Your sixth and seventh paragraphs
by WilfordBrimley (2017-05-03 14:53:43)

In reply to: Did your vision narrow? Did time slow down?  posted by blarneygreen


ring particularly true for me.

I can so vividly remember certain sets and sequences that they might as well have happened yesterday. Yet I can barely remember at all what was probably the worst three or four days of our entire deployment. Complete exhaustion and a bad eye infection will do that, I guess.

I do think back a lot about what I did and what I could have done differently: "If I had done Y instead of X...". We were pretty fortunate with our own guys (with some very notable exceptions - you don't soon forget what a ball-bearing through someone's neck looks like), but not so much with the locals. I'm not sure it mattered all that much in the long run. I keep in touch with my old interpreter, and he told me that most of the locals I knew from the area are dead now, anyway. The Islamic State swept through the area in late 2014 and pretty much cleaned house.

One of the things that struck me then and that I still think about was the lack of music. Growing up, every movie and TV show that I ever saw showing combat had some dramatic music or something in the background. In real life, it just sort of happens. No dramatic music. No build up, climax, and ending. Just crack/boom/echo/incessant radio chatter/lots of screaming over the noise. Again, a very odd thing to think about, but it's noticeable if your mind is conditioned a certain way.

Most of all I remember the heat. The motherfucking heat. And the smell of the place.


I can smell it right now
by blarneygreen  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

They say smell is connected to memory somehow, and I believe it. And it wasn't always bad, either - a few moments in Kuwait or in the Green Zone were punctuated by a kind of nice, spice smell, especially at night with a breeze.

The heat. Ye Gods, the heat was something else. Last August I got stuck for five days in Kuwait on the way home from AFG, and just cooked. With a wind, its even worse somehow.


The Vietnam smell
by BeijingIrish  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

was a tang of charcoal smoke, garbage/rotting fruit, and shit (sometimes leavened by spice or perfume smells from tropical flowers). It is a standard smell in tropical Third World countries, but it was especially pungent in VN (Cambodia too). There was also along the river the jungle smell--musky, damp earth, wet plants.


If I remember correctly,
by WilfordBrimley  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

you've been to Iraq, so you will remember it: some mixture of burning rubber, rotting organic material, raw sewage, and a bit of local food spices. The burning smell was the most pungent of the mix.


Yep
by BeijingIrish  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

Somehow, the smell in Iraq seemed more offensive. Maybe it was the heat. Or, maybe the dust was a more effective vector. I omitted the carrion smell. You had that in the mix in VN too.

Iraq is the most fucked-up, unpleasant, shitty country I've ever been to, and I've been to 90 of them.


One thing that came to mind
by WilfordBrimley  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

reading this thread again was the garbage dump just north of the city. I am certain that anyone on here who has seen it knows what I am referencing: just mounds and mounds of garbage and debris piled up several stories high across several square kilometers with walking pathways through much of it. It is just north of the northern gates of Baghdad adjacent to Highway 1. I am certain that I will never smell anything like that particular place ever again in my life.

Early in my deployment, we were tasked with counter-IED duty, which would involve us patrolling around that area. Shi'a militias tied to the local cops were coming out of nearby Khadimiyah and taking their chances at American logistics convoys going up the highway with those especially deadly IEDs - smuggled in by the IRGC - known as explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs). At night, in order to prevent emplacement, we would stalk the area just off the highway, set in an ambush position, and wait for them.

I figured that garbage dump would be a great spot to check out - easy concealment, no one around, good sight lines to the highway. When we walked in there, I was absolutely shocked: there were whole families living in that shit heap. Dozens of them. I couldn't believe it. The yapping of the stray dog packs made it worse.


Mosul was my stomping ground
by blarneygreen  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

And there were times I actually liked it there. The mountains always dimly in view, and Sinjar Ridge, where we kept a re-trans station. And not nearly as hot as down south; hell, it snowed 4 inches one day in Mosul.

And now its a bloody wasteland, so much loss and heartbreak. I can't watch news coverage about the fight in Mosul now. Too many good men fought so hard for that place, and we wrested it back from collapse, and Ninevah had so much promise - Kurds and Yazidis and Shia and Sunni, and a University, and the mosque that stood where Jonah was laid to rest. And now ISIS packs buildings with desperate civilians and hopes we kill them.


I was pretty much restricted to the west side of town
by BeijingIrish  (2017-05-03 14:53:43)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

Our compound was in Mansour, and I only went from there to the downtown business district (Rusafa), usually via the bridge next to Medical City. Khadimiyah was off-limits for the most part, ditto anything on the east side of town.