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February 18, 2005
1st Lt. Prakash and Armor Geddon
As the blogosphere has exploded in popularity, the term "must read" has been understandably overused--all of us who blog are passionate about something, and we think it's vital that everyone else see it too.
Well, for any of you who have any opinion about the war in Iraq, I have a "must read". It's a blog named Armor Geddon by 1st Lieutenant Neil Prakash, a tank platoon leader from 2nd Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. He was recently awarded the Silver Star for his actions under fire in Ba'qubah June 24. Neil was an ROTC cadet at Johns Hopkins, and on a sure track to medical school, when he was sidetracked by the allure of commanding a tank. A good description of the battle is given here; it's obvious that Lt. Prakash is an outstanding young officer.
He's also an astonishingly good writer. A simple narrative would be interesting enough, but Neil has the quality all good writers have: the ability to see beyond the rush of events to pick out the important ideas. His narrative is packed with description, yet reads easily; it sounds cliched, but I felt like I was sitting in the seat next to him:
“Alright SGT P. Let's hit it with main gun. 3 rounds each” I requested some added firepower from SSG Terry. Let’s hammer this garage. I put my video camera up to the GPSE as I watched the LCD screen of the camera. BOOM.
“Damn!” One section of the garage blew up. BOOM. I watched a red beam shoot across the ground from my left as SSG Terry nailed the garage again. BOOM. SGT P hit the garage with another HEAT round. BOOM. “Oh shit! He hit the light pole!” SSG Terry’s HEAT round just happened to hit dead center of a street light pole. The pole went down like a tree but the round hit its target. The garage was hurting.
“Disarm the gun,” SGT P told PFC Langford. The turret smelled of cordite and carbon. I loved that smell. And the smell of the ammo storage. That little compartment had its own distinct sweetness to it, which was only exposed when the ammo door opened.
The garage was pummeled and I don’t think any more bad guys were going to try that. We probably rocked the shit out of those Bradley guys from the concussion of the main gun. Whatever. This was our fight.
The point of this is not to "glorify" war. As a normal American male I figure it has to be fun to fire an Abrams main gun. But it's not that. The impressive thing to me is to see the combination of utter professionalism and 25-year-old chutzpah, all underlined by a tangible, unsentimental dedication to protecting America.
Fascinating and inspiring stuff.
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Comments
You are right about Neil Prakash. "Where do we find such men?"
Carpe Bonum has a complete index to his Fallujah series here: Armor Geddon's Fallujah series index http://cbcbcbcb.blogspot.com/2005/02/armor-geddons-fallujah-series-index.html
Posted by: Carpe Bonum at February 21, 2005 11:39 AM
