8910012's blog: "My Night Mares"

I keep having several recuring night mares. I am not sure if I should even talk about them for fear of what people might think of me.  But if someone thinks bad of me then oh well. In November of 2003 I was stantioned at Taji, Iraq with the 82nd AireBorn.  I was a M2 50 gunner in my chalk.  On that day my Vic got choosen to be the rabbit truck.  For the ones that have no clue what I am talking about as in rabbit truck. It is the truck that runs up front of the chalk about 175 to 200 meters.  We were the ones that looked for IED's or took the small arms fire.  On that day around 1300 we found our selfs just north of Bagdad.  We turned down route Irish just off route Sword and we started taking small arms fire from our 3 o'clock.  All of a sudden my TC come across the radio yelling RPG 12:00 o'clock I swing my 50 around and all I can see is a little boy around the age of 9 or 10 holding an RPG pointed right at us.  I fired my 50 with a quick burst of around 3 to 4 rounds hitting the little boy.  I have never been so scared in my life and it just happened so fast.  I have not told very many people about what happend that day because I feared that I would be called a baby killer or people would say all we did is kill kids in Iraq which is not true.  About a week after that even my chalk was back out and I decided that my Vic would always run rabbit that away no other gunner had to go threw that kind of thing.  We got a brand new 2nd LT. and he wanted to go out with us because he had never been outside the wire much less seen any kind of combat. What he didn't know is that he would not be coming back alive that day.  I run up route Tampa going North up to Numanie which was a town just East of route Tampa.  We had been their before and always to sniper fire from the roof tops of buildings because you had to drive right down the middle of town to get to the Romanien base on the other side. The LT. asked if he could gun as we went North on Tampa and I didn't see any harm in it. I mean its just open high way up threw their.  Don't get me wrong their were alot of IED's still their.  But thats for another blog lol.  But anyways.  I told the LT. that when we get into the town to get down and close the hatch on the hummvee because we alway took small arms sniper fire from the roof tops and that he was not ready to be trying to return fire with a 50 cal. machine gun.  When I told him to get down he told me know and that I could not tell him what to do because he out ranked me and that he was an officer and as an enlisted I had no right to tell him what to do.  After the secound time of me telling him to get down his knees buckled and he fell in my lap.  He had took a round from an AK-47 no the left side of his neck and was bleeding out in my lap.  I put pressure on it to try and slow the bleeding but it wasn't slowing.  I put my clot pad on his neck and it still didn't slow the blood down.  All I could do is just sit their and watch his life leave his body.  Their are several more things I could tell you about my deployments in combat. but I'm not sure that you want to sit their and read a 50 page blog. More to come soon.