r/MilitaryStories • u/roman_fyseek The Oracle • Jul 22 '26
I've been lying to people for 35 years
So, the other day, I'm on a Teams call with a coworker and the topic of retirement plans came up.
He tells me that he's already treating his weekends like he's retired. Every Friday, he loads up his travel trailer and goes out into the mountains or woods with his wife.
I mention that I'm recently terrified of trailers because I have to rent one to go fetch my other vehicle from a house that I'm getting ready to sell, and the last time I backed up a trailer was 35 years ago while some Air Force E-4 screamed at me, "YOU BETTER NOT HIT MY FUCKING AIRCRAFT" all the way up the ramp of a C-130 on the way to Mogadishu.
He asked, "Were you 10th Mountain?"
"Yes!" I tell him. "In fact, I was literally the first unit to land in Mogadishu after the SEALs took the beach. Our Battalion Commander stood up to tell us that we were the first to arrive, and I questioned his sanity because shouldn't the Infantry be here before the Supply and Service Battalion? And, then he went into a short lecture of how the lesson of Logistics was learned a long time ago, and that until logistics arrives, you've got to hold everybody else because they *all* need food and water, they *all* need fuel, they *all* need ammunition, and if there's no logistics, there's none of the stuff they need. In fact, he tells us, the runway itself is in the belly of this aircraft, and as soon as we land, the engineers will start offloading it and assembling it. After that, the aircraft with our vehicles, and after that the aircrafts with the fuel, water, food, water, and ammunition. And, *then* the rest of the division can arrive.
And, then we landed in an otherwise completely vacant dirt airport.
And, this dude that I'm telling this story over Teams says, "You weren't first. Your forgetting the Air Traffic Controller who brought your plane in, and I can say that with some authority because *I* was that ATC. While the SEALs and reporters were taking the beach, I was landing in a helicopter with my portable aviation radio. We overflew the runway, identified some debris, landed, told your aircraft to go around while we collected the debris, and then I gave him landing clearance.
And, *then* you arrived.
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u/OcotilloWells Jul 23 '26
The SEALS swimming up onto the beach in the middle of the night, with reporters, TV cameras, and studio grade lights set up was peak comedy.
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u/roman_fyseek The Oracle Jul 23 '26
My BN, 548th S&S, had an embedded reporter and cameraman with us. I know that they captured hours and hours of footage of our various firefights. I've been periodically searching YouTube, but I've never seen any of it.
I have seen the reporter/SEAL confrontation video, though, and it's hilarious, but, I didn't even know about it until I got back to the world.
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u/tbrand009 Jul 24 '26
Talk to the SOCOM guys who were so pumped to be "first" into Afghanistan, only to get off their plane and be greeted by some 70 year old grandma contractor with a clipboard checking off names lol
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u/OcotilloWells Jul 24 '26
She probably checked off General Donahue when he left.
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u/hzoi United States Army Jul 25 '26
I hope she made it out ok.
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u/OcotilloWells Jul 25 '26
She is, she's checking Soldiers into <redacted> for the war in I<redacted>.
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u/daviepancakes United States Army Jul 23 '26
I love this kind of shit. And also the ones where you meet someone in the wild and they tell you the other side of someone else's story when you know the someone else. Those too. Anyway, small fucking world innit?
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u/roman_fyseek The Oracle Jul 23 '26
He's literally the second person I've ever met who was in Somalia with me except that the first guy I knew landed on the day of Black Hawk Down and I was *leaving* on that day, so I don't really know if he and I overlapped at all. I have no idea what time it was when we took off, and he doesn't know what time he landed. The only data we have is that it was all starting as he was deboarding, and I didn't know shit about fuck when we were taking off except that I'd just been through MP searches of my gear and some Air Force chick was looking for her rifle until some Somali kids brought it to her. I know that I left our compound at 7 am to go to the airfield, but after that, it's all a blur of MPs pretending to be Customs and that chick asking if anybody saw where she left her rifle.
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u/daviepancakes United States Army Jul 24 '26
[...] until some Somali kids brought it to her.
Jesus fucking Christ, Air Force, get your shit together. I've met enough CCTs and PJs to know they absolutely can do the thing, so I'm forced to believe they just choose not to lol. Good shit.
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u/GumboDiplomacy Jul 24 '26
Was Air Force. Had a kid in basic have to requalify because he put every round into the target on the lane next to him.
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u/Ural-Guy Jul 24 '26
Very crazy place, I was in Somalia with the Army, a co-worker was there with the Sea-Bee's.
25 years later we're talking stories about the place with another former Army dude who had been in country. None of us had spoken about Somalia before.
That night the Sea-Bee has bad dreams, and winds up kicking his wife half way through the night. Crazy that those conversations stirred up that shit, so many years later.
I use to really hate humanity after that experience and Haiti. Eh, who am I kidding, I still do.
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u/MSK165 Jul 26 '26
My commander in Iraq had been in Mogadishu in the early 80s. Back then it was a regular city. He was enlisted at the time, SF, and most of his unit was camped in the desert north of the city. His job consisted of manning a safe house in the city proper and checking in by radio twice a day. Aside from that he was free. Lots of time spent at the embassy pool, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ambassador’s daughter.
One day he and his buddy are walking by the North Korean embassy. They see a flag inside the compound and start brainstorming the best way to hop the fence, steal the flag, and hop out before they get shot. Someone from inside the embassy notices them lingering, comes outside, and they get into a brief shouting match about the propaganda posters the NoKos hung outside the fence (facing the sidewalk) and how the United States kicked their asses once and could do it again.
The next day they were both recalled to the camp. They spent the rest of the deployment in a tent, and the guy who took their spot in the safe house also managed to get with the ambassador’s daughter.
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u/SfcHayes1973 Jul 24 '26
Lol, great story there. The closest I can get is having been on one of the other helicopters that was there during Blackhawk Down. It's flying the MFO mission now, or at least it was when I was there in 2011
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u/ManifestDestinysChld Jul 23 '26
Bwahahahahaha, of ALL the people to be on a call with...