A real game of football

[petey64]

there's a lot of interest here in Los Angeles,,,,,,, just not for the USA it's viva la mexico all the way....

[davethebirdman]

Hey you guys,

hope you got a chance to see a few of the games yesterday. The Aussies were unlucky against a very poor
Brazil but thre highlight of the day was the French being held by the Koreans. Nobody likes to see that.... Ha Ha.
With a bit of luck the "Frogs" could be on the plane home before the next round starts.

Four games a day. - I tell the wife it only comes around once every four years.

Dave

[sodaworks]

I'm just hoping the German's get trashed!! Only because of our irrogant young german plant manager at work. '>

[davethebirdman]

Nobody hopes more that the Germans get trashed than the English. In the spirit of good European friendship a company has managed to sell over 8,000 blow up Spitfires.

Dave

[davethebirdman]

Well we are a Nation in mourning and I really mean that. As an Englishman I'm used to sporting defeat. After all our last major win in a football tournament was when I was only 2mths old. But there was something about this year. It was our time. We had pound for ponud (dollar for dollar) the best squad, the greatest footballers.

So what happens. For the fouth time in as many tournaments we go out on penalties. At the end of the game if its still a draw there is a penalty shoot out. And we just can't do that.

Walking round town there were grown men openly crying, a major out pouring of grief. Funny how psort can do that to ya.

I came home to find out that two more soliders in Afganistan (yep we are there too) were killed yesterday... Guess that puts a game of football into perspective.

Dave

[collecture]

Quote

I came home to find out that two more soliders in Afganistan (yep we are there too) were killed yesterday... Guess that puts a game of football into perspective.

War puts many things into perspective.

[Creighton]

Dave, Sorry UK is out.
Here is a post from another board from one of the US soliders overseas. Doesn't matter who or where he is. Please don't ask.

Over the last couple weeks it has been mostly quite at the gate.

A man brought a small child in about a week ago. She had been ran over by a bongo truck. Her midsection was a mess, she had a fractured leg and her face was all scraped up. Heater called it in to the CP (Command Post) and got the ambulance enroute. We thought she was a little boy when we called it in. Turns out she wasn't. you can usually tell boy or girl by just looking at them. But her face was a pretty messed up.

We talked to the medic at the end of shift that day and he told us the child was a girl and that she was still alive when he handed her off to the doctors. Last word I got is that she is recovering.

(We have been mortared 3 times so far today. All clear just came across the speakers again. It's 2:16 P.M. here. I didn't even here them explode. Must have been on the other side of base.)

Just the other evening after our shift, around 9:30 PM a man brought in six wounded. He works for the US and the enemy told him to stop working for the US and if he didn't he would pay.

He did pay. Our cowardly enemy RPG'd this mans home and killed his 8 year old son and blew one of his 6 year old daughters legs off. She survived. The other injuries to his family members were shrapnel and were only minor. All because he wants peace in his country and to have a good life for his family. Freedom is not free.

When we got on shift at 4:30 AM he was still there, waiting for word. He stayed there all day and got to go in and visit his daughter. He was also given special visitation rights to be with her. visitation is only every other day here but base command allowed him to visit his daughter every day.

We have detained several people over the last couple weeks. Most are questioned and released and many provide good intel.

We finally found a guy we had been looking for, for quite some time. He wasn't a bad guy for the most part but he did have information and we were instructed to find him and bring him in.

Sham, Heat and I were all sitting in our truck then the CP called and needed us for something so we headed back in.

On our way back in we saw a man, an older overweight man, walking hastily in our direction. We stopped and he told us somebody had just stolen his cell phone. We made a u-turn and headed out after the guy.

We never did see him anywhere. This guy disappeared into thin air. He probably had somebody waiting with a car across the canal.

I was driving kind of slow so we could all scan and look for the guy when I saw out of the corner of my eye a car stopped on the road side waiting for us to pass and in the car I saw a guy with his head tilted down and his hand covering part of his face. But I still recognized him. I hit the brakes and said, "Sham, thats our guy." Sham said, "Which guy?" I told him, "Thats the guy we have been looking for, for the last couple weeks."

Sham and the Gun Truck 2 truck commander jumped out of the trucks and approached him, we gave up on the cell phone thief, he was long gone, They asked his name and it was our guy. He was not being detained and Sham asked him to drive his car to the gate, park it in the lot and we would take him to the CP because there were some people wanting to talk to him. The man did not want to. He was scared. He asked if we could "detain" him and make it look like he had done something wrong. so we obliged.

The terp drove the mans car in and we ziptied and sandbagged him.

(We just had another stinkin mortar attack. Heard the "all clear". Boy they sure are getting rid of some mortars today. It's 2:55 PM. Didn't here those explode either.)

Today we handed out ice cold water to a bongo full of people. They were parked on the road side and after they had been there for a while we decided to go and see what they were up to.

They were just farmers and the men were setting in the front of the vehicle and there were three kids and two women in the back waiting for two other women to finish up harvesting some kind of crop. When the men told Sham what they were doing sitting there he told the men, "Maybe if you got out of the vehicle and helped the women it would go a little faster." The two women in the back started laughing. Sham called out the lazy men right to their face. It was funny and that is their culture but it's still quite annoying to see perfectly healthy grown men sit there and not even help with the harvesting.

Sham and Carder handed out several ice cold bottles of water and instructed one of the children to take the two ladies out in the field a bottle of water each.

A few minutes later, while we were still stopped behind the bongo truck, the men waved the women in from the field for the day.

I know today we went against there culture, tradition and how they live. Oh well. Thats what you get if you are a lazy Iraqi and you decide to park in our view. Not all the Iraqi men are like that. That is the part I don't understand. some get right out there and help the women. I guess it's easier not to.

In the states some say dishes and house cleaning is "womens work". We all know that isn't true. You work as a team. Over here all the herding and planting and harvesting is "womens and childrens work" though tradition in the US is thats "mens work".

The women do most of the field work here. The men are lazy and just drive them around. If a women bundles up grass for the animals or wood for the fire she carries it all the way back to her house on her head. sometimes, if a women takes a break along the road with a large bundle of wood or grass, we will go out on the road near her and flag down somebody with a truck and aske them to give her a ride home.

What we did today was wrong. I admit that. We should not try and push our way of living on others over here. it is up to them to change there archaic ways. We did it anyway.

(Maybe thats why we keep getting mortared '> )

[davethebirdman]

Thanks Criegton.

Saturday was also the 90th Anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. 20,000 British Troops died in the very first day of the battle. Over the top just to be picked off by German Machine Guns. At that time during the War Battalions were made up of "Pals" whole villiages, factories etc  joined up together and formed battalions. That day villages were just wiped out because there were no men to return to them.

And we get upset over a game of football.

Right no more morbidness. Lets get back to our Soda Machines and thank God (or whoever you think of when you need insipration) that there were and still are peole prepared to do what it takes to ensure we sleep safely in our beds at night.

[rogerz]

Wow a pretty powerful post! Thanks for sharing it.

rz