1. the rules of engagement our so strict we get hurt more then anyone else.
2. its a 50-50 love hate with the locals. some love you others hate you.
3. hands down gun fight the US wins. There arent many wild west gun fights here though. lots of ieds.
4. taliban are much smarter then we give them credit for. they do bounding movements, buddy movements, over watch, signals, flip pigeons, have kids fly certain kites etc etc. they just arent too good at shooting straight.
5. it only takes like 12 oz's of explosives to blow a leg off. they like to use around 15 lbs to 100 lbs it seems.
6. our camo sucks ball sack.
it took about 24 hours to fly here. colorado to maine to germany to romania (which has tons of beautiful women oh my god)to kyrgyzstan to afghanistan. it was pretty exciting and they take pretty good care of you. the mountains in my area just kinda seem like rocks crashed together and suddenly came up like a knife. it was hot as balls here too. somewhere around 120 on the top of the mountain at 6700 ft. not a real mountain i know.
weve been here 2 months like i said... already taken somewhere around 60 wia then probably around 15-20 kias. our chaplain died in a ridiculously huge ied. the vehicle caught on fire and all 5 died. watched that one from the top of the mountain. pretty gnarly.
i myself caught a guy planting an ied... 100lbs of hme (homemade explosives). set up command det wire so he had to push the trigger himself to make it boom. a convoy was within 300 meters of the spot so we stopped them. i described what was happening. he was arrested...taken to jail...and released within 5 days. so some troops got lucky that day...lived to the next day and mister taliban is back out there doing whatever he likes.
had a truck break down in the middle of village/ city. that was pretty crazy. people everywhere. screaming at us. obviously one of the places we werent liked so much. i had to jump out and pull security around the vehicle. watching for vehicle ieds, suicide bombers, anyone with an ak. just crap like that. and your sense are so heightened and you hear and watch everything but still you get a kind of tunnel vision cause of your adrenaline.
im with a reconnaissance platoon so i spend 7-14 days in the mountains at a time. i go up every 14 days and overwatch everything around me. one day while 3 of us were cruising down the mountain back to our fob(forward operating base) we were within 100 meters of the gate. someone heard a funny sound so we stopped. and looked. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. that funny sound was a mortar coming out of the tube. they were shooting from probably like 3000 meters out since it took like 10-12 seconds for the splash. the round hit within 100 meters of my team directly inline with us. we took of running for cover. i laugh when i get nervous so here i am the medic running with everyone laughing cause its just like fuck...hope we dont get lucky. "thuump" still running running running BOOOOOOOOOOOOM. still inline with us. im just laying down behind some huge boulders laughing. we sat there for about 30 minutes and it was over. we continued on. they werent aiming for us. they were aiming for the fob. just werent very good at shooting mortars and we were very unlucky/lucky.
if you have any questions about afghanistan lemme know. i just figured an update would be cool.
this is the only picture of my team i have right now. its retarded. some beef jerky company sent us a ton of jerky and wanted a picture of us with it.
