In the early days, we woke up and lit up our smokes where we lay. Sauntered over a few paces and pissed in a ditch. Once the area was secure enough for the brass to move in, shit got retarded. In the face of daily rocket attacks, we were holding formations to listen to speeches from Generals who were just passing through.Smitty-48 wrote:That's not even war, that's anything in the military, could be peacekeeping, could be exercise, could be weapons testing, first on the ground, and it's max relax and just getter done, until that is, an HQ shows up and the whistleheads take over.C-Mag wrote:In wars it all depends when you are there. If you are on the initial push it's wide open, an Anarchists wet dream. Open conex full of weapons, ammo, demo, whatever you want........ go later, and the start ratcheting down on stuff.
Headquarters ruins all the fun, no matter what you're doing in the military.
On the auspices of hearts and minds and supporting our Iraqi allies, we left the FOB and started living outside the wire, waking up to see Iranian armored units across the way, just so we didn't have to deal with horseshit garrison conditions the brass was implementing. They'd send out Predators, and we'd ask them what they could tell us about the weapon smugglers we were watching, but they didn't know, because they were only there to see if we were following our TTPs.
Picture yourself in a debriefing following an engagement where a shipment of rockets you're getting ready to intercept instead turns into a hailstorm of bullets from every direction because both Iraqi and Iranian border forces are one the scene, and higher is telling you to stay out of it, and the leading question is whether or not your soldiers were wearing the proper gloves, or if they took them off because it was hot.
