Rock The Casbah

Another very late night. This time rolled into bed around 2:30 AM; dirty, exhausted, and sore. Mostly it is my head that hurts. The helmet gets heavy after 13 hours or so. Then when you attach a bulky radio headset, eye protection pressed against your face, and a heavy set of old night vision goggles, you start to feel like a bobble-head doll with a weak spring. Last night marked a touchstone in our tender military careers. We officially went kinetic. That is to say, we shook the dust off of our vehicle machine gun on some bad guys - something the team we replaced never had the opportunity to do. It was quite a dose of adrenalin, and something to behold through NVG's. Interesting side effect of an adrenalin surge: After the engagement, our gunner (played this evening by Marshall, who understudies for Bob in the role of gunner) dropped back into the vehicle and promptly fell asleep.

Now, something funny. Our convoy is waiting in the dark for the Apache helicopters to swing by and give us a hand. We're scanning the landscape through our NVG's which, as I've indicated in my previous post is something of a challenge. Duane spots a bright light in the sky and says, "Okay, here they come at our 12 o'clock!" I take off my NVG's and peer into the darkness at the steady red point of light in the sky. "um...Sergeant, I'm not quite sure how to tell you this, but that's Mars."

Trust me. It could happen to anybody. ;-)