SPC Spoon's Bad Day

[dutchdemocrat]

SPC Spoon's Bad Day
The name of Specialist Spoon has been changed to protect him from ill treatment from his superiors.

http://www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com/

The concussion of the mortar fire shook the forward operating base. Not a single soldier all over camp was standing. They lie face down pulling their helmets tight with both hands unsure if it's enemy fire. A voice from a mega phone calls out "OUTGOING FIRE!" As the soldiers stand they knock the dust from their fatigues and continue business as usual. It is Saturday the fifteenth of May 2004. Weekends don't exist while on deployment. It's work twenty-four hours a day seven days a week for the entire year. Saturday is the Islamic day for prayer, which means the sector is pretty quiet. It is also a great day to send 155mm shells over the wall. It is just a show of force. Kinda like a big dick contest. A reminder that while you are safe in your mosque praying we can still blow the shit out of you.

An hour later SPC Spoon is sitting on top of an M1 Abraham tank ,at the South Gate pulling his four hours of guard duty, when a beat up rusty sedan stops at a barricade two hundred meters away. Through the binos he observes an Arab man exit the drivers seat and move to the passenger side. He reaches into the vehicle and carefully lifts out a child. It was a girl maybe fours years old. "The same age as my daughter" thought the Specialist. The girls black swirling hair was matted down with blood and her skin was peppered with sores and cuts. One side of her face was red and bruised with her eye swollen shut. The way she hung limply in her fathers arms made him believe she was already dead. The crew on the tank gave each other pale looks as they hopped of the tank to met the Iraqi. The tank commander radioed the first aid station and an interpreter came out of the guard shack. SPC Spoon took the girl from her reluctant father while another soldier searched him. "What happened?" asked Spoon through the translator. from a short conversation with the shaken man Spoon found out that while his daughter was sleeping, bombs from the sky hit his house. Apparently the mortars made some errors in calculating their target points. Many of the rounds landed as much as four hundred meters of the mark. One of which smashed through this little girls bedroom.
The medics showed up and after an examination and some sour looks the medics decided they needed to bring the girl to the aid station. Spoon climbed into the field ambulance with te little girl who's father was forced to wait at the gate for security reasons. In the red glow of the ambulance Spoon held the child as she tried to cry in spite the pain it caused.

The Specialist laid the girl down on a bed at the station and was pushed away by the working medics. A curtain was pulled blocking his view and he backed up until he fell into a chair. Spoon watched as medical personnel went in and out for a desperate fifteen minutes. They finally left one by one until the last left the curtain open to reveal the little girl laying on the bed still, lifeless. After the medic spoke with the commander, Spoon was ordered to carry the child back to the gate with the Colonel. As the Specialist handed the child back the father almost collapsed with sorrow. Spoon thought he was going to be sick, but what happened next left him paralyzed. Five dollars isn't much in America, but it is a good chunk of change in Iraq. This is the price the officer offered as compensation for the accidental murder of his daughter. He seemed furious at first and then a heated haggle occurredd. After the commander made the point that if it was a boy he would pay more, the man finally settled with twenty dollars. The father left with his dead daughter and his new twenty bucks. As Spoon stood there in frozen awe the officer gave him a long cold stare and walked off straightening his uniform.

SPC Spoon was ambushed on a patrol two days later. No US soldiers were hurt and two Iraqis were killed. One of the dead was the childs father. He must have joined the guerrillas after the unfair events two days ago. He was twice the age of the other insurgents and in the eyes of the US he is just another terrorist that got what was coming to him. Chalk up another success for our team.

Who are we fighting? The political enemy is not as common as the relative or friend of a previous victim. Some captives speak of Jihad. So what is Jihad? The 1st Infantry Division Soldiers handbook to Iraq says " Jihad is thought of as the sixth pillar of Islam. It hoes not exactly mean "holy war", but is used to describe the personal battle one undertakes against sin and temptation. Each Muslim is encouraged to wage both an inner struggle against sin as well as physically guard and defeat secular influences that might corrupt their communities." Sounds like a noble cause to me. Some insurgents are more global minded and wish to defeat a greedy evil that threatens all mankind. We invest a lot of money to kill people that are trying to help humanity, even help us as we try to destroy them. Now with their backs to the wall they fight us the only way they can to even the odds, with terrorism.

http://www.ftssoldier.blogspot.com/