u/Gardez_geekin

You never put a crow truck in the back of a convoy. It’s got a robo machine gun and you can’t do crowd control with it. We called it EOF. Escalation of Force. It’s the steps you take try to get someone to stop. We had another saying. Shout, show, shove, shoot.

It’s pretty stressful being a gunner. You are the only one in the armored truck who is exposed. Which comes with risks. But it also came with privilege.

Being inside the MRAP was like being in a submarine. You never wanted to get out of the truck. They weren’t invincible. But being ass out in Afghanistan with nothing but a plate carrier and a rifle was also not super lit.

So we all smoked. But only the gunner could smoke 100% of the mission. You also could talk to the people, breathe the mountain air. Breathe the Gardez tire fire air. Barter with locals for the best watermelon you ever had or local monsters or naan or kebab.

There were also the robot gunner jobs. You were in the truck so you were safe. You also could set the turret to auto scan. In the turret you have to be scanning. You need to know your cardinal directions and your clock face directions.

You had to always be moving in your seat and calling out shit. Not in the robot truck. You could sleep with the rest of the truck except the driver. It was a good position.

You wouldn’t get blown up probably and you were chilling with a joystick. But you can’t do EOF. So you shouldn’t be at the back of a convoy when you have a big civilian population on a main road.

But we were. And they were super busy at the pied site. So everytime I called in, “reaper3 golf to reaper 6” I got brushed off.

The robot guns have a crazy camera. 25x zoom, night vision and IR. They are wild. Either way a week before a foot patrol from our neighbor COP had a large scale VBIED attack from a motorcycle.

And like everytime before, Afghans started massing about 150 meters away. And like all Afghans they sent one person to talk to us.

He was on a motorcycle. I can’t tell him to stop because I’m inside the truck and sleepy. And then I’m not. I’m yelling on the radio.

I hit the button for the hydraulic door and pulled my rifle up. “Stop motherfucker Stop” I yelled, with him in my sights.

My thumb flipped the selector and my finger tightened on the trigger.

And he stopped.

My 5yo is like 50 lbs and loves to stand on my chest when I am sitting on the couch. He likes to stand past the edge of the couch on my ankles. He likes me to flip him. He still likes me to pick him up (and he puts his lil head on my shoulder) and I realizing I have been doing an incremental weight training program for 5 years. I’ll stop picking him up sooner than I would like, but he made me that much stronger