Word: mortared
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...plagued by images they can't forget, some so disturbing that combat-stress workers in the field have to monitor one another for a state known as "vicarious traumatization." A soldier deployed near Baghdad for nine months witnessed several members of his unit torn apart by mortar fire. "I can't erase that picture," he says. "It's something I cannot take anymore." Some stressed-out troops can't control their rage. "They don't know who the bad guy is," says Anthony Pantlitz, a chaplain with the Army's 785th Combat Stress Company, "so they hate everybody...
...know the entire al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership is on the other side, and we can't do a damn thing about it," a U.S. commander complained to his officers on a recent tour of a firebase on the Afghan side of the border. He called in a mortar round that exploded only a few hundred yards short of a Pakistani border post--a warning that U.S. patience was being pushed to the limits...
...building. The high-explosive rounds set the bottom floor ablaze. First Lieutenant Joaquin Meno called up for the first story to be torched as well. "Let the f_____ burn," said a squad leader. When a group of insurgents brandishing RPGs was spotted 400 yds. south, Meno called in mortar fire from the rear and Abrams tank fire from the front. The insurgents had no chance. "Hey, LT, good call. That's perfect," said Bellavia. As if to punctuate the score, a direct hit on the building where the insurgents had taken cover set off repeated secondary explosions...
...industrial area, a hot spot particularly for foreign fighters and the scene of innumerable past battles with the Marines. Sporadic gunfire from the decaying warehouses, cement plants and junkyards provoked U.S. tanks to unleash high-explosive rounds at insurgent positions. The Wolf Pack's fire-support officer called in mortar fire on buildings and locations where movement was seen. Even in lulls in the gunplay, the Fallujah sound track was alive with detonations and the whomps of tank rounds...
...spent a few minutes every day scrambling into my chemical suit whenever Iraq sent a missile in our direction,” says 1st Lt. Bridget A. Sinnott ’01, part of the 642nd Engineer Company (Combat Support Equipment). “And in Balad, we got mortar attacks every night for a week before we left...