Posted on 11/05/2023 10:26:22 AM PST by Mariner
When then-Lance Cpl. Javier Ortiz came home from a secret mission in Syria, the ghost of a dead girl appeared to him in his kitchen. She was pale and covered in chalky dust, as if hit by an explosion, and her eyes stared at him with a glare as dark and heavy as oil.
The 21-year-old Marine was part of an artillery gun crew that fought against the Islamic State group, and he knew that his unit’s huge cannons had killed hundreds of enemy fighters. The ghost, he was sure, was their revenge.
A shiver went through him. He backed into another room in his apartment near Camp Pendleton in California and flicked on the lights, certain that he was imagining things. She was still there.
A few days later, in the barracks not far away, a 22-year-old Marine, Lance Cpl. Austin Powell, pounded on his neighbor’s door in tears and stammered, “There’s something in my room! I’m hearing something in my room!”
His neighbor, Lance Cpl. Brady Zipoy, 20, searched the room but found nothing.
“It’s all right; I’ve been having problems, too,” Zipoy said, tapping his head. The day before, he bent down to tie his boots and was floored by a sudden avalanche of emotion so overwhelming and bizarre that he had no words for it. “We’ll go see the doc,” he told his friend. “We’ll get help.”
All through their unit — Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines — troops came home feeling cursed. And the same thing was happening in other Marine and Army artillery units.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
But they eventually do.
I can only imagine the “shock wave” impact of thousands of large rounds being fired over a short time. That has shake your head a bit.
It’s the NYT. They’re trying to scare/intimidate/shame the IDF who are currently trying to obliterate Hamas. Think about the timing.
The entire account is quite possibly fictional.
It’s how the NYT does business.
Scoff at it and it’s no-win.
I can only imagine the “shock wave” impact of thousands of large rounds being fired over a short time. That has shake your head a bit.
Around 2000 I was taking a martial arts class with an Army veteran who was either in Vietnam, or had enlisted some time in the 70’s. I can’t remember what his MOS was, but I do remember him mentioning something about firing the old .50 machine guns. “Ma Deuce” Somehow we got to talking about hearing loss, and he brought up some issued he had with his hearing, and the long term effects of firing a .50 M2. My 20 year old self respectfully asked him if he was using earpro, which he was, but he pointed out that the concussion of firing that thing, combined with actually jostling his entire body to include his head had all kinds of effects on his hearing. The machine gun was shaking up the small bones in his ears.
Yep. See Tagline.
But the focus here is upon a certain class:
The only thing remarkable about their deployments was the sheer number of artillery rounds they had fired. The United States had made a strategic decision to avoid sending large numbers of ground troops to fight the Islamic State, and instead relied on airstrikes and a handful of powerful artillery batteries to, as one retired general said at the time, “pound the bejesus out of them.” The strategy worked: Islamic State positions were all but eradicated, and hardly any U.S. troops were killed. But it meant that a small number of troops had to fire tens of thousands of high-explosive shells — far more rounds per crew member, experts say, than any U.S. artillery battery had fired at least since the Vietnam War. Military guidelines say that firing all those rounds is safe. What happened to the crews suggests that those guidelines were wrong. The cannon blasts were strong enough to hurl a 100-pound round 15 miles, and each unleashed a shock wave that shot through the crew members’ bodies, vibrating bone, punching lungs and hearts, and whipping at cruise-missile speeds through the most delicate organ of all: the brain.
The NYT is talking about a ghost visiting an American soldier in his kitchen back home?
LOL. All the ghouls that’s fit to print...
Veterans who served in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos during the Vietnam War have a higher prevalence of mental health issues, particularly PTSD, compared with both other Vietnam-era Veterans and non-Veterans, according to an analysis of data from the Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS).Mar 17, 2022.
Throw agent Orange issues into the above to really make being a Nam Combat Vet suffering life long and unresolved issues.
There are many good comments on this post. But for me the bottom line is that we have no business having troops in Syria. None at all.
Years ago I attended an exhibition given by a Japanese karate master. He went over many defensive moves. Then he said the best defensive move of all is “not to be there”.
I wouldn’t say that’s true 100% of the time. But it’s true most of the time.
As Carlin said, "If we still called it 'shell shock' they might have gotten the help they needed at the time."
Back in the 80s when I was tanker, we were doing some shared range time at Grafenwøhr with some German tankers. One of the germans was walking around with a jump about every 3rd step. The guys in his unit said that he was walking between tanks during a stationary night gunnery and had been about 15 feet from a main gun when it went off in the pitch darkness next to him. Shook him up quite a bit.
Do you perhaps mean Grafenwöhr?
Regards,
Sorry, I didn’t make my point well.
I wasn’t saying that a man who’s been in battle can’t see a ghost.
My point was that the New York Times is suddenly able to write about, and treat, a supernatural occurrence as a real event. They usually scoff at such things, particularly as they relate to those who believe in God.
There’s a spiritual aspect to all this. Demonic oppression is real. All military need the protection of Jesus Christ. I’ve been to places on deployment where you could feel the oppression. Without the covering of Jesus that stuff can follow you home.
Walter Duranty, NYT liar, moved to the Soviet Union.
Will Dave Philipps and Matthew Callahan be moving to Syria soon?
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