brinktk
Active member
It had been only a day or two since we had crossed the LD from Kuwait into Iraq. The war had just started and everyone was anxious to get into a fight.
We were moving in our Bradleys about an hour before dawn when we spotted this huge mass moving towards us about 800 meters to our front. In the thermals it looked like hundreds of infantry moving towards us. We could see muzzle flashes from the body of "soldiers" and all of us thought that the Iraqis must really have their act together on this one...
The entire battalion opens up on this formation with eveything we have. After only a few minutes the firing stops and we start to move out again. We call up our contact report and they are wanting a Sitrep on how many we killed. We told them to wait while we move out to see the damage that had been done.
As we get closer, and the sun starts to come up we realize exactly what has happened...There was a massive heard of camels that some Iraqi soldiers had decided to hide in. They were taking pot shots at us from within the heard. In our thermals it had looked like hundreds of people because they were so close together and with the muzzle flashes we had assumed they must have been a battalion or more of bad guys...when in fact it was just a few Iraqis using the hundreds of camels for cover.
Hence the saying, "we flew 10,000 miles to smoke a camel"
We were moving in our Bradleys about an hour before dawn when we spotted this huge mass moving towards us about 800 meters to our front. In the thermals it looked like hundreds of infantry moving towards us. We could see muzzle flashes from the body of "soldiers" and all of us thought that the Iraqis must really have their act together on this one...
The entire battalion opens up on this formation with eveything we have. After only a few minutes the firing stops and we start to move out again. We call up our contact report and they are wanting a Sitrep on how many we killed. We told them to wait while we move out to see the damage that had been done.
As we get closer, and the sun starts to come up we realize exactly what has happened...There was a massive heard of camels that some Iraqi soldiers had decided to hide in. They were taking pot shots at us from within the heard. In our thermals it had looked like hundreds of people because they were so close together and with the muzzle flashes we had assumed they must have been a battalion or more of bad guys...when in fact it was just a few Iraqis using the hundreds of camels for cover.
Hence the saying, "we flew 10,000 miles to smoke a camel"