March 21, 2003
After the 155mm Paladins had blasted the Iraqi border positions, and the engineers and infantry moved in to clear a path, we dozed in the Bradley, waiting for the order to roll. Snippets of information were passed around.
“They’re saying the Iraqis are destroying their own infrastructure so they can blame it on us,” the LT said.
“Fuck ‘em. Less work for us,” Baxter said.
Around 0400, Baxter waxed philosophical.
“I feel like a whore,” Baxter said. “Somebody’s paying me and I’m about to get fucked.”
“Who are you talking about who’s about to fuck you, Bush or Saddam?” I said.
“Both of them. They’re high-fiving each other while they’re taking turns fucking me,” Baxter said.
“I feel like a crackhead,” Baxter mused a little later. “Because lately, my whole life has revolved around a fucking tin can.”
As we picked out MREs for breakfast, Baxter questioned the purpose of providing vegetarian MREs to men who were planning to go kill people.
“I say fuck the vegetarians,” Baxter said. “We had three vegetarians when I went to basic. We’d eat all the vegetarian MREs so they wouldn’t have any.”
“That’s cold,” said Sgt. Will. “But now that I think about it, we had some people who wouldn’t eat pork, and we’d eat all the non-pork ones.”
We got the order to roll around 0600. The column stopped and started, like bad rush-hour traffic, as 4,000 vehicles made their way to the breach in the berm on the Iraqi border.
“Shit, look at that column, all the way to the horizon,” the LT said from up in his hatch. “What’s the fucking holdup? This will take us three days. The war will be over before we get there.
“When we get back to the States and they ask what I did, I’ll just say, ‘I don’t like to talk about it.’” he said. “That way they’ll think I was in the shit.”
“C-Diddy, you gonna write it up like that?” Sgt. Will said.
“I’ll tell all kinds of lies about you,” I promised.
“Way to go, C-Diddy,” Smitty said.
“Man,” the LT said. “This whole war’s been a disappointment so far.”
“Hey, I ain’t mad about it,” Smitty said. “See how disappointed you be when you nuts are in you chest.”
Finally, around 1000 hours, the LT reported seeing the berm up ahead. Someone had planted a 3rd ID sign next it, the square emblem with blue and white diagonal stripes in it. Under the emblem, 2nd Brigade’s motto, “Send Me.”
I liked the spirit that motto embodied, from Isaiah 6:8. “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send; and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me.”
Baxter paraphrased Isaiah. “I said, here I am, send me fucking home!”
Civilian bulldozers that had cleared additional lanes through the berm were rolling back into Kuwait.
“Kuwaitis are pretty friendly,” the LT said. “They always wave.”
“That one gave me the thumbs up,” Sgt. Will said. “Isn’t that ‘fuck you’ in Kuwaiti?”
Topics: Iraq
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:20 am on Wednesday, March 21, 2007
4 Responses to “March 21, 2003”
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March 21st, 2007 at 12:56 am
I do believe that “thumbs up” means “up yours” in the Arab world, although I never got confirmation of that.
And, of course, the meaning could be changing from negative to positive there.
March 21st, 2007 at 2:10 am
March 21, 2003
March 21, 2003Critter Crittenden After the 155mm Paladins had blasted the Iraqi border positions, and the engineers and infantry moved in to clear a path, we dozed in the Bradley, waiting for the order to roll. Snippets of information were
March 21st, 2007 at 2:14 am
March 21, 2003
March 21, 2003 Critter Crittenden After the 155mm Paladins had blasted the Iraqi border positions, and the engineers and infantry moved in to clear a path, we dozed in the Bradley, waiting for the order to roll. Snippets of information
March 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
C-Diddy telling lies in his war stories?!?
Outrageous!
I’ll repeat the old saying that the only difference between a fairy tale and a war story is that a fairy tale begins “once upon a time” and a war story begins “and this ain’t no @#$*”.