My own private War

I am writing a story of my time spent in Desert Storm. This is nothing more than my thoughts and my memories. I plan to do nothing with this other than keep it as a story to pass to my children and family. I thought I would share it with my online family here. It is not meant to be grammatically correct or competitive with anything or anyone else. It is just thoughts from my heart such as they are. Read it if you like, but please, I am not asking for critisism, I know I am not a good writer so I am not looking for corrections. I am looking for feedback about my life however, so any response would be great. I will post more of my story as I write it offline. Thanks for reading if indeed you do.



From the comfort of the darkness I stood watch on a chilly night in a strange land. The distant roar of flying engines was constant as our own released damnation upon those foolish enough to test our might. My friend and co-foxhole mate was absently humming a song that must have been from his childhood. My thoughts meandered back to my own prepubescent years; back to a time when the days of summer seemed to last a lifetime and the wrought iron resolve of my Father never failed to lend strength to my courage.



“Why did you do that?” I asked Eddie, my best friend, after he slapped me on my sun burnt shoulder. He looked at me and grinned, which made me wonder why the Hell was he my best friend anyway? He always was a sore loser, and I think my 200 plus game trophy I had won earlier in the day during our preteen bowling league competition was sour grapes to him for some reason. Oh he had won a trophy for best three game total himself, but I guess my own rare accomplishment softened his thunder somewhat. He had many such trophies where as this was my first, he seemed to dislike it when I did something better or even equal to him. Oh at the bowling alley he was all grins and congratulations, he could not seem jealous in front of everyone else, but when we were alone it was different. He never said so, but his actions spoke volumes on my mind. I felt kind of sorry for him though and he remained my good friend for a very long time.

__________________

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

That friendship also taught me something very important that has made me stronger over the years and helped me thrive during the many cold nights and boiling days that were to come. It taught me to look at the strength as well as the weaknesses of everything. Sure he had a character flaw in relationship to competition, but don’t we all have flaws of some type? Eddie was also like a brother and like all siblings we sometimes fought, but mostly we had fun as kids should have; lord knows we grew up too fast too soon when the ugly world came knocking on the door in our early teens.



“Hey did you hear that?” My battle-buddy whispered between chattering teeth. My thoughts immediately became focused as I went through my mental awakening checklist. I always got in trouble for daydreaming when I was younger, and I still am a slave to its luring escapism, but I learned to focus on the background as I tiptoed through the mists of my past or my fantasies. Actually I had heard a noise, a soft murmuring. I grabbed the night vision goggles and took a look at the area we were supposed to be guarding.

__________________
Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

EDIT: (That wasn't a competitive smilie-escalation btw )

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

__________________
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

I slowly scanned the area in front of our foxhole not wanting to miss anything. Sound can be a tricky thing in the desert, every now and then we would hear the engines of supply trucks traveling the MSR to our west, and it was twenty five miles away. After looking for a few minutes I decided the noise must have come from inside our perimeter, maybe just another soldier up to use the latrine or just too restless to sleep. PFC Ragone wanted to have a look so I handed him the goggles. The noise had not reoccurred and it was not alarming enough to alert the Sergeant of the Guard, at least in my mind. I started to relax when all of a sudden Ragone grabbed my shoulder and thrust the goggles towards me. “Look straight out and on the ground, I think I see someone laying down about a hundred clicks in front of us!” He had whispered it, but it sounded terribly loud to me like we had just given ourselves away. I started to just use the field phone to alert the guard, but I decide to take a look first. After all it was Ragone who had alerted the SOG about a wandering camel a few days earlier and had caught grief about it since.

How long is a "click"?

I was under the impression it meant kilometer, but that can't be right....

Wow 7th....Very cool thread.... Very interesting...

__________________

Ditto...

__________________

Thanks...and yeah a click is usually a kilo or a mile depending on who you ask. The clicks I mentioned has to do with the adjustment dial on the night vision goggles, when you turn it it makes a small clicking noise, a click is about a yard in this instance, sorry if it was confusing.

keep it coming

This is a good idea. I'm glad you're sharing it.

__________________

What I saw was definitely not a camel. I am not sure how I missed the body lying on the ground on my first scan, but sure enough someone was out there perfectly still lying on the ground, their eyes shone green in the zoom lens. I heard the murmuring sound again, and the thing that freaked me out even more was the sound was not coming from the person I saw in front of us; it came from a lot closer. I motioned with a swirling action of my hand for Ragone to alert the S.O.G. via the field phone. He knew to just click in an S.O.S. signal so that the intruders would not hear us. Just then the vision in my goggles suddenly went totally black. I knew why, someone was standing right in front of me. Time does a funny thing when you are scared to death, it seems to crawl ever so slowly. Even though it must have been but a second or two it felt like I was stuck in quicksand. I grabbed my M16 which was sitting across my lap while I sat on the ledge inside the bunker and brought the butt of the weapon straight up into this guys kneecap, he crumpled to the ground screaming. I turned to see what Ragone was doing and just as I looked into his eyes I heard a gunshot, Ragone had fired his weapon in fright, unfortunately it was pointing down and the barrel was sitting right on top of his own foot. His screams joined the guy holding his knee on the ground. A crazy thing happened then, my mind started to drift into that fantasy land again although as my thoughts were distant my body was aware of everything that was going on. As I pointed my rifle in the direction of the man still crouched down in front of us I was thinking about a Thanksgiving dinner in the brick home I had grown up in. I must have been six or seven at the time, but the memory is still vivid to this day.

It was one of those days where the clear Florida sky was as blue as kitten’s eyes. I was glad Dad was home for a long weekend and that I would be able to see my older siblings all together again. I missed walking to the bay with my sister Debbie and helping set up bottles for my brother John so he could shoot them with his 22. When I got a little older he always promised he would show me how to shoot. As I think back now it was probably a good idea he didn’t, he was never a good shot. Today would be a wonderful day and even the daylight abandoning me early now that the time had changed recently was not so bad a thought. The day went mostly as expected and I was in heaven playing with my cousins and other children that I was related to in some fashion or another. Everyone was at the dinner table when the news came. I knew when the phone rang that it would be bad news. I think everyone else did also; it got deathly quiet and the constant ringing seemed to have everyone hypnotized. Finally my sister Barbara got up to answer the phone, she knew, somehow she knew. Regan my niece was the only close family member not attending the dinner and she had already called earlier in the day to say how much she missed everyone and wish she could have been here. She was with her boyfriend meeting his family and spending time with him. She was very in love and no one gave her grief about it.

“Hello” my sister said with a trembling voice. That was the last thing I remember before the turmoil began and fate decided I should start learning the bitter reality of life at such a young age. Regan had been killed in a car crash along with her boyfriend. I never asked the particulars of what happened, who was a fault or anything else. I just knew that the look on my sister’s face when she found out that her child had been killed still haunts me today. That was my first time dealing with the death of a loved one and it gets no easier as sometimes tough things do when they are experienced over and over. Why was this memory coming to me now as my own life as well as my fellow soldiers lives were in danger? Now as I think back I know why.

The emotion that radiated from my sister stank of loss. She was so devastated and even at my young age I knew she would have a hard time going on. That’s what I felt at that moment when I knew I might be killed; I felt loss. Oh it was not death I was scared of, but everything I would miss out on and the grief I would cause my children and the rest of the family. I think now about how selfish that sounds, but it is true. I had this embedded feeling that I was not coming back from the war. I might not die this day or the next, but I was not coming home. Barbara was so lost that Thanksgiving Day, and now I knew how she felt. Losing a close family member especially a child has to be the most awful thing that can happen to someone. I felt as if by dying I would lose them. My faith was not such that I believed I would see them again someday. That is why that memory came to me at that point. My sister has had more children and she seems to have overcome her loss, but I know in my heart that when she looks at a picture of Regan or is lying awake in bed at night, when one’s mind tends to reflect, that she still cries over losing her daughter.



Something about the whole situation did not seem right. The idea that somehow a person could get that close to us without seeing them just blew my mind. As I placed the crosshairs of my M16A2 between the glowing green eyes that were looking my way I hesitated. Not because I had this moral blockade that I did not want to kill another person, not at all. I knew that this bastard would kill me if he had the chance. No I hesitated because amongst the screaming of two injured soldiers something occurred to me: The person whose kneecap that I bashed in was wearing something oddly familiar. He was wearing desert boots. The kind that only a few special force units and high ranking officers were able to acquire this early in the campaign. I remember reading about them in the Military clothing catalog and how much I wanted a pair. We were going to be issued these boots soon, but as of yet we were still stuck in our green fatigues and jungle boots. I took a closer look, I even grabbed the squirming foot in front of me to get a feel of it. Sure enough it was an Army issued desert boot. I knew that as hard as it was to get these boots for our own soldiers it would be crazy to think some Iraqi solider had a pair. Sure they could have been stolen or lost and picked up by this guy, but as I looked closer at his clothing I knew this guy was an American Solider. I immediately yelled halt to the guy in front of us and he seemed shocked. I requested him to identify himself and stated the challenge. He knew the password. Lord I just crippled a guy and almost killed another that was not the enemy. Ragone was still yelling in pain when the S.O.G showed up with others. Something I think I must make clear, this entire scenario occurred in about one minute. Do not ask me how, but as I stated before time seems to slow down when you think you are about to die. As I stood up and watched the soldier who gave the password approach us, I noticed something else about the guy lying on the ground in front of us. He had a subdued oak leaf cluster on his lapel. I had just busted out the kneecap of a special forces officer.

There is a lot more to what happened that day, but basically the two officers that came upon us did not even know we were there, and we had no information about them scouting the area we were in. I received neither reprimand nor accolades, although some days I wonder if I had shot and killed one of them if things would have gone differently. I do know for sure that if it had been the enemy I would have received an award. I find it hard to feel sorry for what happened though because I was just doing my job. PFC Ragone was sent home due to his injury which I have heard he got a purple heart for. Actually I feel sorry for him more than anyone; a purple heart is not going to fix his injury which caused him to be discharged. Last I heard he was fighting for disability benefits, but has been denied due to it being self inflicted. I do not know a lot more about his fate other than that so the ability to get a purple heart but not benefits confuses me. That day was the first of many that I can remember with great alacrity and surety of my time spent in the Middle East. It is, however, not the beginning of my story, that began in the Sweltering Summer of 1988 at Fort Knox Kentucky.

The loneliness that overwhelmed me at the reception station in Fort Knox Kentucky suffocated me like a wet blanket. I knew no one there, and I did not have much in common with anyone. I could see on the faces of many others that they felt the same, but socializing was pretty much frowned upon, and having a friend was almost like having to watch what you did twice over. If your “friend” got in trouble it was just as much your fault as theirs and usually the punishment was worse for you because you were not watching their back. The policy was to weed out all those who could not thrive in a military environment. Not just physically, but in so many other ways also. Recruiters have an obligation to make sure a person meets certain criteria; unfortunately things can happen over a year or two. Someone may have met the height and weight requirements when they first enlisted, but on the D.E.P. (delayed entry program) those Big Macs add up on a person quickly. A recruiter is supposed to reweigh you before you are shipped out, but I know I was not reweighed. After spending all that time getting you accepted in the first place your recruiter was not going to hold you back or lower their enlistments because of a few pounds. McOwen was one of those guys.

i missed this and i'm sorry that i did...keep it coming...very interesting....