My War Story! part III

As I had stated before, we were in a very arid valley, surrounding us was desert landscape and barren mountains. For the most part, it was 115+ F. during the day and 80ish at night. To us this was freezing!

The most important part of this whole story would be the fact that it had not rained there in over 10 years!

As I said before in "My War Story: part II" this town would fall, come hell or high water!

Water is what God chose to give us.

Part III

The sun was setting, and the engines were running. The cool air was setting in, and it was all quiet along the screen line. We were waiting for the word: Go.

Then... Boom! Followed by more, lighting. Then the cloud cover drifted over us and the bottom fell out. The order came down: mission would be pushed back a day. The mud would stick the vehicles. The lightning got so bad we had to turn off the radios to prevent the lightning from striking our antennas.

It was quiet that night. I thought it to be one last gift from God to sleep in the rain, my favorite thing to do. Nothing beats the smell of rain in the desert, but we were all baffled by the rain. It never rains in this place, and there was none predicted. This really came out of nowhere.

The next day went without notice. It was time again, and the rain was gone. The word came, "Go". The sight was amazing. To see 60+ vehicles begin a movement to the objective. We were spread out as far as the eye could see, on line moving into a column.

As soon as the sun set you could see in the distance the air strikes taking place. Bright lights would flash in the mountains followed by the echoes of rumbling. This sent fear and terror into the hearts of these villains. It was nice to know they wouldn't sleep tonight as we drove to deliver their judgment.

Then, sometime in the middle of the night, it started to sprinkle again. The cold set in. My rifle was so cold, it hurt to touch. I couldn't feel my fingers, and the wind from driving was shooting a chill to my bones. This is when a helicopter contacted us on the radio to inform us that we just drove over an IED. He could see it because our tire had un-earthed it, making it visible to thermal optics. Then the next LAV hit it, and the next. We all kept driving over more and more. We drove over all of them. They didn't explode! We kept asking ourselves, how are we still alive?

The next call came in from the helicopter, "I've got a guy squatting on a hillside, frantically trying to detonate a trigger device." That's when the answer came. The rain. Since it hadn't rained in 10 years the Taliban never water-proofed the wires, there was no need to. The rain had short circuited all of the IEDs!

Don't worry about the guy on the hill, he found his 77 virgins.

In astonishment, we all kept driving towards the target. Not one IED went off that night, not even the minefield. The air took out any enemy mortar positions, and we never encountered machine gun fire. It was amazing! When the IEDs didn't stop us, the enemy lost the will to fight. At least until we rolled into town.

God gave us a gift. It wasn't our time. It was as simple as that. To this day, I don't know what for. I have never earned his love, his protection. I am not a good man, nor am I significant in the scheme of his grand design. Nevertheless, he spared me. This was a realization of all the Marines around me. To this day we will all tell you it was divine intervention.

The rest of the story goes off without a hitch. We showed up, and as expected, encountered immediate gun fire. Red platoon jumped to the assault and persecuted the threat while a breacher team went to work on a defused minefield.

As my vehicle rolled into this soon-to-be cemetery, a warthog strafed the town, and bunkers went up into a beautiful ball of fire. I had received a front row ticket to the biggest fireworks show in town, and a show it was!

For the next 40+ hours we laid waste to sections of this town with only a close call or two.

(A special thanks to you Cpl Ginther, for your superb gunner skills, and cat-like reflexes. You know why! I trusted no one more than you to keep our vehicle safe with your 25mm Bushmaster!)

Throughout the hours, more and more Taliban started to show up in the distance but would not dare enter our city. We owned that town!

The mission was done, and the word came to pull out. That in itself was a close call. Our engine went out, and we stopped in tall grass. We couldn't see more that three feet in any direction, and the Taliban reinforcements began to trickle into the area. Thanks to Lcpl Keehner's desperate actions, we got that vehicle out of the area.

It was over. We drove back to the start point and had a celebration. The mission was succesful, we had captured a year supply of IED making materials, ammo, left our mark, and didn't take a single casualty in the battalion. The next morning we made the two-day trip back to base, and I was on a plane in a week heading home.

I had survived a promised death because God made it known that my days were not out.

Therefore, my promise from that day was when this story is told that the rain would be the center of it. The battle itself was just another mission, no different from any other. To this day, I will always see a rainy day as my gift, and it will always bring me back to that night. The night that we were ready to die.

May God continue to bless the Marines that worked diligently, courageously, and without hesitation. Keep them safe, were ever they may be tonight.

To the warriors of second platoon: thank you for your action.