What struck me, though, was how young I was then. I still think of myself as the same as I was in those days, the same as I have always been, but old photos put the lie to that. Would I like to be that young again? Not if I had to go through all that I have in the years since then. At least now they are all in the past. What a blessing that is.
Oh, I was just posing with the M249. Some guy wanted to take my picture with it (and have my hair down rather than in its usual bun). I had other duties assigned to me by the Great Black Father in Washington.
That thing was heavy. With the 200-round drum magazine it weighed something like 25 or 30 pounds, if I'm remembering correctly. Anyway, it was heavy. And needed lots of CLP to keep it working. I can still hear guys cussing it out. Each fire team had one and the poor guy who lugged it also carried a spare barrel or two, three or four ammo drums plus all the usual crap everybody humped, PPE and ruck, so the guy could easily be loaded down with 150 lbs. or more. No wonder so many now suffer knee and back problems.
I was always armed with my service pistol, the Beretta M9. Due to green on blue incidents, orders were to have it in Condition 1 -- magazine inserted, round in the chamber, slide forward, hammer down and safety on -- at all times and be prepared to defend myself at any moment. Somebody told me that about a quarter of all American deaths in Afghanistan were green on blue, meaning they were the result of Afghan Army soldiers turning on us. I remember one incident where three MARSOC men were killed while meeting with the local police chief in Sangin. He invited them to dinner with him, then murdered them while they were eating. That same day at FOB Delhi in Garmsir, three other Marines were gunned down by an Afghan Army soldier. With allies like that....
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| Just thought I'd throw this in here. Good for a laugh. IYKYK, lol. |
By the way, Afghanistan had a population of about 28 million people in those days and is the size of Texas. We put 100,000 troops in there with sort of hand-wavy orders (and lots of ROE) to stop it from being a haven for terrorists, the Taliban and assorted bad guys. Now you might think 100,000 troops is a lot, but consider that for the army there were something like 14 support troops for every trigger-puller. I think the Marines claim 10. So in actuality there were, what, at the very most 7,000 guys outside the wire patrolling Indian country trying to keep a lid on things.
Oh, that was gonna work. Fer shure.
Get real.
I've heard the American armed forces described as a military of lions led by sheep, but my dad said it's more like a military of lions led by jackasses. And I agree.
