Documenting Instanity

Post of the month, maybe the year

This post on "365 and a Wakeup" is in the permanent top 10 I have seen on a blog for personal stories. Honor these men and their bravery and their sacrifice.

I collected up my security team, and we all dutifully followed her to the field to see just what it was she was talking about. As we climbed over the berm surrounding the field the smooth, deadly lines of the shell were all too obvious. The round was sitting in a shallow crater, as if it were some metallic seedpod blown in by some dark wind. Rather then wait around in the projectile's kill zone we jumped back over the berm and returned to the vehicles to call up the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. As soon as we called up the report the EOD team called back requesting coordinating information. "How big is it?" they asked. I responded back with a highly technical infantry term "It's uh, very big". Their next question boomed out over the speaker box "Roger, is it fused?". Since I hadn't approached the shell I answered back "I couldn't tell from our position", hoping that would be the end of it. I had no such luck, the next message that came out of the squawk box was the one message I didn't want to hear "Understood, we will standby while you check for its fusing status".

Yeowsa!!! go read the whole thing. It is serious, very real, and very funny all at the same time.

posted by mailgeek @ 9:50 PM