Thursday, November 18, 2004

Things That Go Boom in the Night

Life here at Kamp Kalsu is settling into a banal routine. Being confined to a patch of dirt that’s about 2 kilometers square, doing the same thing seven days a week, will do that. Given the alternative, however, boring is good.

During my first visit here last month things got very exciting (see my post “Fear”), but there has been no more of that since I moved here, with the exception of one rather unremarkable rocket attack. I like rockets better than mortars – at least you can hear them coming. It’s sort of a “whooooooosh – BOOM!” This latest attack occurred in late afternoon, while I was sleeping, and I was on the deck and in my flak vest before I knew what I was doing, and I was in the bunker before I really woke up. The rockets impacted pretty far from my tent, so it was not very eventful.

Vehicle-borne IED (VBIED)Because there is a war going on around us, there are explosions and loud noises from time to time, often unexplained. When these occur at night, when I’m on duty, people typically freeze, wait to hear if there are more than one, and then ask one another “what was that?” Occasionally the command post will call and tell us what it was, but usually it’s a mystery.

The most threatening sound is that of incoming indirect fire, of course. It is unmistakable for its volume, and in the case of rockets, the sound of its passage overhead. Then there are the IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) which sometimes explode on the main road just to the east of us. An IED is an artillery shell, bomb, or other explosive rigged to explode when a vehicle or a convoy passes by. A VBIED is a Vehicle-Borne IED, and an SVBIED is a Suicide VBIED, more commonly known as car bombs. Unfortunately IED, VBIED, and SVBIED attacks are very common, and they account for the majority of our casualties in this area of operations.

The sound of an IED is distinctive, because it’s usually a BIG sound, but not loud – kind of like thunder in the distance. Occasionally it’s close enough to sound like incoming, but there is usually only one explosion. Sometimes the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Marines “blow in place” an IED that has been discovered along the road, or maybe several of them at one time. This can be very loud. Theoretically we are notified when these “planned detonations” will be occurring, but often there is no notice and it’s as much of a surprise as an IED or incoming explosion.

Camp Kalsu has its own indirect fire weapons, and occasionally we send out some rounds of our own. The sound of this “outgoing” fire is fairly distinctive, and we are supposed to be notified of it ahead of time. That seems to be the exception, however.

The final type of noise we hear is gunfire, sometimes in conjunction with one of the other explosions. This might occur when a convoy gets hit by an IED on the nearby road, or when the Marines in the guard towers feel threatened.

A most disconcerting incident occurred recently, when we had what is known as a “negligent discharge.” In this particular case, an Army soldier coming back from patrol did not properly clear his vehicle-mounted grenade launcher, and he accidentally shot a 40mm grenade across the camp. It impacted very near a guard tower, precipitating a phantom gun battle between the guards in the tower and their imagined enemy. Thankfully nobody got hurt except a speed limit sign, which nobody liked anyway.

One shot, one kill

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