/lit/ - Literature

>>18861587
I always considered myself a mercenary.
Shit was FUBAR from the start.

not to hijack the thread OP but does anybody know good books about afganistan? i was in ranger regiment for 6 years and would love to read a GOOD book written by someone intellegent about it. somebody like tim obrien. am i gooinmg to have to write the fucking book myself? yeah right, like i could do thaty. six years and i dont really have a fucking clue. basuically just SWAT world polcie tyhta fly in blackhaewk,ms and then drop hellfiure missles on compunds then we fly away back to bagram and play fifa and lift weight and i read my kindle,. what a fucking waste of time. we were good at killing i guess. but we arrested many many more people than wee killed. wqe would pick them up, bag their heads, zip tie the hand and then walk them to the exfil. when we got back to BAF or Scorpion, or shrana or wherever we would hand them of to the Spooks in theire vans and the woulkd take them to the bases WITHIN the bases andf who knows what happened to the bastards after thatr. thatnks fior the frree college uncle sam

>>18715405
start with the greeks

>>18696178
I loved those books in middle school. The ones where Master chief is a kid that gets abducted and cloned and put into the spartan program. so cool. It was probably a large influence on why I joined the army and went into special operations. obviously based on childish romanticized ideas of war but it is what it is. at least it allowed me to learn what war actually is and now I can better appreciate The Illiad

me

We had a mission one deployment where we were going to clear out a training camp near J-bad close to the border of Pakistan. Before we flew in they were doing a lot of bombing runs to soften up the target. The entire company was in the JOC watching the TV screens that showed live feeds from the aircraft. Every time they killed someone the whole room would cheer like we just saw our team score a touchdown.
There was one group of 4 guys that I remember vividly. They heard the 30mm rounds being fired and started to scatter before they hit the ground. 3 of them were killed instantly, but one of them managed to avoid the first salvo. He started to run towards the peak of the mountain. When he reached the top he fell to his knees and started praying before the next burst of 30mm obliterated him. I didn't cheer when he died.
When we were on the target we had to clear through all the bodies and get their DNA and pictures for the database. I was point man while we were clearing through one of the valleys. By this time the bodies had been in the sun for 2 days and they had begun to bloat and rot. I was able to locate them by smell alone. One guy's organs have burst out of the small of his back and bloated as large as his entire torso. I had to roll one guy over to get a picture of his face, and when I grabbed his arm the skin slipped off like a velvet glove.