Something special in the air...

Jim, nothing against you and your fellow American buddies (except no leg room and charging for meals), but yesterday it was not American Airlines that has something special in the air. As I walked out of the hospital, I heard a series of booms, about three in a row. From my personal vantage point on this war, there are several types of booms that are common. It is not uncommon to hear IED's exploding outside the FOB, artillery counter-fire although not as often as I would like, and all too often incoming mortars and rockets and the like. Some would say they each have their distinct sound signature, but I was not a sonarman so I can not tell for sure. To me, a boom is a boom and the biggest variance is in how loud the boom is.

These booms that I heard were a cross between machine guns and IED's, similar to a Mk-19 for the benefit of Tim and Koichi. They were also of the not so loud variety, which is my favorite type. As I was taking my first step to the nearest bunker, I noticed a bunch of people just standing around looking at the sky so naturally I did too. There I saw two of the cutest little helicopters just going around in circles, and every third or fourth pass they would unload with five or six rockets. As I watched, I was reminded of stories from WWI where soldiers would watch dog-fights from the trenches, only there was no enemy in the sky and Rusty is a far cry from the trenches. I would much rather everyone out here in Iraq just behave so that no more of these booms and this shooting would go on, but since that doesn't seem likely this week it is nice to know that our helicopters are shooting back.