when I'm really damn old. Drowning in some shitty canal in this dumb country is not cool.



I Dead Civilians (Well, These Ones Aren't Quite Dead)

One of my battalion's responsibilities is to patrol a large segment of an oil pipeline. The pipeline runs through an area where there's a whole lot of nothing. Just flat dirt from horizon to horizon. Why anyone would live out there is beyond me, but there are a few shitty little houses here and there.

One night my platoon ran a patrol along a segment of the pipeline. The mission was simple. Drive out to the pipeline at night, park the Humvees, a few guys dismount from the vehicles and walk a few miles, then the Humvees pick them up and we drive back. Our platoon leader explained all this and what we would do if we were to encounter the evildoers who like to attack the pipeline. Then he said, "Look guys, we all know the chances of us actually catching anyone out there is like zero. The only chance of us getting shot at out there is if there's some farmer who thinks we're cattle thieves and we'll probably just end up wasting his whole family. But that's okay. Whatever."

So there I am, out in the middle of nowhere, there's no moon and it's dark as hell, I'm walking along on the uneven hard packed dirt in a wedge formation, trying not to trip while I watch the ground through my night vision goggles, with Cesar on one side of me and Orlando on the other, both of them with SAWs. There are a lot of dogs that roam around these areas and there were about half a dozen going berserk barking. It's kinda pointless trying to achieve any kind of stealth through noise discipline when you have a pack of dogs announcing your position to the world. I could tell that Cesar was a bit nervous how close one of the dogs was getting to him and Matt even pulled out his pistol. Then in the distance I heard someone whistle loudly. The dogs stopped barking and scurried away. That was nice, I thought, These dogs must belong to this guy who has gotten them to shut up and come back to the house.

Then I heard a familiar metallic sound. "Kuh-chunk". I looked over toward the sole structure in this absurdly empty land of dirt and I could barely make out someone in a white man-dress holding a rifle pointed up diagonally. I knew what was coming next. "Boom!" The muzzle flash and the bang were not quite simultaneous, he was probably 150 meters to the left of us. I went down to one knee and started deliberating whether or not I wanted to shoot back. I knew most likely this guy just wanted to scare off whoever was lurking around his home, but I thought, Then again, this is the same story we're always told when farmers shoot at us. This thought process went on for about one second, then "Brrraaaaaaappp!", Cesar let off a long burst with his SAW. Then a few other rifles immediately started to chime in. I saw the guy with the gun run around to the back of the house. I though to myself, Okay, I guess we're shooting. The hell if I'm gonna miss out on this. I rotated Wazina's selector lever from safe to semi, looked through the Aimpoint, but the green dot on the roof of the house and I squeezed the trigger. "Click". What the...?

When you load and reload the same round at the top of a magazine over and over again, a slight dimple starts to form on the primer from the firing pin hitting it slightly each time it's loaded. I guess when the dimple gets deep enough and when the firing pin hits it for real it may not be enough pressure to ignite the primer. Whatever the reason, my first round fired in "combat" was a dud. This was very disappointing and frankly, quite frightening. I assure you this will never happen again. I charged another round, aimed at the roof and fired. I have to admit that it really felt good to finally shoot.

Cesar was really going off with his SAW. I yelled to him, "Don't shoot at them..." At the moment I didn't know how to best explain to him that I wanted him to shoot, just so long that it wasn't actually at anyone. I didn't believe the guy with the gun was much of a threat and I didn't want to kill him per se, but I saw no reason to not supress him. I continued to fire rounds into and over the roof of the house. I noticed that most everyone else's tracers were also going over the roof. I don't know if this is because they were thinking the same thing I was or they just don't know how to shoot at night very well. When it's dark and you don't aim properly, your rounds always tend to go high, it's a known fact. Anyway, this shooting the roof thing felt really stupid, so I scanned for a better target. The windows? No. The car? No, no one's trying to use it and no one's even standing anywhere near it. The tractor? No. Goddammit, there's nothing worth shooting! I put a few more rounds into the roof then the Lieutenant called a cease-fire.

The lieutenant yelled to me, "Fire an HE!" I thought to myself, HE? Are you kidding me? Isn't that a little overkill?

So I yelled back, "HE???"

"No! No! Illum! Illum!", he yelled back emphatically. Oh, illum. Okay, that makes more sense. Shit, I thought he said HE. I called back, "Illum comin' up!", loaded an illumination round into the 203 and "Pop", fired it into the air. As the flare hung in the air, all the nothing became more visible.

The lieutenant again calls to me, "Start bounding your team!" From here we performed a textbook example of clearing an objective. The two teams bounded one after the other toward the house. My team moved to a flanking position as overwatch, and the other team cleared the house. By then the vehicles had moved up to our position. I then moved my team and we cleared the remainder of the property while trying not to get gored by the bull in the back yard.

There were four men, one AK-47, and a ton of women and children. Apparently Allah didn't will any of the bullets to hit the family this night, (thank god) except for a few fragments of one that struck one of the young men in the chin. He bled on his man-dress a bit, but he was fine. We seized the rifle but we didn't detain anyone. The scene was the same as it always is when we raid homes: The men were fairly collected, the oldest woman wept, wailed, and beat herself, and the young boy was ecstatic at the sight of soldiers. I took pictures of all the men then the youngest boy tugged on my sleeve. He didn't want to be left out, he wanted to have his picture taken too. As I pointed the camera at him, he did just like the other men did and he tried to put on as serious a face as possible. After the picture was taken, he went back to hyperactively running around like he was at Disneyland.

We then gave them a box of MREs, a box of bottled water, and tried as hard as possible to emote, "Sorry we almost wasted your family, please take this gift of food and water as a consolation."

I really love the photo above. The guy's hair on the left is awesome, and the dad covering his head like he's a boxer on his way to the ring is priceless.



Civilians Who Are Not Dead
I like to imagine that the guy on the left is the second oldest son, but his dad favors him more because he's more level-headed than the oldest son with the pompadour from the first photo. He's more adept at the family business of dirt farming and is not as promiscuous as the first son who has been caught gazing at women's ankles at least twice. The son on the right is the mechanic of the family and is a realist. He's the most quiet, but he's also the only thing that keeps the family together. He is trying to make a straight face, but at the moment I took this picture, he was hating on me hard. To be totally serious, I really like these pictures because they are of people who we didn't kill. Something about having pictures of people who you almost killed seems really weird to me, but kinda cool in way. I'm just happy they're not dead.



Photo of Cute Iraqi Kid Who I Almost Shot But Didn't Mean To
This kid is from the country. Country kids are much better behaved than kids from town. I absolutely love this kid's shirt. If you look closely, you'll love it too. It has the word "Skate" printed in the pattern with silhouettes of snowboarders. This photo pretty much has everything. Behind the boy is the oldest woman being hysterical and sitting on the ground are the young women, whom we ignored, just like they always are in Iraq.


to join the mailing list:   
jason@justanothersoldier.com