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Iraqi Freedom Story
Below is a story submitted by Darryl Jensen that occurred during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Click Here to read about Darryl Jensen |
March 20th Close Call |
March 20, 2003: So there I was in Northern Kuwait preparing to head into Iraq and assist the effort of taking down Saddam. The war officially began the night before and the coalition forces were invading Iraq. It was about 8:30 in the morning and I went in to the communications tent and started going through all the network connections ensuring they were all still working. Of course my team was awesome and they were all up as expected. A little bit of time went on and around 10:20am we heard a loud roar coming close to our camp. So we were totally stoked to see some Jets flying overhead. We ran out of the tent and looked around for a second and then we saw what looked to be a 20 foot missile going overhead about 100 feet in the air.
This is totally awesome was my initial thought about this and just wishing I had my camera rolling so I could catch the 3 second glimpse of this thing fly by. Well once the excitement ran through my system, I realized the direction it was flying was the wrong way. That damn Missile was heading into Kuwait and towards Camp Commando the Marine Headquarters and logistical base. So I head back into the communications tent and start getting all of my gear together while trying to get in touch with the Main communications hub located on Camp Commando. For the next 5 minutes I am getting no answer from them and thinking the worst.
After my 10th time trying to get through to them, our camp alarms started going off and we were in full Mopp gear (Mission Oriented Protective Posture – Gas Masks and NBC suits (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) for the next hour. Throughout all of this, I still did not know if Camp Commando was safe and we all sat in the bunker hoping for the best. Every time we had to be in bunkers prior to this, we all joked around and had a good time. However, this time, it was dead silent (except for that annoying alarm!). Finally we got the all clear message and we were able to get out of the bunker and it was then we found out the missile hit within a hundred yards of the camp was not only armed with a conventional warhead (meaning minimal explosion and no gas).
This missile was a Seersucker anti-ship cruise missile that was modified to fly over land at low altitude. This left it undetected by the Patriot missile defense system. It was great to hear from Camp Commando when they finally left the bunkers and resumed their posts. Nobody was injured by this missile, and thousands of Marines were able to go on living their lives! Fortunately, the worst thing to come of this Missile was the 20-25 Scud Alert sirens that went off throughout the rest of March 20th and into March 21st. Many hours were spent in the bunkers those few days and it was a great experience I will not forget anytime soon.
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Just another quick story, on March 21st, a British soldier in my camp was on guard duty with a .50 caliber machine gun and was not paying much attention. So around noon, he ended up pulling the trigger and firing off about 10 rounds and causing the entire camp to hit the Birm and made their M16’s at the ready to engage in combat. Fortunately their was no enemy in sight and the British soldier ended up getting Crap duty for the next few weeks! ;-)
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| If you have Pictures, Videos, Stories or anything else you would like to share from Operation Iraqi Freedom, please share with me. You can email these to me at MyWarPictures@gmail.com. Anyone who participates, will shortly after have their items uploaded for the world to see. Please see the Submittal Information Page. Click Here To View The Page
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