Early Risers

March 14, 2010
Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
01:28

The other day, after I'd been asleep since maybe 2:30 AM, the lights in the tent flipped on at 06:00. That's AM. That's too early. Not...enough...sleep...

People started walking around kicking all the LS Marines' cots and waking us up. "Morning cleanup!" or as Sgt. Ebonics says, "Get up, mownin' cleanup!"

I just stood next to my bed and waited for nothing to happen while the two brooms in the tent were divided between 116 people. And then I went back to sleep, it was pretty worthless. Another one of those really pointless/senseless/useless mornings that I keep finding myself experiencing. If it's not one thing with the other Marines in my tent, it's another. They don't understand our jobs, they don't care, and they don't want to understand or care. It's also PERFECT that the company 1st sgt and gunny are both former drill instructors and can't seem to leave the drill field behind.

When I went back to sleep finally I had one of the worst nightmares I've ever had. Usually I can take something from nightmares to use as story ideas, but this time, I was just really disturbed.

I'm standing in Camp Leatherneck, people are walking around as usual, nothing out of the ordinary. Suddenly, one of the alarms goes off. We all know what to do, but everyone's just looking at each other with that "is this for real" kind of thing that happens when people are in large crowds and they're waiting for one person to react so they can all follow the lead.

I hear a whistling in the air, like the sound of a bomb falling and think "oh shit, this is for real."

I see a three foot tall concrete barrier and dive behind it. You know those dreams where you try to run, but can't? I always have dreams where I try that or I try and punch someone but I can't get enough momentum and my fist doesn't do anything. Well, when I jump to take cover, I just hover in the air. I'm thinking "I'm going to die, or at least take shrapnel" and it's taking forever for me to hit the ground and get behind cover.

As I'm falling through the air, there's an explosion ahead as one of the mortar rounds hits a small shack and blows it to pieces. The sky turns black, filled with smoke and I finally hit the ground as another round hits somewhere else. When I get the courage to look up over the barrier I at first think everyone's fine and no one's hurt, but then I hear someone scream loudly. One of those really awful blood curdling screams that sends chills down your spine. And then I see a man ahead of me standing, clutching his neck. Blood starts to pour out from behind his hands and out of his mouth. He's been hit by shrapnel in the neck and now he's bleeding to death and someone is screaming at the top of their lungs and no one seems to know what to do because more rounds are landing in the distance.

And then I woke up, literally out of breath. I don't think I've ever had that reaction to a nightmare before. It was pretty awful.

In other news, remember the augment Marines I talked about a few blogs back? The ones that have different MOS's and got stuck helping us out because we were short handed?

Turns out I'm actually pretty attached to them now. One got sent away and another one got sent to the other shift, so now we're left with one. I actually miss the other two, they were good guys. I'm going to miss the guy we have now if we lose him when we move to the FOB in April. Oh well. They definitely surprised me though; they picked up our MOS faster than we are able to even with a 5 week MOS school. Good job fellas.

Peace.