,,After Action"
Numbered pencils on Bristol Paper
October 2008


||Edit Nov 09: Wohoo! This piece won the prismacolor national contest! Visit the competition here -> [link] I'm super stoked!! ||


Hokay..... short version, the aftermath of a firefight in iraq summer before last.

Long version:

That day was sort of a microcosm of the stupidity and pointlessness of our involvement in the middle east. In Iraq I was in the heavy weapons section of a light infantry unit; assuming that you dont speak army-ease, our unit was airborne, so we carried everything with us (ie, no tanks, etc) but in iraq we had humvees; our group had the heavies, the .50cal machineguns, automatic gernade launchers, anti-tank missiles, and various other guys toys. That particular day, we were the quick reaction force, escorting EOD (bombsquad) out to take out a couple of roadside bombs....

Arriving on-site, we set up a cordon, and balled up a shepperd (shepperds=spotter/triggerman). my room-mate and I then stopped a whole family trying to run through our roadblock. We tried to explain to them that there was a bomb, and the road was closed, but they wouldnt have any of it.

"we go? we go through?"
*no, the roads closed. wait here*
"no, we go bagdad. go through on road"
*NO. the roads closed. when we're gone, you can go*
"please mister, we go? we go?"
*NO! there's a freakin bomb in the road; two bombs! qoonbillah! thnein qoonbillah hinak!*
"no, pleas mister, we go--"

BOOOOOM !!!!!

So yeah, midsentence, EOD blew the first bomb in place. The whole family, women children and all hit the dirt, but we'd been there so long that my roommate and I didn't even flinch. Some shrapnel landed between us, we kinda looked at eachother and figured "hey, maybe we should get behind something solid...." In the time it took us to clear the first two bombs, we got a report of another one a few miles away. So, we all piled in and went to clear that site as well.

I was the furthest one from the trucks at the second site, maybe 50-75yards out in front. Traffic was halted about 300m further down the road. Sure enough, SNAP, sniper round goes past my head. Shit. I drop to a knee, but the gunner's shouting that i'm hit. I'm shouting back at him that i'm NOT hit. Well, I wasnt hit, but he wasnt aiming at me; The sergeant back with the trucks got caught right in the neck. The sniper knew enough to aim at somebody further up the pecking order. Fortunately, our guy turned at the last moment, and the round zipped through his neck armor, grazed his neck, and then took a big chunk of kevlar out behind him. Knicked the jugular, but didnt puncture it; he bled a lot, and has a wicked scar across his neck, but he's alive, and was back in action a week or two later.

So, we've got a guy down, and we're in the sights of a sniper; we laid down a lot of supressive fire at a house where we think the shot came from (it was the right direction, and really the only good place to shoot from anywhere nearby), as well as freezing anyone around us. Anyone who made a move got warning shots; nobody was dumb enough to ignore the warning. One taxi surrendered to us, white flags out the windows and all. None of the civilians took aimed fire, (ie, no civilians got shot), but there were a lot of bullets flying around, and I'm sure they were pretty terrified. I was half deaf from the .50 firing over my head, and EOD still had to detonate the bomb.

As soon as we had cleared the site, we rushed back to the base to get our guy medical attention. We were on a four lane road, 2 lanes, median, and two more lanes, and we left against traffic, the same route we had come in on. Of course a mile up the road, some asshole detonated the fourth roadside bomb of the day, and a pretty big one at that. Put an eight-ten foot wide crater in the road, but fortunately it was on the far side of the median, so we only took minimal blast damge (concussed the gunner, sheered off all the little antenas and gizmos from the outside of the lead truck). One of our guys saw the triggerman and engaged him, another gunner stopped a car from ramming us head on, cut that guy to pieces; from where I was I only caught a glimpse of what was left of the car.

It was all pretty hectic, we were all pretty pumped up on adrenaline. When we finally got back to our base, coming through the gate I got to relax a bit, stop lookin out the windows. There were all these shell casings laying around the floor and deck of the truck. Our gunner went through a ton of ammo (it was actually kind of comical; he was way overstocked on ammo, so he'd fire for a minute, pause, and keep firing. "need rounds man?" "nope, i'm good" fire fire fire. "need rounds man?" "nope, i'm good" etc etc). On top of all that, there was fine desert dust drifting through the truck, and bright bright sunlight, made for a pretty cool visual. Snapped a couple of photos, finally drew one.

Anyways, to come full circle, it was hot, mid-summer, maybe 135 degrees F or so, plus full armor, kit, etc, and riding around inside a metal box with the windows up. I had taken the liberty (god forbid) of cuffing up my sleeves, so when we got to the aid station, and the company comander (royal douchebag) came up, instead of inquiring about the guy shot in the neck, or the four roadside bombs, or the running gunfight, he reprimanded me for cuffing my sleeves.

No wonder nothing's being accomplished over there.