One Marine’s Afghanistan Story

An interesting read from a Recon Marine in Afghanistan ; an insider's view of what is really going on.

This Marine is articulate, has a flare for colorful language and descriptive prose regarding scorpions, chiggers and sand fleas:

"It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains , along the Dar'yoi Pamir River, watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave.

Stake-out, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles. I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting.

I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard.

The antidote tastes like transmission fluid, but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.

The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water.

That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy.

I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the hand held, and shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware.

We bash some heads for a while, and then I track and record the new movement. It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet.

These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and...

I was Long Range Recon, and here’s an excerpt from one of my Vietnam remembrances:

We halted and went into a hasty defensive perimeter while we observed the stream for enemy activity. After I had observed across, up, and down the stream long enough to be fairly certain it was free of enemy activity, I sent the point man across. The point man slid down the bank into the water, rapidly crossed the stream, and as soon as he reached the wood line fifteen feet from the water’s edge on the opposite side of the stream, he dropped down and took up a security position straight ahead at twelve o’clock. As soon as the point man had dropped into position, without any prompting my LLDB counterpart slid down the bank, rapidly crossed the stream and dropped down into the ferns between the water’s edge and the wood line to take up a security position facing nine o’clock and down stream. I was glad to see the LLDB had not become so deep into the dry hole syndrome that they would goof off in a danger area, as I slid down the bank, rapidly crossed the stream, and dropped into my security position facing three o’clock and up stream. Then nothing further happened.

As soon as I had dropped into my position, Grit was to slide down the bank, rapidly cross the stream and take up a position providing security immediately behind me and facing five o’clock. Right behind Grit would come the assistant tail gunner who would take up a position to Grit’s right and provide security at seven o’clock. The tail gunner was to cross the stream, not stop but continue straight through the formation, take over as point man and continue forward. The assistant tail gunner would rise up from his seven o’clock position and follow the tail gunner, now to become the assistant point man. I would rise from my three o’clock position and follow behind the new assistant point man with Grit rising and following right behind me. My LLDB counterpart and the previous point man would rise and follow behind Grit until we had moved a safe distance from the danger area then we would halt and reform in our regular movement order. Our danger area SOP was intended to move us through the danger area as quickly and securely as possible, and the stream crossing shouldn’t have taken us much more than sixty seconds. But Grit had not followed immediately behind me, and I lay there wondering why.

Out of my right side peripheral vision, I could see the opposite bank where I expected to see Grit slide down into the stream, then move across the stream and drop down behind me. But after lying there for several minutes there was no movement on the opposite bank, and I was becoming angrier and angrier the longer I lay there. What were they doing over there, taking a chow break or a nap? How could they have become so lax in their dry hole syndrome they would goof off in a danger area? But what had really irritated me was I thought Grit was now goofing off along with the LLDB.

To make matters worse, I was lying on top of a mound of wet ground about three feet above the stream on my right, and on my left was a small three feet deep gully holding about six inches of stagnant water in its bottom, and the entire area was infested with land leeches. Land leeches didn’t live in the water, they lived on the damp ground near water, and like all leeches they lived on blood they sucked from passing animals. Land leeches were about the same size, color, shape and consistency of night crawlers or earthworms, and they moved like an inchworm moved by humping their backs straight up then pushing their heads forward. Land leeches sensed their prey by seismic vibrations in the soil that telegraphed the presence of their next meal. I could see several leeches inching their way toward me from the front, had to assume there were more approaching from my rear and both sides to say nothing of the ones I had dropped down on top of. If Grit and the two LLDB on the opposite bank had followed the SOP instead of whatever they were doing, I would have only lain there for ten or fifteen seconds before I was up and moving again and the leeches wouldn’t have been a problem. But as it was, I’d soon be covered from head to toe by those leeches, and it was only because Grit and those two LLDB on the opposite bank had decided to take a chow break, a nap, or whatever the hell they were doing instead of following the SOP. And I asked myself again, “Where in the hell was Grit?”

Land leeches couldn’t penetrate your clothing to get to you; they had to crawl through your boot blouse, your fly, your beltline, your shirtfront, or your collar to get to your bare skin. Before we infiltrated, we would always apply a heavy application of leech repellant to those areas of our uniform where leeches could penetrate, but it would wash off after several days in the rain, and it had rained on us every day so far. After a land leech gained access to your bare skin, they would apply a strong natural analgesic to deaden the pain, and then they would shove their heads deep into you and gorge themselves on your blood. A land leech the diameter of matchstick when it crawled onto you would quickly grow to the thickness of your thumb. The slightest pressure on one of the little gluttons would cause them to explode leaving a large splotch of blood on your uniform as if you had been shot, but that would kill the leech and that, in its self, was a problem. When a leech got on you, and fed, you had to make it pull its head out before you killed it or its head would remain forever inside you. To this day, you can tell who was a Project Delta recon man, and who wasn’t, by the number of still visible leech cysts around his belt line. A spot of insect repellant or a lit cigarette would usually cause a leech to pull its head out and un-attach its self from you, and I asked myself again, “Where in the hell was Grit?

I could now feel leeches crawling down my collar, but my SOP didn’t permit picking land leeches while inside a danger area, so I just lay there. Water leeches weren’t that bad. You only got them on you when you were in the water, and when you got out of the water you picked them off and you were done with it, but a damned land leech would follow you home and crawl in bed with you. Given a choice, a recon team would never RON in a wet area infested with land leeches, but sometimes we had no choice in the matter and would have to spend the night picking leeches off one another.

One of the nastiest wounds I observed during the war was when one night in our RON a land leech crawled into an LLDB’s ear while he slept. The leech had probably stuck its head through the man’s eardrum and was sucking his brain fluid when he awoke screaming, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A fellow LLDB, in an effort to help him, squirted insect repellent into his ear to make the leech let go. Everyone must remember the insect repellent that was a clear liquid, came in a small white plastic squeeze bottle and was so strong it would melt your watch crystal if you got some on it. The insect repellent dissolved the leech in his ear, probably dissolved the man’s eardrum and was eating its way through his brain in a very short time. I gave the man one syrette of Morphine and he still continued to scream, the second syrette had no effect, and I knew the third would either knock him out or kill him thereby putting him out of his misery, so I went ahead and gave it to him. The third syrette knocked him out and kept him out until the next morning when we could medevac him, and I asked myself again, “Where in the hell was Grit?”

Finally, there was movement on the opposite stream bank. In my peripheral vision and through the thin screening of ferns, I saw Grit slide down the opposite bank, slowly walk to the middle of the stream about ten feet from me, stop, take out his canteen, bend over and start to fill it. That in its self pissed me off, but when the two LLDB slid down the bank together, walked over to Grit, stopped and also began to fill their canteens in the middle of the stream it was more than I could stand, and I intended to chew their asses right there in the middle of the stream.

I raised up on my forearms, turned my head so I could clearly see them and said in a rather loud voice, “Hey!” and that was as far as I got with their ass chewing. I was looking into the startled faces of three NVA soldiers as they dropped their canteens and went for the AK-47s slung around their necks. A very hasty “fight or flight” decision had to be made and I selected flight, as there was no way I could have swung my CAR-15 through 45 degrees of ferns and engage them before they raised their AK-47s up to engage me. I might have beaten one of the three, but one out of three just wasn’t good enough at that range, so I rolled over and fell into the gully on my left as the top of the mound I had been lying on exploded from the impact of a hail of bullets that flung mud, dirt, and debris all over me. I brought my CAR-15 up to engage them when they came over the mound, but they never did. Bullets continued to strike the top of the mound and beyond, and two grenades went off in the stream. Then there was the usual silence that came after a firefight when the only sound to be heard was the crying and moaning of the dying and the wounded.

The complete remembrance can be found at:
http://www.projectdelta.net/dry_hole.htm

http://www.projectdelta.net/index.html

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