highspeedsblog

[highspeedsblog]

So here's the thing......

  I once read somewhere that we are Veterans of a different breed. I don't know that I agree with that. But then I kinda sat back and thought about it over a series of moments within days, maybe weeks. My conclusion? FUCK! I think that may be accurate, in some sort of fucked up way. That, and we have a fucked up sense of humor about it. Now, I'll try and explain this in a linear thought process from start to finish. You can think about it like a time line with the Start being the time BEFORE the deployment to the Sandbox, and the End being AFTER deployment, the here and now.

START

We are "normal" people, probably fresh out of high school, maybe a year or two after....or a few more. The shit if I know, either way, we do normal shit, we are possibly a normal parent, a normal son/daughter, spose, what have you. We are normal assholes. Normal. As normal as society can assume. Anything you do, we do. The only thing that changes that is signing that dotted line, essentially signing yourself away to the United States government. We go and join the military. Fast forward to the day that we get our orders to go Down Range (i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, etc).

So, let me first start this off with a disclaimer: I'm not trying to go and tell dirty secrets or anything, I'm just trying to give some insight as to why we are as fucked up as we really are. If a situation resembles you, don't go throwing a tantrum like a child, I'm omitting the fucking names....so simmer down because the only person ratting you out.....is yourself. Now, that's all said and done.

Now, I don't know why things are the way they are, they just are, it's how it is. I remember reading somewhere that our generation of veterans are different. "DIFF-ER-ENT." I see what you did there, asshole. Good one. But again, after contemplating this for a while, again, I'll have to agree. We all went in, guns blazing and came out the same way.

We get hyped. We are a whole generation of soldiers that are just hype. We were hyped up to go out and wreak absolute havoc. If the situation called for it, we did. Our goal was to return from outside the wire with ALL SOLDIERS STILL ALIVE, just as we left. THAT. 

Music hyped us, preparing us for the sting of adrenaline that would coarse through our blood, that was inevitable. Music. A generation of soldiers that had our own MP3 playlists and soundtracks for going outside the wire. I'm not shittin you. Go ask one of your OIF/OEF veteran friends, "Hey, what songs remind you of your delpoyment?" I'm willing to bet, for most soldiers, it was Hatebreed's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor." Do it. Go ahead, I'll wait. What did I tell you? Thought I was lying huh?

There are soldiers who could tell you, without even thinking, what album or band got them through the rough shit, when shit went sideways. Even when shit was upright and  straight. Shit, I have a playlist ready to go RIGHT NOW if shit were to hit the fan in this country. Sounds kinda cooky and morbid, I know. That's just the way we were trained. But that music also brought us back, breathing.

I remember gunning on a convoy where I was the rear vehicle. See, front and rear vehicles have a 180° scope to cover, so it's a lot. You gotta be in that gunner's turret, rotating it with your body weight. That turret is loud too. The sound of metal clunking as you shift your crew serve weapon from left to right. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, like a huge chain. All vehicles in between have a smaller scope to cover on the sides.

Being the rear vehicle, you need to make sure shit is straight, no one following, nobody too close, just don't let shit pop off. Now, in Iraq, personal space is not a thing with local nationals. It doesn't matter if it's in person, in a vehicle, whatever the case may be. So, when some old hadji vehicle tries to roll up too close to your convoy and you have no idea what is going through the drivers mind, or if there's an explosive strapped to someONE or someTHING, you don't take any chances. 

So here you are in the rear vehicle, watching this raggedy, rusted out little pickup try to roll up, your senses become heightened and things, time, starts to slow down. Then you gotta remember the Rules of Engagement, because if you disregard these steps to take, it could result in some bad shit for you. Bad shit meaning the UCMJ - Uniform Code of Military Justice. 

Fuck me, really? So, here I am. My face is covered to shit, trust me it didn't help with the Iraqi sand because after a convoy my teeth were still gritty with sand from being up top. I'm yelling at the motherfucker to stop while giving a STOP hand signal. Even so, it really doesn't matter because it's like talking sign language to a stubborn blind man, did you get that? Verbal. Hand signals. Then, tighten up on that 240B, with the belt already locked and loaded. Yell back to the TC (passenger seat of the humvee), my Platoon Sgt, so he knows what the fuck I'm about to do, so he knows all heads will swivel at the sound of 7.62mm rounds popping off. Take aim at the grille of the vehicle, so that I can work my way up through the engine block, and if need be, up through the driver as well.

While this whole process is taking place in a matter of seconds, to me, it feels damn near an hour. This is one of the processes that we have to go through to save our asses, both from an attack and from UCMJ actions.

Oddly enough, in my right ear is one of my ear buds (2005 model, wired) playing one of the songs I loaded up for my convoy playlist. As chance would have it, somehow this process, what would be a calm before a storm, magically synced up to that serene sound in Tool's "Ticks & Leeches" leading up to Maynard's harshest scream ever, at the 6:10 minute mark. It became one of the many, distinct memories of Iraq, now forever tied to this song.

SSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKK

MMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

DDDDDRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

[highspeedsblog]

It's my 1 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[highspeedsblog]

Addictions

Now that we've come this far, let's go ahead and get into this one. Addictions. There's a good percentage of us, not all of us, that now have addictions. If we didn't have any before the war, we may have some now. Gambling, sex, alcohol, shopping, drugs, guns, etc. Sorry to break it to you.

Now, I am not a doctor, but I'm going to give you my own best educated guess. I'm going to tell you about the epiphany I had some years back.

Here's the recipe : You take all these soldiers that are most likely in their very early twenties, round em up, train them, ship them overseas to the Middle East to a combat zone. Give them a weapon and/or weapons, add to the mix some live fire, RPGs, mortars, explosives, etc. Put the soldiers in a literal life and death situation from day to day for at least three-hundred-sixty-five days. Do this, and I guarantee you will ramp up the flow of adrenaline tenfold. Do this for an extended period of time, and the body adjusts to it. Ladies and Gentlemen, we now have a new "normal" baseline!

So, once we get back from deployment and get out of the military, it's hard for us to adjust to "normal civilian life." We go out and race cars, skydive, do drugs, drink and party (still) like there's no tomorrow. Are you beginning to see how this happens? Why we do the crazy things we do? We need to seek out that fix, that rush. And let me tell you, there's no other high like an adrenaline high, no matter how hard we chase it. Things begin to become a problem because, whatever we are doing to chase that high is quite excessive.

Have you ever been in a close call situation before? Like just barely scraping by involvement of a car accident.....by the skin of your teeth? You know that feeling you get right afterward where you feel the sharp sourness coursing through your veins? Kinda like when you eat something sour and you feel the tartness in your jaw. That's how adrenaline feels when it releases in your blood. Yeah, we had that shit all day, every day, for a year straight. It's a high and nothing compares to it. Take that away from us combat veterans and expect us to go back to normal regular life like everyone else, right? Not that simple.

Some compensate, one way or another. Good, bad, indifferent, it's just ONE of the things we struggle with. This is not to say that each veteran is like this. This is just the sense I have made from it. Another educated guess.

[highspeedsblog]

Smoke 'Em If Ya Got 'Em

One thing you will notice is that we smoke like chimneys. We smoke so gawd damned much because it's about the only thing that calms our nerves. We live with adrenaline in our veins for roughly a year straight (common theme here!) and weren't given the tools to cope. So, this is just what we do. We fidget, we curse, we at times get rowdy, we drink, we smoke. Ain't no two ways about it.

But in the middle of nothing and the desert, we need our ciggs. Once a month a Conex shipment comes into Tikrit's PX. I really don't know what comes in those shipments. Except cigarettes. Cigarettes are in that Conex. Gawd forbid you oversleep or take too long of a shit and miss out on your smokes. See, we all had figured out the timing of this here shipment. Every first of the month, give or take a couple days. Every soldier knew that schedule, especially the smokers. We had learned this schedule after one too many times ending up with cartons of USA Golds. This particular brand of cigarettes was the very bottom of the barrel. The only thing lower than this was the cigarettes from the Iraqi economy, most likely the Miami's.

These, damn things were the most stale things that have ever existed on the planet. After smoking a Miami, it made your throat so hoarse you lost your voice by doing nothing other than inhaling. Swear. Smoke one of these bad boys and you'd be coughing up phlegm for a week. Sure, we could have just avoided it all together by NOT smoking at all, but where's the fun in that?

We smoked to pass the time. We smoked when we were "happy." We smoked when we were sad, mad, whatever you can think of. When we had to "hurry up and wait," we smoked. After formation, before and after convoys. When we woke up, when we finally got the time to sleep. We pulled gate guard holding our weapons with a smoke hanging out the side of our pie holes, never once removing it to ash. If we needed to communicate to our battle buddy something important, we did it with a lit cigarette wagging off to the side of our cursing mouths. If there was a briefing we needed to be at, we'd go, and then when we needed to ten minute break our Platoon Sergeants announced, "Alright, smoke 'em if you got 'em!" That was our cue.

I remember when my unit's time was finally up in Iraq and we were heading back to Germany, we had to endure a ten hour flight back from Kuwait to Frankfurt....with one stop along the way. That's all we were really factoring in, our next chance to smoke. Our layover was to be in Istanbul. Weeeheeeheeel, guess what? Nobody was allowed to step foot off of the airplane. Say what???

Now, imagine this if you will...At least a hundred or so soldiers, on one plane, stopped for two hours solid, not able to get off the damn thing to go enjoy a damn cigarette. What. In. The. Fuck. We got antsy. We became irritable. We became shitty. We may have been close to becoming hostile. So what did we get? NCO's managed to get the crew to pop open the doors. And there we were, going to by two, forming a line, just to be able to hang halfway out the airplane doors to be able to enjoy three quarters of a cigarette. But it shut us the fuck up. I imagine we were like a bunch of screaming toddlers....with M16A2s.

Humph, craving a cigarette. Good thing I don't smoke anymore....

[highspeedsblog]

Suck it Up

At twenty and twenty-one years old, you are literally dealing with shit with the weight of the world on your shoulders. You are willing to lay your life on the line for your battle buddies, without question. You are walking into the face of danger, into the unknown, not knowing if you are going to make it out alive. Man, you deal with some heavy shit. And then, add death to all of that. And add the fact that you cannot process all of that because you NEED to Suck It Up and Drive On. We did what we needed to do to accomplish the mission. If we did not do that, we possibly could have all died.

The fucked up shit we saw and dealt with on a daily basis is why we are fucked up now. It is. We have to worry about our next moment being our last. Hyped up on pure adrenaline, all the time, it makes it very clear to me why most of us have some sort of addiction.

I used to pull gate guard every now and then with the Air Defense Artillery guys. I liked those guys, abrasive and rough around the edges, but good fucking guys. Again, they would lay their life on the line. Every time I would walk up "Heeeeeeey!"

We would bullshit, crack jokes, just talk general shit.

When you pull gate guard you gotta worry about when the next jihad is coming through, ready to blast you all to shit. Is this pregnant lady not really pregnant and just strapped up with explosives? Are these little ass kids who come on to work strapped with explosives? Are these youngsters gonna give their lives for the cause? And if they do, I'm definitely gonna go out with a bang! Pun intended. There's a bit of our fucked up humor. That's another story in itself.

When we convoy out in Iraq, we constantly need to be on high alert. You never know what's inside that dead dog lying in the middle of the road. Stop. Box formation. Us gunners then keep our eyes peeled on the outer perimeter, just in case its an ambush. But damn, I can't remember what happened after that.

I'm still alive though. I'm here. But I'm still there.

[highspeedsblog]

RPGs and Mortars

One of the first things you realize when you're down range is that there is a good percentage of local nationals that don't like your ass. They did not want Americans in their country. Insurgents wanted us dead. Period. Those Insurgents had no boundaries when it came to drawing American blood. Sure, some of the local nationals loved us. The rest didn't, plain and simple.

So, right off the bat, you come into enemy fire. It was everywhere. We used to get hit several times a day with Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and/or mortars. So, basically there's explosions everywhere, every day.

The first few weeks, maybe, everytime there's an explosion, you hit the ground. Doesn't matter if it's close or not, that's just a natural reaction. You make sure you hit the ground, because you want to make sure you don't get hit or get hit by shrapnel or any other shit coming off that bad boy. Because, in all reality, you don't know what that incoming mother fucker is or how bad it is. So, you hit the deck.

By the time you are six months into the deployment, you stop hitting the deck. I never thought about it until years later. It's fucked up. It's not that we don't give a fuck, it just becomes a normal, everyday occurrence. Background noise, if you will.

A soldier driving a yellow Hyster forklift down the horribly paved road in Tikrit, minding their own business, suddenly feels the wind of an RPG wiz by their face. So, they turn the damn thing around and drive right back to their starting point. They walk right back in the office, plop down on a bench, reach into their DCU cargo pocket for their ciggs, and light one up right then and there. Another nearby soldier asks "What the fuck are you doing, soldier?" The returning soldier's eyes dart right over to them and with the cigarette hanging from their lips, they say, "Welp, looks like the other unit isn't gonna borrow our forklift this minute because halfway there a fucking RPG flew by........six inches from my face and I'm still alive......So I'm gonna enjoy this cancer stick right here and now."

The FOB (Forward Operating Base) sat at the edge of the Tigris River and there was a bridge that crossed over. That bridge was way too close. What the insurgents used to do was drive a truck across with a guy in the bed, laid down, RPG set to fire. Just as the truck would get on the bridge, guy in the bed would sit up, position, fire, and pray that Allah would let it hit someone. And by "someone" I mean an American soldier. This happened several times a day, not just from the bridge either.

So, by month eight or nine of a twelve month deployment, you're jaded. Shit is exploding here and there and you continue doing whatever the hell it is you were already doing. You don't miss a beat. Although, there are the occasional bastards that hit a little too close for comfort and you instinctively hit the deck. After the ringing in your ears begin to subside, you start feeling on yourself (without looking, just feeling) to make sure all your body parts are there. Am I good? Okay. Now get the fuck up. Chow ain't gonna eat itself.

I forget what year it was that the Iraqi soccer team won the Olympics or something, them hadjis lost their shit. I happened to be by the water filtration plant, laying in a canoe under the stars, on the lake. Next thing I knew, I saw shooting stars. They weren't shooting stars though, they were fucking tracer rounds lighting up the night sky. The local nationals were shooting off rounds in celebration of their soccer teams victory. No exaggeration, there were hundreds of streaks in the sky at one point. I sat up and thought, "Welp, I guess I better kick rocks." Those rounds gotta land somewhere. It was kind of pretty though.

Probably the only time we hit the deck is if we are in an unfamiliar place. Something pops off in an area we aren't too familiar with, then yes, we drop. And even then, we get right back up and start thinking, "Shit, where's my weapon? Why don't I have my weapon? Where the fuck did I leave it? I'm about to be in some deep shit without my weapon!" You start to become a little flustered because you cant even remember when you had that god damned weapon last. After a few minutes of this train of thought, you finally remember that you have been back in the U.S. for ten, fifteen years or what have you, and what you just heard that made you drop probably wasn't even a mortar....or an RPG.....maybe it was just your Dad's Harley backfiring in the carport.

Fuck it, I'd rather die standing up than crouching in fear somewhere.

[highspeedsblog]

 I know I'm already a few stories into this, but I want to apologize to you right now. I'm apologizing for my fucked up non-linear thinking. I'm not sure if I have always been this scatter-brained or if it came after the deployment. I can't say that I remember either. I guess the purpose of this particular blog is to give you an insight to how our brains work now, why we are assholes, and why we take the risks we do. Among many other things. So, Ill try and articulate that as much as I can. This blog will not follow a timeline because it was all flashes then and it's all flashes now. Enjoy the ride, it's our daily lives. Mine anyway.

You know, once our unit was done with the deployment to Iraq, we got redeployed back to Germany. We went from one-hundred-thirty degree weather to thirty degree weather, in twelve hours. That's how it was. We can go from one extreme to another, no problem. Ah, but the only problem is that we still do that. We do that because that is all we know. Here's the only catch, we never really left that war. Sure, we came back home (some of us), we are physically here. But in all honesty, we never left that war, we are still in it. We fight it every day. We look around us and see our battle buddies fucking killing themselves at alarming rates, twenty-two a day. Remember that. 

Have you ever noticed that we are like magnets? We can find other veterans, especially those that were in the same campaigns, and we form a bond instantly. We form that bond because, right off the bat, we know that if shit came down to it, we got each other's back.....to the death. Everyone I fought beside had that mentality, we still do. Even twenty years later, across continents, I know who I can trust. 

People ask me why I never really talk about my time in Iraq. Sure, I say things here and there. I had some good experiences. But what I saw there, I wouldn't ever want my children to see. Shit, I don't want YOU to see it. But after years of stuffing it down, I have come to the conclusion that if I let it out, I just might be able to move on from it. Either way, a big part of me is still out there in that god damn desert. You'll see how and why we have our fucked up sense of humor, it's how we got through those times. It's still how we get through shit.

I could keep going in this jumbled mess that is my brain but I think, for organizational purposes, Ill try and break up all these experiences into these little stories. Sand. Weapons. Gear. Our lovely tans. Whatever I feel to focus on for that particular memory, I guess.   

[highspeedsblog]

 ROUND 1

Qualifying on the crew serve weapons out in "Midland" in Iraq is an all day affair. If you qualify on just one crew serve, still, it takes all fucking day. In my case, I trained on the .50 cal, but what did my platoon sergeant say after I zeroed? "S******! Zero on the 240!" I was about to get up and move to the 240. "WRONG! Roll over and zero on the 240!" So, I rolled over. Zeroed on the 240. "Good! Now roll over and zero the 249!" Fuck me. Rolled over and zeroed on the 249 SAW. "Beautiful, S******! Goddamn beautiful. We're gonna get you qualified on all three by the time we leave here!"

Well, shit. I guess I'm qualifying on all three crew serves. 

It was hot as shit, no shade, and I barely ate anything that morning. In that kind of heat, that's the wrong thing to do.

After zeroing on the crew serves I felt like complete shit. Dizzy, nauseous, tunnel vision. Then....I yakked. Fuck me, now I'm a heat casualy. Here's a bit of advice: Especially in excessive heat, be sure to hydrate. But also, don't overhydrate. It's just as dangerous as dehydration. Which means, fucking eat something so your body has sustenance. 

ROUND 2

I gather myself and head on over to our next station, Stationary vehicles. The idea is to qualify on the crew serve machine guns from the Gunner's Turret. Two of my favorite Sergeant Majors were assisting that day. My platoon Sergeant nods me over to the five-ton truck. SMA 1 is already up there waving me over. I climb up that big sonofabitch and seat myself in the strap of the gunners turret, full battle rattle and all. 

If ever you are going to convoy as a gunner in a five-ton or humvee, do yourself a favor and bring a fucking pillow. I don't care how big and bad you think you are, you ain't shit when you're whining midway through a two hour convoy (one way) about your ass hurting because you chose to go raw and sit on the three inch strap that IS your seat.

I digress.

SMA 1 says, "Today soldier, you're gonna be one of the very few to qualify on all three machine guns AND you're gonna do it better than everyone else. Hooah?" He looked me right in my eyes, "HOOAH, Sarn' Major." He looked through his binoculars across the wasteland desert and a broken down haji semi truck. I surmise it was maybe about three quarters of a mile away? Fuck, I don't know, FAR! SMA1 then tells me that I better not miss that big ass semi truck over yonder, otherwise it'll be my ass. Roger that. 

The .50 cal was mounted with a spring, which makes it soooo much easier to maneuver that heavy batch. I take a min to get the target in my sights, my gloved thumbs on the butterfly trigger, I remember my breathing and how it will effect the trajectory of that big ass bullet. SMA1 says, "Fire when ready soldier. Don't miss." I fire once. SMA tells me to keep firing, so I do. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. SMA1 watched every round hit through those binoculars. "Thaaaaats right," he said. "Do it again." So, I did. Armor piercing rounds are pretty damaging in general, so imagine the hole it left in the side of the haji semi. Time was up, next station.

I climbed in the humvee and popped up in the gunners turret and manned the 249SAW. Now, I don't particularly like the SAW all that much because the barrel seems to heat up faster on these damn things. This means you gotta carry a spare and it means more malfunctions of the weapon. But my platoon sergeant told me to, so I did. 

My platoon sergeant was always so calm that it was sickening. Me? Back then I was known for being hot headed, so calm was a feat. These days, I'm more calm than ever. But there are the occasional outbursts of anger and insanity, although with the help of anti psychotic meds, those outbursts are kept to a minimum. 

Anyway, I sit in that gawd awful strap and fire away on the 249. I hit the target. Qualified. My platoon sergeant is happy as all hell. "S******, from here on out, I think you're gonna be my personal gunner. You have quite the shot. These crew serves have come natural to you. I'm proud of you." Not gonna lie, it made my heart swell, kinda like when your dad tells you he's proud of you. Next station.

Again, I climb in and up the humvee, and I get ready. This last weapon is the 240 Bravo. This. Shit. Right. Here. This is my jam. On a 240 you can feel the smoothness of the round fire out the barrel "like butter," as I always say. Bad mamma jamma. I love this weapon, all twenty-six pounds of it. Every 7.62mm round that accompanied it as well. The 240 would come to be my weapon of choice on all my future convoys, all except one. 

SMA2 immediately peers through his binoculars and says, "Damn it S******, you see that gas can out there?" I stare down range, at first with my naked ass eyes, and blink real hard. You mean that fucking DOT out there!? 

I say, "Yes Sarn' Major...." He follows with, "I want you to make that fucker jump." FUCK MY LIFE! Really? He expects me to make that DOT jump!?! There I am, sweating on top of sweat on top of sweat.

Mount. Position. Get sights. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Get in rythym with my heartbeat. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Hold. Squeeze.

Thooomp! Thoomp! 

"Fuck yeah, soldier! Do it again!" I do. I made that fucker jump. He was proud of me, which made me feel pretty good.

Round 3

The last part of qualifications were done on a moving vehicle. This is to simulate being part of a convoy. So, once again, I move through each crew serve weapon, through each vehicle. But once I came to what would be known as my Beloved 240, I was met with belt fed ammo and every fifth round were incinerator rounds.

SMA1 looked down range for a minute or so. He said, "Today we are gonna blow up that semi out there!" I looked up at him, he looked back at me. "Let's do it soldier." I took aim, concentrated on my breathing. Slow. Steady. Controlled. Wait for it. Inhale. Exhale. Hold. Squeeze.

I could feel each round slide through the barrel, smooth and nice. I fired short five round controlled bursts. The vibration of the weapon blurred my vision. Jeezus christ I hope to hell I'm hitting that semi. I stop. "You done?" I squeeze the trigger over and over, being very conscious not to hold it for too long. In the distance I can barely hear SMA1. "Hold fire! Hold fire!" 

I sit up while he looked down range. "Hell yeah, soldier, good aim!" I squint my eyes to focus. That semi went up in flames. 

Those goddamned 3M earplugs. Do you hear that ringing sound?? Huh? What?

[highspeedsblog]

Here is my disclaimer, here's your one chance to run away. Don't get all offended after this. Your risk, not mine. What you are about to read is some truth, from one Operation Iraqi Freedom II veteran, although the end of the series may come as a bit of a surprise.

Do you know how hot it gets in Iraq? One-hundred-and-thirty fucking degrees, at least. One of my battle buddies used to say, "Its hotter than all balls!" No lie, it is for fucks sake. 

I joined the Army AFTER 9/11, real genius move. I went in having a Quartermaster job, 92G. Yes, yes, a goddamn cook. Why? Because pushing back my ship date cost me my slot as 54B, NBC (Nuclear Biological and Chemical). So, I took the next best thing, a big bonus.

Basic Training, check.

AIT, check.

Report to duty station in Wurzburg, Germany, check.

Deploy to Tikrit, Iraq on Mother's day 2004, fucking check.

In-process in Kuwait for two hellish weeks. Hurry up and wait, story of a soldiers life. Check.

Land in Tikrit, check.

Settle in at my living quarters....in a marble palace in Sadaam's hometown? Holy hell...

These palaces that we lived in were unbelievable. Marble. Gold. Crystal. One square mile of luxury, while outside those walls were desolate. Power outages were rolling. Water was dirty. Us? We were all pretty fucking rough, chain-smoking, gutter-mouthed, horny bastards that had each other's back in life, and in death. To this day, I'd trust my battle buddies with my life, because it just doesn't get any more real than that. Even if I haven't seen them or talked to them in years, there still lies that special bond. Blood and guts, no question.

On a daily basis, temperatures rose well above a hundred degrees. We wore our full battle at all times because The Big Red One was held to higher standards. Those higher standards nearly gave us heat stroke on a daily. DRINK MORE WATER! Hydrate fucker! So much fucking water. 

Full Battle Rattle consisted of full DCUs, flak vests weighing in at 20lbs maybe? And that's without add ons. On top of that was usually a camel pack with at least a half gallon of water, give or take. Six magazines of 5.56 rounds in Molly gear also attached to that flack vest. You have your standard M16A2 on a three point sling, eight pounds. On top of our already hard-headed noggin, a Kevlar helmet. Couple pounds. By the end of each day, lovely, thick salt rings in/on/through our DCUs.

On top of that shit, we were peppered with mortars and RPGs every fucking day, more than once, more than twice. Them hajis would drive over the bridge crossing the Tigris River with a dude, or woman.......or teenager......in the back ready to sit up and fire in hopes of blindy taking one of us, or some of us, out with a bang. It got to the point that it happened so much that we stopped ducking and diving. We wished a motherfucker would, cause they'd have hell to pay. When an RPG crosses about a foot in front of your face while scootin down the road, it pisses you off so much so that you turn around, head back to point A, kick a fucking door open, sit in front of a cooler with a cigg hanging out your mouth, and contemplate a whole scenario of blood and guts, not your own either. If only they were close enough....

**Break**

I think about this today. From what I can gather, in all my non-scientific-scientific-next-best-educated-life-experience-guess, is that we were out there for approximately 365± days, living on pure adrenaline, 24/7 in some form or another. So after a while, THAT becomes your body's "normal," then you get shipped back to duty station, asked a couple questions, deemed safe and normal, and then shipped for thirty-day leave and expected to adjust to normal civilian life with your family and kids and shit. The government failed us, oh so badly.

**Break**

Then, one day, they say, "S******! You'll be training on the .50cal, get ready!" I think, "How you figure?" But there I go......