Fellas, I'm an 11b deploying to Afghanistan in about a week. I've got all my things squared away and have a good idea of what I'll need from other guys who have been, but I've never been deployed before and I've never been shot at. The prospect of it doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure how I'll react under fire. I fee like I'll be fine, it even excites me a little bit, but perception is often different than reality. Any other vets on /k/ that have any insight or tips to mentally prepare?
>>30012225
Yes, play airsoft a lot (reaction under fire +5)
And video games like Insurgency (tactics +10) and Amnesia (fear management +20)
Also, shoot yourself with increasingly large bullets starting with .22LR to build an immunity
>>30012225
Look man, just breath and remember that you're fighting the result of our (the US) countries invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 or any other violation of, well, anything.
Trust me, I'm a Gunner's Mate in the Navy.
>>30012225
Take some extra shit paper with you.
>>30012258
>Countries
>>30012258
Honestly, the Taliban are in fact slimy little fucks with no respect for human life, who need to be exterminated.
>>30012225
I doubt you'll get into anything crazy. The war in afghanistan has wound down by a lot in the past few years. We're not in Korengal anymore. You'll be fine. Most you'll see is an IED or some asshole will blow up your porta shitter with a poorly aimed mortar before running away- don't worry, you'll still get your CIB for that
take a box of sharpies and lots of baby wipes
Just relax, treat everything with an open mind and learn from the people around you
>>30012383
Take lots of chap stick. 2nd for baby wipes.
I had a constant case of red ass and chap stick was the best cure. Probably used to much Tabasco but shitty shower schedule doesn't help.
Also take some small tubes of 1st Aid ointment, good for cuts and scrapes.
And take some Tabasco.
>>30012366
So are lots of extremist groups around the world. Pillaging countries is pretty hard to justify just because bad guys are in government.
>>30012225
You'll do your job if not for yourself then for your buddies. You will do fine. Listen to your NCOs and experienced guys in your team/squad. Be a team player. Don't ever be a puss. You will be scared and that is normal. Focus on your role in the team.
- USMC 0311 1998-2009
youll react however youll react. theres no point in worrying about it.
the more important thing is that you have at least 2-3 gb of porn.
>>30012600
This.
You'll may well fuck up or freak out in your first engagement, trust your NCOs and guys with deployments under their belt to carry you through it and don't dwell on it if it happens, just strive to do better.
The dorkiest guy in my squad was this sheltered farm boy from the Midwest (Nebraska IIRC). His name was Rose. He was my boot Pvt. and I his squad leader. He was naive and trusting of the world, always wore his Birth Control glasses. Had only driven dads pickup, a tractor and a combine no drivers Licenese. His first DL was from Uncle Sam and it was for a Humvee w/ a ma deuce on the roof.
Rosey had never been to a "fancy restaurant" called Outback Steakhouse and was confused when the waitress asked him how he wanted his steak cooked. He looked at me "Sarg'nt?" The waitress starts saying medium, medium well, well done. Rosey says to the girl who is about 4 years older than him "Yes ma'am of course I want it well done!" When his well done shoe leather comes out he says Sarg'nt mine doesn't look as good as yours. We all laugh. I explained it to him later.
Rosey was a good troop and I'll never forget the last time I saw him in Iraq. We were is southern Baghdad, Al-Dora district circa fall of 2005. Mixed suburban and rural area. Lots of palm groves and hiding places. Sunni loyalist area.
We got hit with small arms fire and mortars from a tree line 400 meters away. Rosey was on the ma deuce (M2HB) hammering away yelling at the top of his lungs for AMMO! Over the heavy fire. I had dismounted to call for fire after getting the truck in a half decent hull down position. Thier mortars weren't even registered on us. I was on the horn with Sherrif's net calling for gunships to cut these fuckers off.
I woke up in Germany full of shrapnel. I didn't see Rosey till I got back to Stewart 6 months later. He became one of my best squad leaders.
>>30012600
/bread
Former 11B here; you'll react like it's your job and your friends lives depend on you...probably.
A fraction of people (maybe 1 in 5?) freeze up their first time, and maybe 2 in 5 react slow.
Don't rush and don't freeze and you'll be fine. Do force yourself forward. Once you're in the fight, the action will take its own course, because you're generally better at the small-unit stuff than them.
The best way not to fuck up IME is to get yourself ready for the aftermath first. Your feels about killing are however you program yourself to feel, so get right about killing dudes now to avoid qualms or hesitation later. You want to be able to look yourself in the mirror 10 years down the line, so work out your personal ethics about ROE.
Also...barber's brush and baby wipes. And Afghanistan isn't what it used to be. It's a lot slower now.
>>30012792
I'd like to say something but can't figure out what it is I want to say
>>30012880
Finnish FO -team member here, even though I don't really want to think about it, I still find myself wondering how I would feel after the first time my team were to direct mortar fire on living targets (hopefully I'll never find out...)
>>30012258
That's pretty good bait!
>>30012971
>hopefully I'll never find out
Fag
>>30013020
fag=cigarette? what does the fack that I am a smoker have to do with anything, other than that in war I'd have to quit or else I'd be very soon a very dead FO -team member, probably taking the rest of the team with me...
>>30012225
Just do what you were trained to do, how you were trained to do it, immediately when you're supposed to. The killing part is easy: position, sight picture, breathing, trigger, and the target goes down.
The hard part is the homefront angle. Dump/divorce your gf/fiance/wife. You will have dudes in your platoon yelling and crying in the MWR because they thought their woman was special and different. That is more stressful on the individual than any mass cas.
>>30013045
I mean the fact you aren't eager and capable of killing for your country makes you a shit soldier. You think Simo was a faggot like you?
>>30012225
Got any medication or small shit that you would really like to have? Make sure you bring it with you for a guaranteed supply.
Make sure you have people ready and willing to hook you up with care packages.
Make sure you have a private supply of good toilet paper.
Smoke? Bring cartons with you, because shit is expensive overseas. Hell, you could be the guy that sells cigarettes to his friends for a buck or two above the price per pack you got them for (still cheaper than the price there) or sell them for face value and make some friends/earn some favors.
Oh, and stab any fucker who tries to steal your skittles.
>>30012258
does it even matter as long as you get the opportunity to shoot muslims?
killing muslims is OBJECTIVELY not only morally justifiable but a moral IMPERATIVE of every able bodied Western man.
>>30012613
>Makes so many spelling errors he has an image saved for when people call him out on it.
Ouch.
Online school?
>>30012225
Update your will, you're gonna need it.
>>30013077
not wanting (as in, not anxiously waiting for the chance-) to do something and not being able to do it are two different things, I might be able to kill, or I might not, but I certainly would rather not have to do what I was trained to do in a real situation, especially since if it came to that it wouldn't be some bunch of hardly trained goat-fuckers from Ragheadistan firing a couple shots from an AK in my general direction & the rest of the magazine in the air, most of the scenarios my unit trains for involve such things as repelling fucking air assaults, take a wild fucking guess whose air assault troops I'd be fighting against (those guys are nuts even by Finnish standards)...
>>30013158
>Isn't looking forward to laying waste to the slavs yet again
As I said, you're a fag
>>30013380
russkis are actually pretty bros, it's the assholes in Kremlin I'd more than happily remove with no trace...
>>30012917
You said enough with that faggot tumblr post.
>>30013380
also, I respect my grandfather way too much to bring myself to hate russian people just for being russian people; when a man who lost his father in WWII in a battle to liberate his home province gives you a stern lecture about how you shouldn't hate people for something their countrymen were forced to do & how hating will never achieve anything, what are you going to do, especially when it's more or less the last thing he ever told you?
>>30012792
Shit man, what unit of 3ID?
>>30013563
3-7 Cottonbalers by God!
>>30013465
Yeah it's hard to hate a people, society, government and culture that stand behind their claims that they dindu nuffin that theyre brave liberators who swear that war crimes like Katyn never happened
>>30013794
thankfully Internet trolls such as you are not the same as the population of a whole country
>>30012383
Why sharpies?
>>30012449
Why Tabasco?
>>30013934
>Why sharpies?
so that you can draw dicks in port-o-lets or what ever you call them
>Why Tabasco?
to put on the abomination called Meals Rejected by the Enemy, I think
>>30013121
He has a point, you dumb faggot.
>>30013136
>>30012225
That's good advice for any deployment.
Hell, you should do it annually, anyway.
Brave Rifles faggot OP. Go have fun being a fobbit POG cunt because no more real deployments are coming.
>>30014022
stay salty
>Afghanistan
Are we still doing that?
>>30012225
Combat Veteran here:
You have been trained to shoot people, when the time comes you will. Its after that is hard. Your friends will slap you on the back, tell you how bad ass you are and generally make you feel like you are Chuck Norris. Its the weeks, months and years later that lets you get fucked up over it.
So remember this:
1)Its okay to feel good about it, even a little proud (but dont brag)
2)It was kill or be killed. He would have killed you and all your friends if he could have...then chopped your heads off and filmed it.
3) talk to your buddies! 22 Veterans kill themselves every day and we all think about suicide sometimes. Talk about it.
4)Jerk off every chance you get. I am not even joking. Thats about the only way you can relieve stress without getting UCMJ action while over there.
5)dont blow all your money on dumb shitwhile you are there. Buy CDs and IRAs and shit. Maybe a kick ass gun when you get home bit dont drop more than 2k on it.
bonus: Fuck any and every girl you can when you get home.
>>30012225
Keep the moondust out of your gear at the end of each day
The locals/enemy are scum
Manlove Thursday is 'a thing' for both of them
Hydrate, also in some parts expect the weather/temp to change from desert to arctic
Stock up on Cheetos, sunscreen and foot powder
Don't be too excited or wishing for contact, chances are it'll be over before you know it and there's not a lot of stand up fight left in them- just IED's everywhere. See some shit in the ground that doesn't look right, don't go near it and let your next in command know
>worry about how you'll react under fire
>stress about it for weeks
>practically piss yourself when heading out on your first patrols
>finally come under fire many months later
>the dreaded reaction has finally come
>"Whoa, lol"
>>30012225
>Any other vets on /k/ that have any insight or tips to mentally prepare?
lol no, not really. All of your stress inoculation training, by now, have stacked up on each other enough. When you get into a TIC you'll feel super excited, it's uncontrollable. And you'll be slightly confused for the 1st moment, then spring into action by the 2nd second. That's how it goes.
By the time you've been in 3 TICs, you will feel confident about it all, from that point forward.
-The only caveat to this is that the first time you make a decision which leads to someone dying, you'll second guess the premise of the war itself a lot. And you'll not want to be a leader for a while. But your combat effectiveness and reaction under fire will be entirely unaffected. ie. You watched your bro die, will you now cower from gunfire? No, nothing will make you cower from gunfire anymore.
Trust your training. It turns absolute dunces into infantrymen. AAAAAAND gl hf ;)
>>30013121
That image is a pretty common /pol/ meme
>>30013407
People in the Kremlin aren't there by chance, ok
-Ruski
>>30012225
I dunno if you will find this thread up but if you do, the advice so far ITT has been Breddy gud, shitpoasting notwithstanding.
Take a one inch wide paint brush or two to keep moon dust out of your weapon. Actually take three. One for you. One for when you lose or break the first one. And one for the crewserved weapon in your squad. You don't want that thing to ever go tits up.
Take two identical decks of cards. One will serve to replace lost cards from the other.
SHIT TICKETS == SOLID FUCKING GOLD!
Take a good multi tool and a good heavy fixed blade knife.
Take a camera. Phones take shit pictures.
Pay attention in CLS class.
>>30013059
A roommate of mine in Giessen broke his hand punching the cinder block barracks wall when his wife left him. He wrapped a sock around his bleeding compound fracture, went to the bar (the Mr. Jones, iirc), found a sloot and fucked her at the bahnhof. He went to the medic that next Monday.
man combat vet here; remember one thing, if you rush in your going to die, let someone else be hasty. Thank you for your service young man and god speed, come back and I hope the world gives you what you deserve.
>>30018651
Change your diaper liar.
>>30012225
You should get a trench periscope so you don't get your head blowen off looking around corners.
