Winning Hearts and Minds

This post comes to you all the way from Iraq, compliments of my brother, Jason.

Ok, so here is a story I may have told some of you while I was home on leave, but for the rest of you I felt that this just about sums up the dangerous/ridiculous factors we deal with here.

So our platoon was tasked with a mission to go "west", into the wild west you could say; out where there ain't shit but desert, power lines, chewed up road and the locals point at you and say "DIE, DIE."

This trip we were on the lookout for white pickup trucks because intel had said that there were at least 12 suspected bombs loaded into white pickups. Now saying "be on the lookout for a white pickup" is like telling someone back home to "look out for a Japanese made car on I-95." Anyway, we are hour 4 into our 8 hour drive and we get a call over the radio saying that there is a white pickup with a propane tank in the bed. Great, a propane tank, the latest and greatest in insurgent technology to help accentuate the deadliness of their homemade bombs. Now in Iraq, civilian traffic pulls off the road to let military convoys pass, and this white pickup has pulled off the road alright.... WAY off the road. Now our interests are peeked because most people only pull off far enough to let us know they don't want any trouble. This guy has pulled at least 100 yards off the road and is pointing out into the middle of the desert. We interpret this as "this guy wants absolutely no part of us." Naturally, we are determined to find out why. So three Humvees circle the truck with machine guns and two soldiers approach him to search the vehicle. The driver gets out and opens the hood to show no bomb, however the passenger is a little reluctant to get out. This makes the two guys who are searching the vehicle a little nervous and they ask the passenger to get out. Now everyone is kind of on edge and you can feel the tension mounting. Is this guy gonna try something funny? The door swings open and the passenger gets out and puts his arms up, then quickly hops on one foot reaching for the bed of the truck. To get a gun? To get a bomb? . . . No, to get his crutches. Yes, the liberators of Iraq here to bring peace, democracy and freedom have pulled over the one legged man and his brother. They were carrying fruits and vegetables to their home, which is apparently out in the middle of the desert, and the turn they needed to make just happened to be right where we passed. This was why he had pulled over so far, not to avoid us, but to go home. Needless to say we all laughed our asses off at the misfortune of this miserable duo and our shitty luck to harass two locals just trying to get their groceries home. The kicker of the whole situation was that the two in the pickup never got pissed off, argued or acted annoyed. They even saluted the guys who searched the truck and drove off into the desert waving to all of us merrily. What a day, we get all worked up and everyone has their finger on the trigger and is praying to God to make it through; and you get saluted by the One Legged Man.