Saturday, August 31, 2013

BLACKHAWK RIDE

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Christian I – …As I mentioned before, we got about forty minutes of sleep. Good training! We were all together now as a platoon and SFC Glenn woke us up, saying, “Let’s go! Let’s go! They’re coming!” (If you don’t know what’s going on, this is a continuation of an Army narrative that began with a blog called FLACHBACK??).

As usual, a little description is in order! The sun is about to come up and those annoying little birds (you know the ones I mean) are cheerfully breaking the morning silence. The problem is that everyone is exhausted from the various operations that went on the night before. All anyone knew was that this big black man was waving his arms, freaking everyone out and yelling. But, being the well-trained soldiers that we were, nobody said anything. Also, everybody was probably like me, and didn’t want to show how clueless and seemingly stupid they were. Ha Ha.

We fell in to a formation just outside the wood line and through the clearing we could see several black dots in the air. They were quickly increasing in size and in noise. No big deal, we rode in Blackhawk helicopters many times before but never before did we behold such a sight with no instruction at all. Good training! We left our rucksacks behind and donned our soft caps once again, bringing along our ammunition and grenade simulators with fresh face paint on. We boarded the aircraft.

It would of have been really great for them to close the doors so we could hear what was going on, but, the pilots were always trying to make us sick, and they usually always left them open. I had the privilege of riding with SFC Glenn and 1Lt (First Lieutenant) Cardone – the platoon leader and the platoon sergeant. They were sitting across from me and barking orders and telling us exactly what we needed to know.

THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE SPEAKING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE – WE COULDN’T HEAR ANYTHING. It was so loud and the pilots were rocking back and forth just above the tree line (Remember, they were trying to make us sick)  The only words that were intelligible to me at the time were… “Make your way up the middle…Destroy as much as you can…Grab the flag…Don’t worry about dying..” What a morning – Good training!

After a few minutes we hit the ground and dismounted the vehicles. This is always a very clumsy time, because instead of climbing down ropes, you have grown men flopping out of the helicopter onto their bellies next to each other. Before I knew it, we jumped out of the door and the helicopters were gone. 1LT Cardone led the way towards the wires that I cut the night before.

I didn’t realize it, but the helicopters had landed exactly where Mabry and I had crawled the night before. So that meant that we were… “Oh no, did I cut all the wires?”. Now my platoon leader was rushing to pull the wires aside with the entire platoon following him. If I just left one wire uncut, the mission would fail, and we would die, because we were all out in the open. With the strength of ten men, 1 LT Cardone grabbed the wire and yanked it aside, and wouldn’t you know it, the wires flew open perfectly! YEE-HAW!

I wish you could have seen the look on the faces of the POGS (mechanics and cooks). Some of them ran out of their tents in their underwear swearing and cussing. They were so “ate- up” it wasn’t even funny. Those brand-new 50 Caliber machine guns that had just blared at us the night before, were just unmanned and collecting dust. It was a very embarrassing time for the 15th MSB and for their 5000 United States soldiers. I think I just threw up in my mouth. LOL.

The blog is getting too long, and I need to stop here. Today Pastor Dad is feeling great and ready to break bread with my people tomorrow! Reliving these stories though is making me very aggressive. Ha ha. Please let me know your thoughts. I have a brain full of stories. And when I am done with this one, I can continue with the Military stories or I can write about childhood maladies, corporate sales, Trinity, drug dealing, or whatever. Let me know what you like.

Christian II – Christian’s blood sugar has been high all night, and there is evidence of “keytones” in his body, which is a pretty clear precursor to a situation that could become very bad. So please pray for him. On a lighter note, this doesn’t seem to be slowing him down! He’s jumping off of everything and saying, “To the Trinity and beyond”!
 
THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN AT THE BEGINNING OF THAT TRAINING WEEK...







 
 


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