In Feb 2005, I deployed, voluntarily, to the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, Bagram Army Air Field, Afghanistan as a third country national escort. Basicly escorting the Egyptians, and local Afghanis that were building a new parking ramp for the Army's Apache Gunships. Well, they had the most rain they had had in 7 years shortly after I got there, so the locals didn't work too much and as such, we escorts had very little to do.
We were sitting in the Civil Engineering hooch one morning watching whatever was on AFN when the CE commander walked in and told us we had to find something to do. Well, none of the escorts were CE guys, most of us were space command, or, like me, maintainers, so we asked what we could do. She said we could check with structures, heavy equipment, Red Horse or EOD to see if they needed any help.
Gee, let me think, play in concrete all day or go see what the Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys were getting into.... umm, door number two!
We walked over and they said, well if you don't mind getting dirty or working a little, we got a job for you! Go grab your level III's and your kevlar helmets, lock and load your rifles, grap extra mags from the locker and lets go, we got a convoy!
SWEET!!
Two hours of eating dust in a convoy consisting of three huge Army dumptrucks, four Army MP humvees, and three EOD vehicles, will get you ready for anything! We arrived at a small ANA-Afghan National Army- compound (I mean a mud hut with a 7 foot mud wall around it) just outside of the Panjshir Valley. They had a 51' CONEX FULL of land mines, morters, tank rounds, artillery shells, rockets, RPGs, and grenades. These things were literally THROWN in the CONEX with no order what-so-ever. These munitions were OLD leftovers from a few wars that had been captured here and there and collected in this "compound".
We stripped off our DCU tops threw our level III's back on and got to work. Six hours later and one close call from a morter that rolled off the back of one of the dump trucks and landed in the sand nose down 6 inches from my foot, we were ready to go back to Bagram.
We rode the two hours back, hit the sack, and got up the next day and headed out to Red River Range to dispose of the munitions, along with a hefty flatbed full of captured rockets from a well just outside of Bagram Village. (Yeah we got to go on that one too!)
You take a row in the sand of rockets, cover that in a layer of C-4 another layer of rockets, C-4, morters, C-4, RPGs, C-4, landmines, C-4, etc... and throw small arms on top, including bad lots of U.S. ammo and grenades.
Total? 940 Pounds of C-4 and 18 tons of captured munitions...
After we had it all done, one of the EOD guys, SSgt Polleck asked if I wanted to pull the detonator pin since since I had been all gung ho the entire ordeal... Um YEAH! Like I could possibly say no! I pulled it with a distinctive "POP" and we knew we had five minutes to get back to the "safe zone" a mile away. When we got back we all sat there watching the horizon, just below the mountains, five minutes came and went and MSgt. Dreys,the EOD flight chief, turned to me and said, "You know if this don't go, you owe us all a case when we get back to the world..." No sooner did he say that then the ground exploded in silence. It seemed like an enternity before the WHACK came from the concusion followed by the roar of the explosion.
ZING! ZIP! CRACK!
"COVER!! EVERYONE GET TO COVER!!!" MSgt Dreys yelled. The force of the explosion had sent shrapnel hurdling at us from a mile away! It was over in a few seconds everyone rushing out from behind cover to snap a few last shots. After a while we went back to look at the crater. Just one word... WOW!!!
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Ah American Politics! If every other country can't get it to work, by god we will try it out!
Last edited by USAF_462/2W1X1; 07-27-2008 at 11:02 PM.
wow!! that has to be one of the more fun details to get on. almost a shame though, I saw some still useful looking stuff in that pile. too bad you had to blow up the empty artelliry cases. those would make great souvineres.
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peace through superior firepower
HAHAHA Captn! As I said, most of the U.S. munitions on there were from bad lots and needed to be destroyed. The rockets, morters, landmines, and RPGs were all captured from the ACM (Anti-Coalition Militia) or Taliban by the ANA and coalition forces. Most of them were found in a cave inside the Panjshir Valley but a lot of others were found in various other weapons caches and then stored on that ANA compund. Also, there were three Soviet DPM Light Machine Guns complete with six pan magazines FULL of ammo, and two PPSH's.
These things were rusted to no end though and were unserviceable, but they were still kinda cool! The EOD guys took these and we had them on display in our CE hooch unto we all rotated back to homestation... I have no idea what happened to them after that...
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Ah American Politics! If every other country can't get it to work, by god we will try it out!
HAHAHA Captn! As I said, most of the U.S. munitions on there were from bad lots and needed to be destroyed. The rockets, morters, landmines, and RPGs were all captured from the ACM (Anti-Coalition Militia) or Taliban by the ANA and coalition forces. Most of them were found in a cave inside the Panjshir Valley but a lot of others were found in various other weapons caches and then stored on that ANA compund. Also, there were three Soviet DPM Light Machine Guns complete with six pan magazines FULL of ammo, and two PPSH's.
These things were rusted to no end though and were unserviceable, but they were still kinda cool! The EOD guys took these and we had them on display in our CE hooch unto we all rotated back to homestation... I have no idea what happened to them after that...
DUDE!!! Can't ya just ship em over to me?? I'll destroy them for you guys (eventually...)and save you some C4!!!Anyway... thanks for serving!!
Anyway... thanks for serving!!
