Military Veterans Past and Present

[FLBikerParticipant]

Anyone have guns or accessories from their time in service?

[JackSpirkoKeymaster]

What I have is a WWII US Bayonet that was in the possession of a Iraqi solider.  As it was US looking, no one questioned anything when I brought it home even though it was old as shit.

God only knows where it came from and how it got there.

Not to be morbid but yes the individual it was taken from was deceased.

I feel I brought it back to its rightful home.

[FLBikerParticipant]

Nice find! I brought back a couple rusty old wrenches I found in a guard shack in Tikrit, Iraq

 

I didn’t examine them closely until about 10 years after I got back. As it turns out, under the rust, it says that it was made in 1912 in Hartford, Conn. Hartford being my birthplace, that was pretty special to me. Sounds like some WWI and WWII era American items found their way to Iraq.

[JackSpirkoKeymaster]

Well there was an entire front of the wars in Turkey, Greece, etc.  Then we go in after the war and chopped up all those “nasty” Arab states to our liking.  So it makes sense.

[Joseph DAdnreaParticipant]

For the longest time I had a piece of shrapnel from a Chinese made rocket. It was the size of my thumb and was a the result of a rocket Attack Fall of 2006 at Camp Korean village in the Anbar Province of Iraq. I’d like to say that I was performing direct combat action at the time but the truth is I was walking to the chow hall with the S2 whom I shared an office with.

We heard the rocket coming in and didn’t even have time to process before it went off. The piece flew directly between our heads so close my buddy could feel the wind. She being all of 110 pounds and 5′ 3″ instinctively grabbed my blouse and tried to pull me towards the nearby Hescos.

A Captain with the air wing was killed and the S2 chief for our parent unit was very badly injured. The Cobra pilot was sort of a fixture and was well liked the medical staff worked on him for a long time. He had a wife and two kids.

I up until than had never felt so alive. It was the most intense high I have ever felt. I had been in a few near miss helicopter incedents but this was an experience that was totally different.

When We had gotten to that AO we were told by the outgoing Army unit it was a quiet area and it had been up until that point. But being Marines trouble seems to follow us and a bunch of insurgents wanted their 72 virgins and figured tangling with the MAGTF was a good way to get them.

When the Adrenalin settled and we finished our accountability I remember the mood in the staff meetings was totally different. There wasn’t any more joking it was serious business.  I was so angry at the cowardice to fire a bunch of rockets into our camp and turn tail and run.

Fortunately the S2 section and the HET marines in general were very good at their jobs and the two brother responsible were located and dealt with.

Our quiet tour ended up with 7 KIA for the whole MEU and a several more with career ending injuries.

I was a POG but still had lots of opportunities to leave the wire I was trained on machine guns and of all the times I nearly died they were all inside the fob or in a near helicopter accident. Not once did anything of interest happen while I was outside the wire.

I’m just rambling now it’s late and I cant sleep and the post brought back some memories I haven’t thought of in a while.

[FLBikerParticipant]

Thanks for sharing your story and for your service, Joseph.

[Chris near AtlantaParticipant]

I have no war trophies as I didn’t serve in any combat theaters, thankfully.  I did pick up a piece of shrapnel from the Hurtgen Forest while I was stationed in Germany.  I own an old M1 Garand from 1943 and a 1911 from who knows when.

I DID leave a bit of a war trophy once… while in Bertchesgaden in 1993, before it was turned back over to the Germans, I located the ruins of Hitler’s old house (the Berghof).  All that was left, if you were willing to climb the fences and ignore the “Eintritt Verboten” signs, was part of the garage under the house.  I crawled through one of the “windows” and promptly and ceremoniously dropped a deuce (yes, I had TP… and yes, I took the hike specifically for this purpose).  I feel like I left it in a better condition than I’d found it.

[FLBikerParticipant]

Lol, I just read this…if I was in Hitler’s house, I’d leave a deuce and a half! Good story.

[Author]

Posts