It's A Rush

Now maybe somewhere through the course of your life you have had to kick a door in. Maybe you had to rescue a puppy from a blazing fire or your drunken friend that who locked himself in the only bathroom in the house and has since passed out. I’m sure there are many reasons out there for just why you did it. But it was a rush wasn’t it. Just like the movies you stepped back and gave it the old “Chuck Norris” one-two kick and it went flying open. Or maybe some of you gave it a more “Richard Simmons” exercise kick and ends up on the floor with the door still holding firm. None-the-less, for that split second it was a rush as you went all kung-fu on that poor door.

Okay so getting to the story, the other morning we were called out at about 4am to go grab up a target that had presented him self close to where we were. So we roll through the ruthless fog that covered the area that morning and come up on this little farming village not to far from the Tigris River. The farmers of this area are “Orange Farmers”, not like the ones in Florida, this are smaller, more ornamental looking orange. So all we have is an area where “Vince” (For fun we will name him, Vince.) might be. In this area are about 10 medium sized farm houses and the area is surrounded by orange orchards. We dismount our team (The “A-Team”) from the two tanks and two trucks that we rolled in on. We group up and decide to work from one side of the street on down. This is where the thrill seeker in me comes out. I don’t really know where I picked this sense of adventure up by I have it. So there I am leading the way straight into a doorway. No idea what’s on the other side or who if anyone is waiting for us. No idea if I am even going to be able to kick the door in. We get to the doorway and all the training from soccer coaches of the past comes back and with a size 9 full force into it, the door goes flying open and in we go.

We go through the first house and its just a few old ladies and a couple kids, definitely not who we are looking for so we head out and move to the next house. We are moving quickly and not wasting anytime; we go from the first house straight into the door of the second house. Never even missing a beat I kick the door in on the run and it goes flying off the hinges. I am not really that strong, Iraqi front doors just aren’t all that sturdy. We are moving through the house and out comes a “military aged male” and once he realizes just who is making all the commotion he hits the floor. We post a guard on him and keep pushing through the house. Just like every other house in Iraq there are tons of children; most of them under the age of six. And if you do the math, we invaded just under six years ago, so I guess since then baby making has been all there really is to do. We group all the women and children into a room out of the way and continue to search the home. We have his wife show use where the AK-47 is, everybody over here has one, and with out any hesitation she shows us where it is and where all the magazines for it are. Well thanks lady! You just showed us enough to haul your hubbie off for a few months. Iraqis are allowed to have one AK and one 30 round magazine. This guy had seven, “for protection” he said. So we load him up. This guy turns out to be “Vince” and our new friend “Vince” turned out to be a very wanted man in Iraq. Two points for the good guys!

We continue on down the street and search through four more houses all of them come up clean. We end up chasing down what turned out to be a 14 year old kid, when its dark out they don’t really look 14, he was just scared a bolted when he saw us clearing the roof of his neighbors. I really do feel sorry for these kids, that’s the hardest part of all this. Kicking in the door, snatching their IED planting father out of bed while they sit in the corner scared crying and having no idea what really is going on. Poor little guys are innocent, just caught up in their father’s poor mistakes. I give them some candy as we head out but really, I don’t think it fixes what they just witnessed.

All this goes on so fast you really don’t have time to think about what exactly is going on. You just go, full tilt, wide open, then all the sudden you are sitting in the tank rolling out of there and the adrenaline starts to wear off and your heart rate returns to a safe rate and you start to rethink just what happened and all you can do is smile and shake your head and think, “No one is ever going to believe what I just did…What a rush.”

Hear is a new favorite song of mine, it’s by “My Chemical Romance”

and the song is “This Is How I Disappear”

It’s a recommended download of mine. If you like this type of stuff that is…

“By streetlight, this dark night
A séance down below
There are things that I have done
You never, should ever know…”