Gregory Hill Jr August 30, 2015
English 101
It was June 2008 in downtown Baghdad, Iraq on yet another convoy operation to put down new t-wall barriers to help secure a perimeter around a recently established combat outpost that was once a 12 story office building and had previously came under direct fire and had barriers get blown out from RPG’s. As I sat in the gunner’s hatch behind our beloved M2 .50 caliber machine gun with my personal M4A1 assault rifle to the right of me. I could only be thankful that I had a MRE with me and camelback filled with ice water and had previously set up a triple layer of camo net above me to block some of the sun’s hot breath from beaming down on my head before leaving the FOB. The temperature outside this day was one of the hottest so far at a scorching 135 degrees and could easily cook a nice steak and egg dinner well done in a pan on the street in less than two minutes. The surrounding buildings resembled that of an old ruined city that bears the mark of a hostile combat zone with bullet holes in walls, shell casings and shattered glass lying on the ground, and holes in rooftops the size of baby elephants that indicated mortar fire was a present and deadly threat to anybody in the area. As the crane crew picked up the last few t-walls off the back of a PLS truck and lined them up to finish the perimeter wall, a loud and thunderous echo rang out from a nearby building. Over the radio you could hear one soldier yell out “Contact Right” as we had become under fire from a nearby sniper. As soon as the convoy’s NCOIC started to reply and ask for a sitrep, another shot could be heard. Only this time we could tell the sniper was within 100 meters as the sound of the bullet whizzed by my Humvee like the sound of a bee flying right past my ear. Luckily there were snipers and scouts of our own on top of the building that were able to pinpoint the exact location of the sniper hiding deep inside of a room when he let...