So what was I up to in the meanwhile?
"*beep* Left leg injured.... * beep* Left leg injured..." The calm, soothing female voice declares every half minutes. Like the HEV suit in Half-life, really. Bravo squad had cleared the first floor of the two floor building we were going to take under our control but the enemy was clearly still on the roof. The staircase was treacherous place, we could see the sunlight shining onto the wall from the hatch above and occasionally a shadow moved from over there. They were clearly ready to shoot anyone who comes up. Never the less, unit chief was personally there giving orders. He patted on my shoulder and gave me the order to move up and cover the hole in the ceiling. I moved up keeping my G3 rifle (that thing is long, never meant for battles inside buildings) pointed at the damned square of blue sky.
I got into position and the rest of Charlie squad was sent up to clear the second floor when suddenly an enemy reared it's ugly head to rain down hell on our guys. "CONTACT!" I shouted at the top of my lungs and opened a hail of fire upon the grinning face of the enemy. Things didn't go well. Not good at all. You see, the detectors on head of the laser tag harness (which is the one speaking in soothing female voice) rarely works well and this was no exception. No matter how many shots I fired at the enemy, it had no effect on his face. He returned fire upon us and I heard a clear "*BEEEEEEEP!* You've been terminated." from a comrade on my right. I tried to fire at the opponent again, uselessly once again and he fired upon me. And then I heard the terryifing beep. This time shorter: "*BEEP!* Left leg injured. *BEEP* Weapon disabled." The female voice declared. My left leg was busted and my weapon destroyed, but I had survived. The enemy retreated as guys threw a couple of grenades on the roof, the unit commander himself grabbed me and dragged me down the stairs.
"You okay?" He shouted in my face. I assured him that it was nothing serious, just my leg and gun were busted. He gave me the dead guy's rifle and put me to cover the first floor corridor and took the rest of the Charlie squad to the second floor.
"*beep* Left leg injured.... * beep* Left leg injured..." The calm, soothing female voice declares every half minutes.
There I was, with a new rifle and unable to walk. I observed how Bravo squad cleared out the rooms when suddenly a loud boom cracked in the room at the end of the corridor: couple of guys had stepped on a well hidden mine . Both had died and there was nothing to be done. Bravo squad leader spotted another bobby trap in the middle of corridor - lucky no one stepped on it - and then that was it, the building had been cleared and everyone moved to the next building to clear. I lied down there, just me, the HEV voice, the corridor and couple of guys on the second floor, keeping enemy from retaking the building. And the mouse.
Battle was raging at the next building, which was connected to our own building by the skybridge when suddenly a tiny mouse popped it's tiny head from a hole not even a meter away from me. It looked around, looked at me and then climbed out to eat it's lunch, whatever it was. For 5 minutes, I just stared at the mouse while the mouse ate. It was magical. Until mouse finished it's lunch and left back through the hole. The rest of time I spent listening through the radio how the battle was going - our guys had used the skybridge to get into the other building which was about thrice the size of mine and had managed to clear the top floors while the rest of guys tried to take it from lower floors. The enemies were clever though and managed to kill everyone in Charlie squad - MY squad - except for our giant machine gunner, over 2 meter tall mountain of big bones and muscle who was practically keeping the enemy at bay all by himself.
Eventually the building was cleared and we received orders to catch up with rest. I limped over to them and found out that the enemy had holed up on other side of the road and we were preparing to flank them when I suddenly heard: "*BEEEEEEEP!* You've been terminated." Fuck.
As it turns out: my "leg injury" was left untreated for too long so I "bled out". Medic! Why u no be there when needed?
So, what the hell am I talking about?
Well, in the country I live we have mandatory military service. You have to serve either 8 months in infantry or 11 months in specialization, such as NCO course, sappers, navy, recon, sniper or like me: military police.
Military police was waaay more interesting than infantry. That's because 6 months were exactly the same as infantry. Infantry just spends last 2 months practicing unit maneuvers, we take those extra 2+3 months to learn military police stuff, such as: scouting and mapping the roads and enemy movements (yup, how do you know the high brass knows where the enemy is? Recon is too few and valuable to bother with such mundane observation. It's left for the MP to deal with. It also means finding ambushes. Usually by being ambushed. But we are good at getting out of them, so no biggie. But it practiaclly means being ambushed every day...), then there's arresting and searching people for illegal items (trust me, feeling up a man for the very first time is as embarassing as you can imagine), searching vehicles (even ships!) and rooms for same stuff (it's amazing what you can hide inside a room where there's just a closet and a bed), setting up check points (like in Iraq), and the fun stuff: like self defense (Ju-jitsu! With rifles!) and VIP escort (the best).
Who's the unluckiest guy in VIP escort? VIP! When someone starts shooting at you, chance of getting shot may be the biggest problem but it's not the only one! First of all, your escort will throw you on the ground. Then he'll drag you back up and forces you to run while being as low as possible. Try it! Bend forward, bend your knees and try to run as fast as possible. You can't see where you are going and you feel like you are going to either trip and hit the ground face first or you are going to run into something head first. Finally you are thrown into a car and not comfortably: you got to keep as low as possible people are going to jump on you to cover you!
As for the battle I described it was part of the urban battle exercise.
So, next blog post 3 years from now!
