ABC News: GIs Survive Hidden Bombs With Gadgets, Guts and ‘Dumb Luck’
The good folks at ABC News are doing their best to remind folks that there is still war in Afghanistan, that American sons and daughters are still doing their best to have a successful outcome there. They sent us a link to an article written by James Gordon Meeks entitled “GIs Survive Hidden Bombs With Gadgets, Guts and ‘Dumb Luck’“. Meeks accompanies a patrol of 10th Mountain Division’s Cav scouts;
“Nobody is demanding this of me,” I thought, weighing the risks from the unseen bombs, and seeing my babies’ precious little faces when I closed my eyes the night before. “There isn’t a gun to my head. I don’t have to do this.”
But my fear and apprehension dissolved at sunrise, when I considered that those young and inspiring American troopers didn’t have to do this, either.
They were all volunteers facing the Taliban’s proliferating IEDs, including the 19-year-old from the Louisiana bayou his buddies called “Savvy,” who made up a personal trauma kit for me to carry — tourniquets and bandages — and offered to take point in front of the others just because his four whole months of experience facing this threat might actually save our lives.
Savvy had just returned to his platoon from the hospital at Kandahar Airfield after earning his second Purple Heart from an IED blast. He’d been knocked down on his keister by another one, when a U.S. sniper he’d just spoken to stepped on a pressure-plate IED on patrol and was blown in half — fatally — by the hidden bomb underfoot.
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Category: Terror War
The article was great, as far as it went–but there’s a lonk on the page to a video well worth watching. It’s called An Emotional Homecoming or something like that.
God bless those troops of the 10th! Thanks to the reporter for being with them to give us the story.
Six deployments…ten deployments…twelve years of combat. Wounded twice…three times…five times. Christ.
How does this addled, self-absorbed, neurotic country manage to breed men like that?
@3. It sucks. It always has sucked. I never understood why troops were deployed repeatedly. I know why they go–but my issue is why they are ordered to go again and again and again. And if anyone says, “Well, that’s their job” he or she can blow it out his or her butt. The IED anxiety when moving on the ground is enough to have set a limit.
There is also a very interesting link to an article about how AQ bombmakers were allowed into the US as immigrants despite having been IDed and fingerprinted overseas – worth reading. Sheds a little light on the delay in getting some interpreters into the States…. after the AQ guys were spotted a collective “Holy Shit whatarewethinkin'” delayed a lot of visas, according to the article.
@3 – God only knows but He obviously favors us with His best children. It is from folks like them that the legends of semi-divines were born.
Air Force Times just had an article the other day:
http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20131202/CAREERS/311180002
about the frequent deployments of the most in demand AFSCs, including EOD.
It’s a big problem and it doesn’t help that the only cuts the Feds are making are to the military.
Kudos to these guys for being willing to do what 99.999% of us won’t.