Note to self: If your body says poop, it may be the hand of god.

Back from the Back of Beyond--A funny thing happened on the way to the crapper

 

Funny story... I was saved today by my regular diet of caffiene and nicotine--the breakfast of champions.  (Names of places have been changed to protect mostly me.)

 

Lemme 'splain.  For the last week I've not been at my regular Forward Operating Base (FOB Smells Like Ass.) Instead, I've been high up in the mountains, a stone's throw from Pakistan, at FOB Back of Beyond.  We are building Joint US/Afghan Army/Afghan Border Patrol Outposts.  (Like the US Border patrol, but with better guns and marginally more effective.) This OP, OP Beyond the Back Of Beyond is so high up in the mountains and so far from, well, everything, that we are building it by bringing everything in by helicopter.  It looks a lot like one of the montain outposts in Lord Of The Rings.

 

So...

I had a helicopter scheduled to take me back to FOB Smells Like Ass (not it's real name) at 0930.  At 0900, I was leaving the Back of Beyond Tactical Operations Center to go get my gear and go to the LZ.  As I walked out of the TOC, my morning coffee and cigarette hit, and I figured I'd best go drop the afghanis off at the pool before I got my gear on. 

As I was taking the Browns to the Superbowl, I heard something go all 'splodey... and it wasn't me!  It was--close, but generally from the area we usually have outgoing...

Then I realized there was no PA System (we call it the big voice) call to tell people it was outgoing.

Oh, shit.  (No pun intended.)

I had one thought and one thought only--"I don't want to die on the shitter."

I finished up, and by the time I left the latrine, the rockets had stopped falling.  I stopped by the TOC, to really just check in and see what was going on, watched them call in air strikes on the point of origin, and then walked back to the building I am staying in. 

All eight rounds landed between where I was when I decided to go shit and where I was bunking. 

My life was likely saved by the fact that my breakfast is usually coffee and nicotine.  Funny how life works.  One round landed on the barracks building right next to mine.  Nobody was killed, some were hurt, none too badly.  Could've been a lot worse.

 

Generally, when you start your day by taking indirect fire, it gets better after that.

--Chuck