Personal Narrative-Haunted Ranger School
On May 7th 2006 I had just graduated Ranger school with my best friend in my platoon. We had both started the school as PFC’s and were immediately promoted to specialist after graduation. We also were moved into team leader positions as soon as we arrived back to our unit. At this point in time most of our platoon has been deployed at least once, either to Afghanistan in 2005 or the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. Upon our arrival back to our unit we immediately went into training and preparation for our upcoming deployment to Iraq. The unit was set to deploy in November to replace our sister unit operating out of COB Speicher near Tikrit. The type of missions we were conducting were new to all of us. Our normal means of transportation
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I could see the focus in the eyes of my men and I could see that they were well prepared and ready to execute this mission. We knew that we had about an hour and a half flight and normally most would take advantage of this time and get what sleep they could before clearing houses for the rest of the night. Something about this mission wouldn’t allow anyone to get any sleep. I kept going over the steps that I had to take to lead my platoon into the village. I wanted to get to the target house as quickly as possible and get security established to allow 1st squad to flow right in and clear the …show more content…
As I moved down the street to the next house, I noticed that the gate to the courtyard was open and again this just didn’t feel right. I relayed the info back and was told to proceed anyway. As I stepped inside the front gate I located the front door of the house and began moving towards it to get into position. As soon as I went through the gate an IED went off out in the street. I immediately turned and ran back out in the street to get accountability of my men. I was relieved to see that none of them had been harmed and even more relieved to hear that the other squads were all reporting the same. Until someone noticed a body in the middle of the street approximately 50 meters
I could see the focus in the eyes of my men and I could see that they were well prepared and ready to execute this mission. We knew that we had about an hour and a half flight and normally most would take advantage of this time and get what sleep they could before clearing houses for the rest of the night. Something about this mission wouldn’t allow anyone to get any sleep. I kept going over the steps that I had to take to lead my platoon into the village. I wanted to get to the target house as quickly as possible and get security established to allow 1st squad to flow right in and clear the …show more content…
As I moved down the street to the next house, I noticed that the gate to the courtyard was open and again this just didn’t feel right. I relayed the info back and was told to proceed anyway. As I stepped inside the front gate I located the front door of the house and began moving towards it to get into position. As soon as I went through the gate an IED went off out in the street. I immediately turned and ran back out in the street to get accountability of my men. I was relieved to see that none of them had been harmed and even more relieved to hear that the other squads were all reporting the same. Until someone noticed a body in the middle of the street approximately 50 meters