From the Soldier side: I know a lot of civilian cops in the US will not get the chance to do or see some of the wonderful things I did on my 2 Army National Guard deployments….which might be a good thing. I’m pretty sure that if I wasn’t already a little crazy before, I surly would have become so after.
If you work in a big city police department, then you might have delt with some crazy shit…even some small departments have an unusual number of “W.S.” (Weird Shit) calls. But, some of the W.S. I saw on my deployments and some of the shit that happened to me…just makes normal everyday cop stuff seem easy.
When I was in Bosnia, for example, I had become a somewhat regular visitor to some of the Police Stations in my A.O. (Area of Operations). Those cops got used to me drinking coffee with them and having little chats. I guess they became very comfortable with me.
Now, keep in mind, at the time I was in Bosnia, I had been a civilian copper in California for about 25 years--- so I thought I’d already seen a lot of shit.
One day, I walked into the police station in a small city (of about 16,000 people) in Bosnia. As I walked in the front door with my “Terp” and partner…the desk officer sees me. He smiles and says: “Dobra dan” (Good day) and tells me he has something for me.
The desk cop steps into a back room and returns with a grocery bag. I’m looking the bag and I think maybe it’s bag of apples or something good to eat. He hands me the grocery bag without saying anything else.
I take the bag and realize it’s pretty heavy. I set it down on the floor and look inside--- expecting to see some apples or something good. But to even my surprise I see a bag full of fragmentary hand grenades.
Now, if we’d been in an armored vehicle, I might have taken them back with us…but we were in a 1989 VW Passat Station Wagon and in civilian clothes. Half the grenades were rusty and some looked like the pins were going to fall out any minute.
I made one of the better decisions of my entire military career and told the nice Bosnian cop: “No, I think we’ll leave these here for EOD to pick up on Monday…how’s that sound to you?”
These guys were so used to death and war and the devices that make killing easy, that it didn't mean much to them. Could you see somebody bring a bag of grenades into your local police department in the US? People would freak out. For these Bosnian cops it was no big deal.
----Yep, shit like that makes police work seem kind of easy.
6 comments:
1. Can't think of anywhere I've been where a sack full of grenades wouldn't be a big deal.
2. Most definitely would have been squawking for EOD.
3. On a little island in the Pacific, my troops found a cave stacked with Japanese mortar rounds.
4. Went to inspect the find and saw contents leaking out of the casings.
5. Turned my flashlight off, walked out and made it clear to the young Marines that the stuff in the cave was sensitive enough that it was just luck my unsealed flashlight didn't set it off.
6. Reported it to the engineer unit we were supporting.
7. Whatever was done about it was done after we rotated out.
8. Unscheduled meetings with ordnance were something that would always raise up the hair on the back of my neck.
V/R JWest
It would have been funny as hell if someone behind you had popped a blown up paper bag about the time you looke in the bag. HAHAHHA...what? Same to ya, Dude.
JW, Yep, a bag of bombs would scare anybody. I know enough to respect anything that explodes!!!
CP, I would have been the guy behind somebody else yelling "BOOM!" but the guy behind me was scared shitless and couldn't think that fast.
"I would have been the guy behind somebody else yelling "BOOM!"
And this my friend is why I adore reading your posts [not quite as happy about having to clean the cola off the monitor now but it's the price for good humour I guess]
:)
Pax
Ummm, We used to find the occasional odd piece of ordnance in the mailbox of my first National Guard unit; in Klamath Falls, Oregon. People just seemed to thing the Guard would take care of it......
Then, up in Seaside, near Astoria, we'd get calls from the local police department about old ordnance that people brought in to them. (Old impact areas from WW II)
So, it does happen here, just not to the same extent.
Dennis,
Yep, over the years as a cop, I got a lot of old military crap handed to me because "hey, you're a combat engineer, you know what to do with this shit."
Post a Comment