Pass The Brass

Hey everyone, sorry I never got that video goin. I pretty much quite tryin to get that stupid program to work with me, then I pretty much just quite werkin on the video all together…it’ll come one of these days I swear.

The real reason Im on here is to give everyone a heads up that I will be off the net for about a week. I’ll be werkin on some more posts during that time, and I’ll get them up when I get back online.

Sorry things slowed down a bit here. My inspiration comes to me still…but I get sidetracked after work and never get around to typing. But this next week I’ll have plenty of focus time to type.

Thanks for reading and see ya soon.

I had a nice little suprise waiting for me when I came back in from work today. It seems the US Treasury saw me fit to recieve a bonus. Or at least that’s what I thought at first…

I’m not sure if too many of you remember a while back when I was in Korea and I got scammed off some stupid site that sold all kinds of tactical gear for military and law enforcement, but just to refresh some memories and/or bring others up to speed…I did.

Anywho, I’ve been in contact with the Texas Justice Department when they found I was a victim of this dude’s crimes. So they emailed me and I emailed back and it went on like this for a few months until I got one email that said that they had the bastard in custody and were takin’ him to trial. Sweet deal. So I gave them my blessings to continue with the prosecution(pardon my ego) and later they sent me another email saying he was found guilty and they were going to start redistributing the money that he stole from all kinds of suckers like me so we could all be happy citizens again. So I send them an email with the amount that I was robbed of and they told me that a check would be in the mail as soon as they reacquired the funds from this scum bag.

Fast-forward a few months to my present location…still in Irak, I pull in off of mission and download all my gear. Good times, all…good times. I’m wandering down the halls to grab me a plate for lunch when I get handed a little tan colored envelope addressed from…The Treasury! Everyone knows an envelope addressed from them means good things. So I shake it a little bit and listen for any suspiscious noises…sniff it a little…smack it on the floor…wing it across the room like a frizbee…and then dip it in a chemical solution that is supposed to show me if there are any chemical agents on the envelope that may be hazardous to my health…then I slowly tear the tiniest hole in one corner and throw the envelope as far as possible into the blast pit. No boom. Must be clear.

I hop down inside and grab the envelope and rip it open to find a cool lookin’ watercolor check thingy with the “typewriter stamped” numbers…”$********200*00″ Sweet deal. Now all I gotta do is hope I can cash this sucker before it voids. Maybe I should mail it home to mom.

I been sayin it all year and I had actually almost convinced myself that it wasn’t going to happen. But yesterday…all my wildest dreams came true. Let me share with you my exploits…

So there we were, in the middle of Bag-Dad, Irak, just mindin our biz when the boss calls and ask’s why we’re not at werk. Busted. So we mount up and go about drivin around this wretched place that smells of death and decay. Just another day in the neighborhood.

Now that our “tank” is up and running we are rollin’ around Bag-Dad in what has been described as “an armored car”. I’m fully enclosed in this huge chunk of metal with nothing but “periscopes” to see out of. And as we’re rollin around in one of our patrol sectors we’re passin’ by a familiar portion of the neighborhood my turret suddeny fills itself up with dust…weird, right? Well accompanying the dust is a pretty solid thump and a fairly large “BOOM”. Of course the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is “OH SH*&!!!” or the other four letter word of choice in that scenario. My second reaction? I’m sittin straight up in my turret checkin every one of my periscopes to see who got hit and how bad it was.

SF: Who got hit!! Who got hit!?!

Driver and Team Leader: WE DID!!

…short pause…

SF: oh…

After we pull out of the kill zone we check our damage and find that there really is none….turns out we had Invincible Mode turned on. Thanks, God. Good lookin out on that one. Whoever the hell planted that thing must have been aiming for something made of plastic…cuz he didn’t do jack to our “tank”.

So we call up EOD(the guys who blow things up) and they come out and send out the little robot dude to check out a suspicious lookin bag of trash. After ripping it apart like a scene from Robot Wars, it goes puttering back to it’s master. As it’s passing by the larger pile of trash that we got blown up from earlier, a second explosion detonates. Well, I guess we just found the secondary that was in place. What’s weird is that is was pretty much right where the first one went off…probably a malfunction or something in their crappy bomb making. Hahah. Suckers.

So now the little guy just rummages through that pile there for a bit then rolls over to it’s master, where he feeds it a little black package. The bot turns and heads back to the pile with this little package in it’s mouth, and proceeds to drop it right where it was just before. Sweeet…a Blast Pack. For those of you who are not ‘In the know”, a Blast Pack is a small amount of C4 used to destroy IEDs when they are found by the good guys. So annyway, while they’re out droppin that thing off, some of the local Wildlife come out to see what all the excitement is. There’s a few feline’s rummaging through the trash as well as a canine type. Of course I’m filmin the whole thing, “this is gonna be great if they blow the crap outta that dog.”

As the bot scoots away the dog goes and lays down about 10 feet from the Blast Pack…sweeeet. And as if the set up wasn’t enough, a cat strolls by the garbage pile just in time. 10 seconds after the cat reaches the middle of the street and starts swatting some garbage, the pack goes off. And I think I’ll cut it off right there…if you really wanna know what happened next hang on to yer seats cuz I’ll be uploading the video soon.

Stay tuned…

>>>> UPDATE: Hey, sorry this is taking so long. I’m trying to find a program to change the format of the video’s so I can edit them. I’ll get it up soon as I can. Thanks fer waiting.

Most of you might have seen it on TV the other day about an “ammo dump” catching fire and blowing up. I’d just like to take this time to clarify a little more on what happened.

The Ammo Storage Point on the FOB did catch fire, but not by some un-attended flame or some carelessly thrown cig…instead it was a rocket that hit it. Those lucky bastards. Anyway, it caught fire and started cooking it off, which was reported as a “series of small explosions”. Yah…real small.

Of course, I do not know the exact contents of the storage point, but there were some arty shells that went off which made for rather large explosions…as opposed to “small explosions”. Anyway, there were alot of those in there along with a mix of small arms ammunition(5.56mm, 7.62mm) and most likely every other caliber that we have here on the FOB. All this makes for a very interesting night.

I was walkin back to my room when the rocket hit. I personally love the sound of the occasional explosion. So as we’re checkin’ in with the leadership, my driver says to me, “They hit the AHA.” At first, I had to have him repeat himself about 5 times trying to figure out if I was mis-hearing him. Then I asked him what the hell the AHA was. Ammo Handeling Area. There goes the Army and their stinkin acronyms again. Being an actual hit on something I didn’t believe him at first and he kept sayig “Dude, I swear! You can hear the small arms ammo cookin off right now.” Being that there was an accountbaility check going on I couldnt hear outside, but that all changed within the next 5 minutes as one of the first explosions went off…and then it all started.

When it all kicked off, it was almost hard to tell what was incoming and what was the ammo cookin off. But I’ll tell you this. Some of those explosions were the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life, and even some of the guys who have deployed before had never heard an explosion that big. So now we all know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an artillery barrage. I’ll kindly refuse any future offers…thanks. I mean…it was all good up until those large ones went off and the whole building shook like it was just gonna explode.

And so we all sat in the center hall of our building as the explosions went on through the night with the bursts of small arms fire every now and then. And occasionally youd hear a few explosions that we were asking each other “what the hell was that?” For the most part we could identify what was going off.

This all went on for about 6 hours until it died down enough for us to go back to our rooms and try to sleep. And now our FOB is littered with debris from the explosions as well as a few unexploded rounds that EOD is currently running around picking up and taking to the blast pit to finish ‘em off.

My driver said something to me recently that totally applies to this situation…”Only in Irak, will you experience things that you’d never see except in the movies.”

Tomorrow is the Memorial Ceremony for one of our fallen Paratroopers…

I only knew him as one of my fellow soldiers, so I’m just going to keep this simple.

In Memory of SGT Joseph W. Perry 1983-2006

Things are kinda sorta starting to wind to a slow hand off here. Inventories are being condcted, mail is being stopped…the bad guys are still doin bad things(little bastards). But despite all these foreshadowing’s we must remain vigilant in our struggle to overcome The Darkside. When it’s dealings with these vermin, there is no lowering of any defenses…one must adapt and overcome the pathetic evil that we face here. Yes, there are time’s where it all seems so pointless and those times may seem like…well, all the time really.

But we must not lose heart for soon we shall see the true light of day as it pours over the endless skies of America…bathing our faces, our souls with a renewing joy…a refreshing thought that there is yet hope for a better life, a free life. A life where we need no longer fear death’s rearing head on every street corner, every rooftop…every unknown face. We return to a land where the stench of burning trash is replaced with the scent of Pine…Glades…grass…and KFC. No longer will the women turn their faces from us or run and hide in their homes. No. Instead we shall have the pleasure of seeing their beautiful faces…and mabe a llittle bit more than we wanted to see, but it’s all good. Instead of fearful flight, we shall receive warm embraces and maybe a kiss or two.

Once again we will be reunited with our brothers, our sisters…our mothers and fathers. Again we shall receive the blessings of their presence. We shall shed tears of joy at the joyous reunion of our hearts and minds with those whom we love and adore. No longer will we be strangers…but instead, family.

Our armored vehicles will be replaced with the more fancy shmancy things that we drive…those plastic pieces of flash that we call our “rides”. Once again we shall “bump it” whilst driving down our respective “Main Avenues”. But…we sacrifice a small bit of freedom in that we no longer “own the road”. There is no more “bubble” to maintain around your conv-er I mean your vehicle. No longer must we swerve to the other side of the road because there is a tire sitting by itself on the opposite side….or that cardboard box there. We return to a land where there exists a system known as “Traffic Laws”. Again we must abide by them and know this…that there are no warning shots to keep people away from your vehicle. If you do that you go to jail.

BUT….this is an American jail where you need not fear death at the hands of certain corrupt or simply embittered policemen. Here all you must fear is the sanctity of your temple. Don’t drop no soap. You no longer fear the harsh the reality of losing all freedoms by having to sit in a cage…and just a cage, but here you get cable TV, and nice fluffy pillow, and a very nice roomie named “Ron”…but likes to be called “Rolinda”(be nice to him). And here…you just might make parole as you get off on “good behaviour”. Good for you.

Overall the fear is abated. That survival mode that you may or may not have adopted is no longer needed. So go ahead and fold that thing up and put it in your pocket. We may need it sooner or later. Quite possibly sooner.