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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...
