Big Guns, Bigger Guns, and Christmas Cheer in Afghanistan

 

    Took me awhile to update, but so far the Internet is still going strong. I am still trying to catch up on some of the things that I never got a chance to post when the Internet was still down. I scratched some of the less interesting things but I thought I would include our self-induced firefights.

    It all started after soon after I woke up hearing repeating shots coming from the helopad area. I was hearing them all morning and wanted to find out why. I could tell it wasn’t the usual M4 sound so I was curious as to who, or what was shooting. I never miss a chance to shoot whenever I can get the time, clearance, or rounds to do so. Turns out that (nameless) was zeroing his .45. And being the great shot that he is, didn’t need very many rounds to do it, leaving some for me. I have only ever gotten the chance to shoot a handgun before once, and it wasn’t very impressive. (nameless) was a much better teacher then my buddy Meadows was at the gun store in the back of the local pawnshop. I love learning stuff like this that is practical, but only from people who know what they are teaching and how to pass it on.

 

  

   After about 10 minutes of instruction before I ever fired a round, something that would normally bored me to the point of disinterest, I was ready to put holes in stuff. With all the stuff that (nameless) showed me the entire thing seemed much more practical. When I was a Jim’s Pawn Shop, I would aim for the guy in the poster and be happy if I hit him. Now I would be aiming at his nose, and hitting his face instead. Aim small, miss small.(Line from Patriot that I get finally understand)

 

 

    This was my target holder, I tried to set it up as close as possible to something that you would see at a carnival, I think I did a pretty good job. Now I just had to hit them. These are big targets at usual .45 range but if you look at the last picture of the last post you can see how far away we were shooting from. This range is like in the movies when the guy is running away and you shoot him in the leg, except for the running part…and the leg part.

 

 

    Turns out that I am a pretty decent shot post-training. Now I just have to get a gun, get a badge, and have a bad guy try and run away. After the fun we had with the .45, we decided that this week would officially be weapons familiarization week. With things around here kinda slow for Thanksgiving, we set aside two days to shoot almost every weapon that the SF team here has. Something that would justify the entire trip to Afghanistan in my eyes. To shoot weapons other then our M4s and handguns we have to leave the base and go over to the heavy range…armed to the teeth. This involves not only big guns….but four wheelers!

 

 

    We rolled out of the gate with our 4 man, heavily armed four wheeler convoy. I have never felt more like a badass in m entire life. We drove around the heavy weapon range checking for threats before we setup. All of the sudden we were ambushed by a group of three or four paper targets bent on our destruction with no concern for their own safety.

 

 

    You could see in there eyes that this was a serious situation. These paper targets meant business and it was a well planned and executed ambush. We backed off about 400 yards and fought back with everything we had.

INCLUDING….

 

 

  The resident badass of the sniper inventory. The .50 cal sniper rifle. If someone were to jump behind a brick wall in a firefight, this baby with blow a softball sized hole in the wall, them, and the two walls behind them. With this, you can miss someone by over a foot and still kill them with the force it creates while it roars by. The bullets below help demonstrate my point. The ones on the right are the big boys, the .50 cals bullets make them look like slingshot pellets.

 

 

    One thing that you do not want to do when you fire the .50…is forget to put your left earplug in. That was the mistake that I made. When you fire it, you feel an immediate pain in your shoulder and slide back about six inches. All the dust around you kicks up and the little weeds on the ground sway forward like trees in a nuclear blast. When you forget a earplug it feels like someone just jabbed you in the ear with a pencil. The link below is to the video of me shooting it. Notice the scrambled look on my face when I stand up. I am not sure that I knew where I was. I thought someone shot me in the ear for awhile.
http://box.net/public/MyersAndrew22/files/1771850.html

This one is me shooting a silenced fully automatic M4. For anyone that has seen movies where guys rip off rounds at someone with a full automatic weapon and they all hit there mark. Let this video be proof that that is not how it works. I am an expert with the M4…at least I qualified expert on the range. But watch the front of the weapon on automatic. After the first round, the other ones go wherever they want. Definitely NOT at the target. This is part of the US advantage in a firefight because the enemy almost always fires back with a fully automatic burst. Wasting ammo and missing targets.
http://box.net/public/MyersAndrew22/files/1771851.html

 

 This was the leader of the paper target ambush. Intelligence says he was the one that planned it. He got what he deserved. Notice the different sized holes. None of them were the .50 cal. The big ones were the bullets in the other can next to the .50 rounds, and the little ones were M4 rounds. Not bad from 400 yards… he never had a chance.

That is what he gets for ambushing us with a pistol.

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    I can’t belive that Christmas is less then a week away. Bummer. I had planned on taking a picture to use as a Christmas card but since Kinkos online has a screwed up website that produces web errors instead of pictures when you try and design your card, I scratched that idea. None of the pictures turned out the way I wanted anyhow, I was hoping for snow, enough to make a 10 foot snowman in fact, but instead we got none so far. Anyway, since most of my family checks my Xanga, sorry about not getting you a card, here they are though…feel free to print them out and make a card. Just pick out your favorite one.

 

Merry Christmas to everyone there from everyone here.

Thanksgiving Dinner, Turkey bowl Football, and an Early Christmas in Afghanistan

   

Online again…

    Apparently the Internet is a much more shaky entity then I had realized. But without the Internet we found new ways to fill the day, many of them probably much more productive then what we would have done online. Still haven’t put much of a dent on the small library of books that I had sent here. I returned online to find almost 300 emails, most of which were junk, apparently while I was gone my account made then official switch to a mostly junk mail account. I turn 23 in a few weeks, maybe a switch to MyersAndrew23@hotmail.com is in order.

  

 Starting at thanksgiving…

If you build it, they will come.

 

   “Football on the rocks” was retired by the command after a number of significant injuries, and thus began planning for “football on the field”. The field in question is pictured above, a lumpy plot of dirt and pricker bushes. We weren’t planning on trading rocks for pricker bushes, and that is where our small army of local workers came into play…”If they build it…we will come”

 

 

   I think I have said before and will say again, never underestimate the will of bored men to entertain themselves. Not only do we get a football field, but the workers get paid about like thieves for scratching at the dirt for a few days. Then, just in time for the thanksgiving, the “Turkey Bowl” field was finally cleared off and the sandbags marking ten yards were painted and everything was in order for Thanksgiving. We had a battle royal with 3 teams and a weird form of round robin tournament to decide the winner. I have tons of stories but I do not have the energy to type them out right now, and I have tons of hilarious pictures from the day but almost all of them were not cleared to be shown on the site. So all I have is this.

 

(trust me it was fun)

 

   After the games we all stumbled on sore legs back to the chow hall for Thanksgiving dinner. We had two huge hams and two tiny turkeys the size of chickens, amongst other random fixings. I missed the rush at the poor undersized turkeys and was perfectly happy with some ham and a nap for thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving I was thankful to be here with the SF where noone tried to pretend that all was great and have a real Thanksgiving party like they did at some of the bigger bases. We all just went about our day and then took turns calling home to talk to family and enjoy Thanksgiving via the voices in the background on the phone. I hope I will be as lucky for Christmas next month. I do not know if I could stomach a gift exchange in Khandahar, comprised entirely of things bought from the PX or some SGT Major with a Santa costume on scaring all the locals.

   

    Shortly after thanksgiving we had another flight make the trip out here with mail, and suddenly it felt more like Christmas.

    Pretty much everyone got their Christmas rush on the same day, the ground was littered with stockings,  little plastic Christmas trees, candy, and everything else that comes with Christmas morning except for shredded wrapping paper and toys. Of course Kitty still got toys, along with enough treats to live off of. It seemed like every who got a package had gotten something for Kitty in it.

 

 

    That is all the energy I have for this post, I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on so look for more posts in the near future, sorry for the lack of enthusiasm in this post, it has been awhile since I typed anything and I am still intimidated by the idea of responding to all the comments I got while the Internet was down. Thanks to everyone who kept checking in while I was away and leaving comments. If it weren’t for you I probably would have put a close on my Xanga when I got back on. Hopefully I give you something better to read soon.  -Emerstan

 

 

(next time)