Posted on 08/24/2004 12:51:51 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
"Please god, grant me the serenity to accept the fact that the human race is all things good, and all things evil. At the same time, grant me the courage, and strength to not give up what I know is right, even though its hopeless, and please give me the wisdom to take it day by day." -Blood For Blood
Back when I was civilian, I lived in Los Angeles for awhile. Why I moved to LA I don't know, I just did. On random nights I used to go up to the historic Griffith Observatory up in the Hollywood hills, (usually on some mind altering stimulant) and I'd sit up there for hours and hours and stare off down at the illuminating lights coming off from the urban streets and buildings down below. For some reason I always thought LA looked really cool from way up there. Good from afar, but far from good.
Now years later, I'm constrained up in some f**king guard tower in Mosul, Iraq (itching for stimulants to help me cope with the boredom) staring off at the night lights radiating from this ancient Islamic city. Working the guard tower shift sucks. There aint sh*t to do up in that tower but stand there and stare off into that city and fight boredom as best you can. You always have to make sure that you bring a full pack of smokes with you up in the guard tower. You're in a world of pain if you run out of smokes up in the guard tower, because there is absolutely nothing to do up there except chain smoke cancer causing cigarettes one right after another until your lungs physically hurt and you get sick from having way too high of a toxic level of nicotine flowing through your blood stream.
Thinking about sh*t is also a good way to stay alert and pass time up in the towers, I usually spend my time thinking about what the hell I'm going to do with myself once I get out of the Army, and if this dream gone bad is ever going to end. Even though I've spent countless hours here thinking about that very subject, I have yet to come up with a good answer. At one time tonight I tried to my blur my vision with my eyes while I gazed out onto the city, to pretend like I was staring out at Los Angeles again, but it just didn't work. No matter how hard I tried to pretend that I was somewhere else, I was unsuccessful. I was still in Iraq.
At night here in Mosul, all you can hear the faint barking of loathsome stray dogs coming from the city, and every now and then, all at the same time, this somewhat creepy recording in Arabic is blasted from all these sh*tty radio shack quality speakers mounted on various mosques scattered randomly throughout Mosul. Its kinda eerie hearing these recordings, which is some guy speaking Arabic, in a monotone voice, versus and parts from the Koran. It's one of those sounds and you'll experiences here in this country that you will never forgot. Every time I hear those recordings being played from those mosque speakers, it completely hits me with the realization that I'm on the other side of the planet far away from home, and that I'm stranger in a really strange land.
Like I said before, the sounds of gunfire is also a pretty common thing to hear coming from the city at night. Every now and then you'll also witness a burst of green tracers being fired up into the air. It's no big deal when it happens. After awhile here it becomes one of those things that you just accept as a "normal" about this place, and think nothing of it.
Another thing I remembered about Los Angeles, was on New Years Eve once, I was walking back home from the hidden bars tucked away in the Los Feliz hood of LA, completely inebriated, and I looked out over to the East Los sector of Los Angeles and I remember seeing celebratory gunshots being fired up in the air. The Iraqi's do the same mindless thing here too, but its every f**king night here. Religious holidays, Muhammad birthday, Saddams, birthday, weddings, job promotions, or just for the hell of it, they celebrate by firing a burst of AK47 rounds in the air. Well, tonight I was just chilling up in the tower, lighting another cigarette with the lit end of the cigarette I just consumed, when all the sudden the sounds of gunshots we're being fired from all over the city. Like everywhere. Far and near, left and right, over here and over there. I was like, holy sh*t what the f**k is going on tonight?!?! Is this like a signal for the start of some kind of all out fight to the death holy jihad on US Coalition Forces or something?
Bang, bang, bang, bang. So I started counting all the shots I heard fired: one, two, three, four, five, six... finally after a couple minutes the shooting silently dissipated. I was unable to count every single gunshot I heard fired, some overlapped each other, but the final tally that I came up with was 67 shots heard fired. I remember awhile ago I was up in a guard tower when it was some Islamic holiday here, like Mohammed's birthday or some sh*t like that, and there wasn't nearly as many celabratory gunshots fired up in the air that night as there was tonight. So I wondered to myself what the f**k was going on tonight to have all these shots fired all at once? Then, down by the bottom of my tower, a vehicle rolled up and the TC stuck his head out of hatch and yelled up to me, "Hey, I just heard over the radio that Iraq is up! One to nothing!"
Holy sh*t, that's right. The Olympic soccer games are going on, and these people here are just as fanatical, if not more so, for their soccer team, than they are for their religion. Strange, very strange.
stay tuned. Story still developing...
The National Endowment for the Arts has a great program available right now called: Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, I encourage everybody to check out the site and be a part of this. I've known of this program for awhile now, but never considered submitting my personal written accounts of this war to them, thinking there's no way in hell they'd consider my stuff. But then I recieved an e-mail from the people involved with that program saying that some of you have been e-mailing them alerting them about my this website and of my writting , and they also said that they were interested in me submiting some of my work for consideration to the project. I would like to thank everybody who did that, sent them an e-mail. Way cool of you guys to do that. Tango Mike.
ping
I have been on countless "fire watches" for the Navy. It is the longest 4 hours you will spend in your life.
BTTT
Good post, right on the money. Gives a good picture of Iraq
Did you just fix your pics of unit patches? First all, except one, were all "x boxed" out. Now I see them.
The author of the article is making more grammatical errors and reminding me of why I switched to menthol cigarettes. He's taking me back in time!
Did you drink grape soda and part your hair down the middle?
Interesting story. its amazing how into certin sports (especially soccer) countries get, and how idiotic people are who shoot up in the air. guess they don't realize the bullets come back down.
by the way, the first quote by "blood for blood", do they mean the band, or somthing else?
I was pulling fire watch in cinder block billets with sparky gas heaters at Camp Shelby, Mississippi before I came on active duty. Nothing to do but slap yourself aroud and listen to people fart and snore.
That's a good guess. CB is into music. I am not of his generation and never heard of Blood For Blood. My resident 16-year old advises me he hasn't either.
BTTT
I drank anything considered potable.
What about the pics? Did you make a correction. I'm still learning about HTML and trying to figure what's going on with intended pics being "x boxed" as I'm trying to describe them.
I can see the brigade insignia pics. I have no idea why you can't. There have been a few times today when I posted a pic, looked at the post, saw the red x, re-posted, and had two pics. I am no wiz at HTML, either. Miss just one > or " and you get the red x.
I assume you didn't make any corrections. Is that correct?
Correct.
Last fire watch I was on was during Basic and AIT.
Bad enough that even the crickets were bashing their heads into the wall.
Years later I dug them out from where my folks had saved them. Man was I one boring dude. It was more boring listening to it 20 years later as it was then. Mind-numbing boredom occasionally interrupted by firing a burst at something that may have been something. I didn't smoke so it was just that much worse.
Welcome household6.
I counted cinder blocks to pass the time. What a total waste of time.
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