Automatically, the title suggests there are more posts coming, but I figure I’d let it stay open (like the ending of The Terminator) to allow for more down the road.
We were all riding around town in the Strykers, the hot, dry air and the stench of burning trash filled northern Iraq’s largest city. Those around me were all familiar to me, but some did not belong to my squad; my team leader had been replaced by another member of the platoon with whom I had been in constant conflict with. We were then called up to a vehicle chase nearby where a car had been hijacked and a family taken hostage; we responded to the area to find the car pulled over and the occupants out.
As the ramp of the Stryker dropped, I was the second one out and immediately drew down on a man with my M4 rifle. In Arabic, I shouted for him to show me his hands or I would shoot. The man was heavy, perhaps 5’8” and 240 pounds. The other occupants of the vehicle were not near him, but were clearly victims of this crime. As the rest of the squad dismounted the vehicle, the man quickly reached down into his waistband. All I could think at this moment was “Congratulations! You shot the guy holding a cell phone” booming in my mind.
I watched, in a sort of slow motion, as the man pulled out a pistol and began to raise it. I saw this unfold in what seemed like several seconds, but was really only a mere fraction of a second. I flipped the selector switch from safe to semi and quickly squeezed the trigger several times. The fat man’s chest rippled as the 5.56mm projectiles tore through his flesh, sending fine mist spraying out the back. He slumped to Earth and the pistol clattered across the ground.
I woke up in a cold sweat…. This was not the type of dream I was used to having. This had not happened to me before in such absolute realism. I could feel every sensation in the dream for the first time ever. After this, I rushed next door to tell my friend Paul about it. He told me that sometimes you have weird dreams because something is trying to tell you something. Nice and vague.. thanks Law Dawg.
At the time of this dream, we had been deployed for about 8 months in North-west and north-central Iraq. We saw some wild action and suffered the loss of three members of the company. My mind had been conditioned to the sights, sounds and sensations of combat and I basically shrugged off the dream
About a month later, that near-exact event occurred. The differences were that my actual team leader was there, the guy was a skinny one and I shot him in the throat instead of the chest. After we bagged up the body, my buddy Paul yelled from the hatch of his Stryker: “Jack, it’s your fuckin’ dream, bro!”
So, this sounds like horse shit, but that’s okay. Real deal. Like it or leave it. J
Peace out.
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