Deployment stories/combat stories

[slunk0844]

I want to hear some of your guys most memorabale moments on deployment (scary, funny, exciting, etc...)
This shouldn't be who was better or had it tougher. This should be a thread to come and read other veterans stories and share similar experiences we've all endured on deployment.

I read that it helps with PTSD symptoms and mourning to write experiences down. Also where else better to share experiences with than other veterans?

Finally the stories don't necessarily have to be stories of combat deployments. I wanna hear about other parts of the world you've all been deployed and the stories you have to share!

I will start.

There was rumors floating around that the house right outside our FOB in Helmand province Afghanistan was haunted. We called it the militia house because the ANP had told us that back when Russia invaded Afghanistan, Russian soldiers had been skinned alive in the building.

The building was riddled with bullet holes and sat maybe 30 yards in front of our rear machine gun outpost. One night I was Sargeant of the guard and got a call from the 2 marines manning the rear post telling me that something was in the militia house.

I came down to the rear post and asked them what they see. They told me there was a light that kept shinning in the militia house but you could barely see it unless you looked through the thermal scope. So I look through the thermals and sure enough theres a light that seemed to be floating around the entrance to the house. After much debate and when we finally manned up we decided to go take a look. 2 of us would go and 1 would stay in the post with the machine gun.

So me and B (I will call him) head to the entrance of the militia house slow as ever weapons hot soiling our pants. As we near the entrance to the house you have to go over a mound of sand with tree stumps and brush everywhere. We get to the top of the mound and the whole house lit up like someone shinned a flood light on it. I immediately raise my rifle and simultaneously take a step back but trip on a tree stump and start to fall backwards but I force myself to thump on my butt keeping my rifle aimed in.

I yell at B what the hell? And B doesnt answer. I turn to see B half way back to the machine gun post in full sprint. I get up and ran as fast as I think I have ever and got back to the post. Thats when we could see that it was a tree stump an ember from our burn pit had landed on and was now fully engulfed in flame. We laughed for a good 15minutes.

lets hear em boys!

[cc56]

I have nothing too good. We had a little girl in Afghanistan who swallowed a battery. It got stuck and corroded her esophagus (tube you swallow food with) and trachea (tube for air). She was very sick and was brought to Bagram where she got care. They procedure to stabilize her throat with a temporary fix. Her wound was too complicated for a permanent fix to be done at Bagram, she needed a children's hospital with specialists. The Air Force staff worked very hard to get a hospital to take her and Cincinnati Children's hospital took her in. They fixed her throat and got her stable. She was still on a feeding tube when she came home with her family. Her family was uneducated and do not understand a lot of things, which included the instructions on her feeding tube. The little girl got septic and almost died at home. The family brought her back to Bagram and she was saved again. She spent the rest of her time at Bagram until she was healthy.

People always hear about the bad things in war and how innocents get hurt. This is one of those times we helped and it was not our fault. I can't remember if her name was Nazzi or Razzi. We had both names for patients.

[Worknstiff]

Lobbing 40mm grenades at "The fisherman" was always fun back in Ramadi. Got stuck out at OP Horea for 3straight months without leaving the building and man oh man did we go F'n crazy in that building. It sat right off of route mobile and everyday the fisherman would hideout in different buildings and push out ied's underneath passing convoys with a long piece of PVC pipe.

We caught his *** slippin one day and he took about 15 hedp with him on his lil trip to alla akbars place ;-). Good times....

[BajaJames83]

well we all know only %20 of the "story" has to be true and of that %20 only %20 of it has to be your personal story....
Ive deployed to iraq twice 13th meu (was on the ship they shot the pirates from) and Afghanistan.
no sotries here
can say in a 7 month time span we hit uh 30-40 ied's.
Iraq in 2003 bedlam! complete bedlam no law!

[tnlrat37]

Somalia-95 after just getting into it with the locals and having my M16 explode at a very bad time we exfil in our Amtracs off the beach under fire and head back to ship. We get a call that the Commanding General Zinni's amtrac broke down and is being pushed back to shore so we head back and start towing them and ours breaks down. They send a boat back to get him and his command staff and we are left out there waiting for a tow from another trac, it took over 3 hours of bobbing up and down in the surf all the while hearing the rounds from the militia bouncing off our trac as we floated back to shore, before we got pulled in.

Anyone who has ever ridden in an amtrac will tell you it sucks big time. Between the cramped quarters (23 guys fully loaded when they only fit about 13 normally) and the diesel fumes once the first guy got sick we all got sick. I remember thinking it was just like the scene in the movie Stand By Me where everyone got sick. Then we had nowhere to piss either so add that in as well.

When we finally got back to ship and they opened the back they dropped the hatch and all the sea water, urine and puke rolled out all the Navy guys who were in the well deck about lost it. They just hit us with hoses to get the nasty off. It was probably the worst experience of my life, I literally lost my mind for a bit there. Whenever I think work sucks I just think of this and tell myself this is nothing. To this day I cant eat scalloped potatoes ( the MRE I tasted twice that night). So I guess I have food PTSD.

[Worknstiff]

Somalia-95 after just getting into it with the locals and having my M16 explode at a very bad time we exfil in our Amtracs off the beach under fire and head back to ship. We get a call that the Commanding General Zinni's amtrac broke down and is being pushed back to shore so we head back and start towing them and ours breaks down. They send a boat back to get him and his command staff and we are left out there waiting for a tow from another trac, it took over 3 hours of bobbing up and down in the surf all the while hearing the rounds from the militia bouncing off our trac as we floated back to shore, before we got pulled in.





Anyone who has ever ridden in an amtrac will tell you it sucks big time. Between the cramped quarters (23 guys fully loaded when they only fit about 13 normally) and the diesel fumes once the first guy got sick we all got sick. I remember thinking it was just like the scene in the movie Stand By Me where everyone got sick. Then we had nowhere to piss either so add that in as well.





When we finally got back to ship and they opened the back they dropped the hatch and all the sea water, urine and puke rolled out all the Navy guys who were in the well deck about lost it. They just hit us with hoses to get the nasty off. It was probably the worst experience of my life, I literally lost my mind for a bit there. Whenever I think work sucks I just think of this and tell myself this is nothing. To this day I cant eat scalloped potatoes ( the MRE I tasted twice that night). So I guess I have food PTSD.

I got the food PTSD myself, we had greasy disgusting spaghetti for two whole months. Now I can't even look at spaghetti without vomiting in my mouth

As far as tracs go they suck major balls. Always packed full of personnel and exhaust fumes flowing like running water

[dirtrider04]

Oh thanks for bringing up tracs.. I was at 3rd tracs until march of this year. We did a ship op in 2012 where we splashed onto San Onefre beach as it was covered with civilians. People were like WTF as we rolled out of the surf. Of course the MPs were supposed to have the beach clear but showed up late. It was the first time landing on a beach I had to avoid surfers.

[brando]

Back in early 2005 there was a small COP in central Mosul that some 25th ID guys manned with their Strykers. My team came down from the north to stage there with a LRS unit before rolling out for a night mission. We were all setup, vehicles lined up, water and ammo topped off as darkness fell, but before we could leave the COP we started taking direct fire from across the river. This expanded into a pretty heavy duty firefight that basically prevented our small group from heading out.

While the 25th ID guys repelled the attack for hours, the rest of us and our Pesh were basically stuck there with nothing to do, so we just helped feed ammo to the guys on the walls, among other things. After a while we got pretty bored, even though there was the occasional indirect fire coming in as well as direct fire from across the street in a construction site. Earlier in the day we'd bought some bananas from some kids north of the city and now my buddy and I were just staring at them and then looked at each other with that "you thinking what I'm thinking?" look. One by one we soaked them in gas, lit them on fire and catapulted them over the wall with a makeshift rig built out of surgical tubing. The first few that went over got the guys in the tower wondering what the hell we were doing, but after a while they cheered us on. The fire died down for a little bit while we were doing this, to which we correlated with our flaming banana assault, right or wrong. It's amazing how silly you can get when you've been downrange a long time.

The next morning at sunrise we decided to rollout to the airfield after the mission was scrubbed. And since the first rule of rolling outside the wire is "make sure you piss and **** before hand," I took off my armor and climbed the loading dock to hit the porta potty. About five minutes later, with my pants around my ankles and TP in my hand, we took a half-dozen mortar rounds directly into the staging area. I'd been around mortars before, but they were usually at least 200m away going wump!. These were right on top of us, going BLAAAAMMMM!!! The porta potty shook, my ears rang and it took a second for me to realize what was going on. By the second and third impact I knew what was happening and the best I could do was sort of hunker down in the port potty on my knees, trying to pull my pants up. Because it was placed high on the loading dock, the spread of shrapnel was shredding the top of the porta potty with little bits of fiberglass falling all around me. After the final impact, I waited a second, then looked outside and saw my buddies all laying on the ground. I thought they were all hit, but as I hobbled to them pulling my pants up, they all stood up and brushed themselves off. The mortars impacted so close, but the M1114s and Strykers took the brunt of the damage. Even the Hiluxs were spared, which was pretty amazing.

Sadly, that wasn't the last time I was caught on the crapper during an IDF attack.

[lookyoubest]

Of course the MPs were supposed to have the beach clear but showed up late. It was the first time landing on a beach I had to avoid surfers.