The Jordanator

letsgottoafghanistan:

Actually, you know what? It’s probably a good time to tell this story. Why is it a good time? Because I’m unemployed for another month. When else would I tell this story?

So we had this Navy LT. Commander. A CA guy, and the det “commander” for when we had been separated and attached to the SOTF guys. We were getting close to the end of our time in country, and I had been dealing with this fucking clown for 9 months now.

We called him a lot of derogatory things, but for the sake of this story, we’ll call him Captain America. He was an arrogant, cocky, useless piece of shit. He cared only for himself, and looking like the hero. I have no tolerance people who put their own name above the success of the mission and the safety of my soldiers, so I had a special kind of hate for this man. 

I think I’ve made my point about how much I hated this guy.

So Captain America wanted to do a route reconnaissance near the Helmand river to try and find a quicker/alternate way to get to a local village. This was Mid-June so the rivers were pretty low and he felt we might be able to find a crossing point somewhere along the way.

Fine. It actually wasn’t a terrible idea, even if it meant driving our trucks down a narrow riverbed with high ground on both sides and known enemy in the area. It’s a great idea. A perfect idea.

Now traditionally what would happen is Capt. America would come to me with a mission tasking, and I would create and execute the plan to complete that mission. My basic idea for this mission was to use the gun trucks as roving overwatch on the high ground, while we dismounted through the riverbed to attempt to find a crossing point.

The logic behind this is pretty simple. It’s a lot easier to determine on foot has stable the ground is, I was a huge proponent of having overwatch anytime we were in low ground (not to mention Comms go to shit in any valley, and the trucks could act as retrans), and because I’m an infantryman. I want to be on foot. 

So everything had gone according to MY plan until we get to the dismount point. Capt. America (war fighting expert) informs us that he can tell the riverbed ahead is stable, and he wants to take it in the trucks.

But…Sir…that’s…not…..the…plan.

Like I said, I had fought with this guy every single time he opened his mouth for the past 9 months. I was sick of it.

I consulted with my SL and TL’s, decided - whatever - maybe we get him killed - fuck it. We’ll take the trucks. At least the trucks have AC, and it is fucking hot out.

We get no more than 300 meters down the riverbed, when the lead truck (my truck) hits a soft spot in the mud/dirt and immediately sinks up to the axels.  

Fucking awesome. 

I call all the vehicles to a halt, so I can get out and assess how the fuck we’re going to get out of this. Capt. America has other plans. He pulls his truck (the 2nd truck in the convoy) up past our trucks to try and pull us out. About 10 meters past our truck, he hits a sinkhole and gets his truck stuck even worse than ours. 

Fortunately, my SL in the 3rd truck isn’t a complete fucking moron and kept his truck still. So we’ve got two stuck trucks, we’re in a valley, and….yup. We can’t reach our QRF on Comms because we’re in A FUCKING VALLEY.

At this point, I’m furious. I told Capt. America (I’m still surprised I wasn’t Court Martial’d for this) to get his fucking ass back in the truck, to shut the fuck up, and to let me unfuck his asshatery. 

So we tried getting the trucks unstuck. We were digging, using the one unstuck to pull..anything we could think of. And then the 3rd (and last) truck got stuck trying to pull out the first truck that got stuck.

Yup.

So all three trucks are stuck. We’ve been outside the wire about 6 hours now (for a 3 hours mission), I’ve got a pissed off Capt America bitching to any Specialist who will listen..and still no comms. 

I took one of my TL’s and hiked up the nearest hill with the SATCOM and EMBITR to try and raise our base to have them send out some help. Here’s the issue with that though, the SF guys had HUMVEE’s and 4-wheelers. They had nothing that could tow us out. Our trucks were the biggest things within a 7 hour driving distance. More than anything we needed more brain and manpower, because we were tapped. We got them on the radios and they said they would send some assistance ASAP and that we were idiots.

Duh.

So the SF guys showed up on their 4-wheelers with some extra tow chains, some extra digging tools, and some extra manpower. We immediately got to work unfucking a completely fucked situation. It’s getting close to night. We’re all soaking wet, muddy, tired, and frustrated. We don’t want to have to spend the night in these positions, and I’m considering just blowing the fucking trucks in place.

At some point after the SF guys dropped off help, we noticed that Capt. America was gone.

REJOICE!!!!

Confusion? Where the fuck did he go? (Insert random specialist saying: “Sir! He took off on the back of one of the 4-wheelers when they went back to the base!”) - That. Mother. Fucker. The dude straight up peaced out and went back to the comfort of base leaving us out in the fucking shit.

Coward. 

We ended up getting out. Everything worked out ok. One of my TL’s had to be restrained from physically attacking Capt. America when we rolled up and he was coming out of the chow hall in his PT’s. Word somehow got back to the SOTF-SE commander about what Capt. America had done. Had we not been leaving the base a couple of weeks later to RIP out, he would have been asked to leave the base altogether. 

The last contact I had with Capt. America was an email I sent him with a picture of my guys wearing our CIB’s (he refused to sign the paperwork for it, because he wasn’t on the mission with us) with the 1-Star who pinned us, and a simple note.

Fuck you.