From the Soldier side: One morning 11
years ago, I was doing my morning workout.
I had just finished one set and was getting ready to start the next and
catching my breath. The phone rang. Normally I don’t answer it when I’m working
out…figured they could leave
message. But for some reason I
answered it.
“Hey, turn on the TV NOW!”
I did and watched as the first tower of
the World Trade center was on fire. I
was a little confused…then the second plane hit the other tower. I knew a few things at that moment.
1.)
It was not an airplane accident, but a terrorist
attack. This was simple to figure out.
2.)
I knew with the new job I was training for in the
California Army National Guard that I would be going places.
But my world didn’t change much….at
first. Since I had just changed jobs in
the National Guard (MOS) from Combat Engineer to Mess Kit Repair, I was still
in training. In the National Guard if
you change your job, you usually go through an abbreviated MOS school –cut down
to 2 weeks instead of 8. However, for
Mess Kit Repair, I had two choices on how I went to school…the first choice was
to just take the full 18 week school at some fort in Arizona. The second choice, the one I picked, was to
take the course spread out over 2 years.
One weekend each month doing the training locally and 2-two week
sessions at some fort in Arizona.
I had just started my new school…and
wondered if they’d just cancel it and deploy us right away.
They didn’t cancel the school, but they
did take almost everybody in my new unit that was MOS qualified and sent them
off to a few places- Fort Lewis, WA, Afghanistan, or Gitmo, Cuba. I figured I’d “lucked out” again and missed
another war. (I was in West Berlin when
Viet Nam ended, I missed a few little things in central American and I missed
the Gulf War…so I thought I was lucky and was going to miss this little thing
in Afghanistan…figured it’d all be over in a few months.
Late Dec 2002. We were all ordered into the unit one Friday
night and start filling out paper work and reviewing our personal data. –then nothing happened.
Jan 2003- A bunch of us who had just
earned our new MOS were sent to Camp Roberts, CA to train with another unit
getting ready for possible deployement to Iraq.
--then nothing happened….
Feb 2003- A bunch of us were sent to
train with the 34th I.D. “Red Bulls” in Minnesota for preparation for
Bosnia. Then things started to happen…from that point on until we deployed to
Bosnia it seemed we were doing training about every weekend. Most of it was off the wall stuff the some
knuckelheads made up that had nothing to do with our actual mission in Bosnia…some
of the knuckelheads even thought they spoke Arabic in Bosnia. That was funny.
I re-enlisted for 6 more years while many others let there enlistment expire and a few officers resigned.
Then around May-ish 2003 we were put on
Active duty orders and gone for 9 months.
3 months after we returned from Bosnia,
we were back at Camp Roberts, CA going through more prep for Iraq. When we got to the end of the line after
about 4 days of paper pushing, we were all asked if we’d deployed in the last
year. We all said: “we just got back
from Bosnia.”
Then they asked if we wanted to deploy
again. We all said: “do we look like
retards? Hell no.”
But I went anyway.
So, because of them assholes who crashed
them planes on 9-11 eleven years ago, I spent 2 years of my life on
deployments. If I had to do it all over
again, I’d go again….just for the chance to do my own Jihad on some camel
smellin’ terrorist.
It’s one thing to kill a soldier; it’s
another to kill innocent civilians for no reason.
5 comments:
True, I tried to go back in myself, but they wouldn't let me...
You want to get rid of them, secretly infect their goats and mules with some kind of std. Half the country will be wiped out in 6 months.
Oh my, Coffeypot. LOL
I think all of us will forever remember where we were and what we were doing. We will also be more alert.
Thanks for doing all that!!
Some of my friends I went to Bosnia and Iraq with have done 3 or 4 deploymnets as of this time.
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