Night fighting!

Well, sort of…

Kharma, Iraq. August 2007.

Yeah, it sucked.

My first night patrol during this deployment was not a history making event; no pivotal battles were fought; we didn’t even detain anyone. This patrol will never even amount to a footnote in the annals of military lore. As a matter of fact, I would have to say that on any given day a combat patrol through our part of the town more closely resembled a steeple chase than anything else.

Imagine, if you will, temperatures more suitable for the baking of cookies than human life. Then strap on 100 pounds of miscellaneous objects including body armor, ammunition, water, first aid kits, communication gear, and any other number of items of interest. There is always one more clown out there with a brilliant new piece of gear that we just “gotta” carry with us. Well brain surgeon, get in line behind the twenty-five other experts with a brilliant new gadget that is supposedly light weight. It always amazes us that engineers are able to come up with some of this dazzling stuff, but can’t do simple math. Nimrods, twenty-five doohickeys that only weigh 2 pounds is 50 pounds of extra crap we get to carry around! Sorry, I’m getting off track.

That night I didn’t really walk so much as fall for at least 1,800 meters or so. Leaping over irrigation ditches, slugging through muddy pastures, cursing the Marine in front of me for not pointing out the giant hole my hip just sank into; it was definitely not a highlight reel of graceful gymnastic achievement.

I will never know how the designers of our body armor at that time expected Marines to chase bad guys through urban battlefields with all that crap on. In the end it becomes more of a liability than an enhancement. If they developed a round that actually killed the enemy more proficiently, I might never have to run again.

By the time we got to our first check point I was a train wreck. We stopped to check up on some of our Marines conducting operations out of their own patrol base. I shucked off my equipment like the albatross that it was and flopped myself miserably onto the floor. Despite my reputation for physical prowess, I felt like I just had the snot kicked out of me by a gang of gypsies.

One of the drawbacks of being the First Sergeant is that despite how I felt, I still had to set an example of performance and professionalism. In this case it meant donning all that soul grinding gear again and continuing the patrol like I thought it was a great idea.

Splayed out on the floor like a human sacrifice, I suspect I gave myself away to the likes of my CO Capt H. It’s kind of hard to maintain a poker face when you look like someone stretched out on a torture rack.

“You okay First Sergeant?” he asked dryly.

“Go to—I’m fine sir.”

We set out into the darkness again taking circuitous routes around angry dogs, man-eating cows, or worse, an aroused bull. This only led to further acrobatics as we scaled walls and performed precarious balancing acts on rotting planks thrown over the filthy ditch water.

When considering all the acts of heroism performed in the war on terror, this patrol will not be considered worth recounting. On the positive side, we were inspired to award our fellow Marines and Sailors for notable achievements on follow up patrols; Most Falls Endured; Most Spectacular Header; Ditch Water Consumption Award; Most Body Area Covered by a Foreign Substance.

I never won any of these awards, but I never came in last either.

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