Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Havr you ever gone "into the breach?!?!?"

It's a strange thing for sure. I worked for a guy that thought anyone that stated it was to rough to talk about was a pussy and I new a guy that wouldn't talk about it unless he was drunk, I also knew a guy that never talked about it and would get pissed if you asked.

I haven't been hrought it so I make no judgements either way, I just listen.

🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂

Thank you for your service!

No, thank YOU for my college money. 😁

Saddaam forgot that the M1 A can see and shoot through dust and smoke. Unfortunately for his tankers, as I recall the reports.

I think it was our Canadian friends that extinguished the oil well fires.

I think this was it.

The mig engines on a tank was Hungary, not Russia

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Doesn't seem like it's been 20 years. In 2003 I was with 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

January-February we sailed from Camp Lejeune aboard the USS Kearsarge. Crossed the Atlantic, the Straits of Gibralter, through the Med, through the Suez Canal, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and into the Persian Gulf.

February we were camped in northern Kuwait getting ready to invade Iraq. Incoming SCUDs from Iraq, [bleep] chow, shortage of MREs.

In March we invaded. Our mission was to essentially be door-kickers for the 1st Marine Division. We were to open a high speed avenue of approach for the 1stMarDiv all the way to Baghdad, so they would be fresh and fully provisioned as they entered Baghdad.

Along the way we had a lot of action in and around An Nasiriyah, participated in the rescue of Jessica Lynch. Went on to Ad Diwaniyah, Al Amarah, Samarah, Al Kut. Other little places along the way.

It was quite a time. Nothing else like it. Overall we suffered about 26 dead and 100 or so wounded.

I had served in prior hostile-fire areas in El Salvador, and Croatia. But Iraq was a true D-day style invasion of a foreign country. And there was no air campaign prior. The air campaign and the ground campaign both started simultaneously.

Amazing times and memories.


Our 'ride' , USS Kearsarge



In Camp Ryan, northern Kuwait. A couple days before we went in. I'm the tall one in the back row, with the cool glasses,



Leaving Iraq aboard a CH-53, heading back to the Mother Ship.

I did that same route on the USS Saipan. Feeling old

Edit: and those are some sweet birth control glasses!!!!

Thank You, and all the others for your service.

Yeah, the BCG's....grin

I'm 61 now, almost 62. I was well past my prime then. 41 years old is practically a dinosaur for Marines. Had my 42 b/d in Al Kut.

There are few things as universal in the DOD as BCGs. Regardless of branch - everyone notices.

The wookie next to him isn't wearing BCG's....

My little brother was a forward observer for the 1st, he was flown over a few weeks after Kuwait got run over.

My wife's sister didn't make it back. Anniversary of the scud attack that killed her is tomorrow. Will be at the annual memorial in Greensburg tomorrow. Still tough on the family after all the years.

I'm sorry for your loss. She is a hero.

Ironically, perhaps, but my job was to close the breach. Meaning slow the flow of trucks coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail every night. The NVA hid in the day, parking their trucks, bicycles, and beasts of burden under as much cover as they could. Our job was to plant small teams of courageous men near the HCMT to count trucks at night. That meant flying into Cambodia to receive their reports by radio each day, and be there to attempt to extract them when (not if) they were discovered.

It was a mission that Tricky Dick swore we weren't doing. And that meant that all of us were there doing it incognito. Flying an unmarked Cessna alone with no ID, no uniform, 100 miles deep into Cambodia made me a spy. With - unknown to me at the time - a $10,000 in gold reward on my head, dead or alive. With zero chance of the "alive" part if I had gotten shot down. It was strongly suggested to us that the .38 revolver we carried was not for defense, but in lieu of a cyanide pill.

Fortunately, although I was shot at a great deal (I quit counting after an estimated half-million rounds of ground fire) I was never seriously hit, and never wounded. My Cessna got me home 300 times.

You're welcome, it was the least I could do.

I went over as a civilian in 2004. Not "into the breach" because we got to pick where we went and stayed out of the bad neighborhoods. We were south of Baghdad, at Numaniyah.

We were there when the Marines went into Fallujah, those guys were into the breach, and I salute them and all others who came before and after!!

That's what I was, an enlisted forward observer. MOS 0861 Fire Support Man. At my senior enlisted rank I was no longer 'on the hill', but working as the Fires Chief in the Fire Support Coordination Center (FSCC). Still, as part of the Brigade FWD CP, we were working out of our Humvees, just behind the Infantry. Coordinating/deconflicting close and deep fires.

Neal Adams Firefighters is the outfit that extinguished most of the well fires in Kuwait. Find a copy of Kuwait In Flames for the on the ground video.

I was there (Kuwait) about 5 years after Gulf War 1 and some of the carnage and destruction that still hadn't been cleaned up was sobering and surreal.