Our own little 4th of July

Its June now in the desert, and yes, it is getting pretty hot here now. Fortunately I will be going home soon. In the hospital we have been super busy lately. As was seen on various news channels, there was a recent mosque bombing that resulted in numerous casualties. We received a lot of these and have been managing several burn patients for last few days. It is really sad what the ordinary Afghan has to deal with in his or her daily life.


Before it got really busy, we had another play day with various weapons on the open range. This was our chance to make our own little 4th of July fireworks show! Behind me is the mountain that we plan to kill with our fireworks. Here I am holding a smoke grenade. It's a lot bigger than the kind you find at your neighborhood fireworks stand.




Ooooo, pretty. Ok, enough smoke, lets shoot something bigger!




Now we're talking. It's time to load up the 50 cal. This string of bullets is sold beside the bottle rockets, and are also sold by the "gross".





Die mountain! Here I am shooting the "240" mounted on the back of the truck. I really need to get one of these, you know, in case I ever see a snake or something in the back yard.






All right, what else did we buy at the fireworks stand this year? Oh yeah, excellent choice! This is a handheld Mark 19 40 mm grenade launcher, perfect for those backyard family get-togethers. It works like a 6 shooter. The six shells you load can be flares, smoke grenades, parachute flares, explosive grenades, or for $2 extra, a random mixture. Die mountain!





Look at this guy, how cute is he? He's one of the local kids who came over to check out the action.





It feels wierd to me that I wear all this body armor and he's out here in regular clothes. I had to get a pic with him.











All right already, lets get to the big stuff! Ahh yes, the mother load, grand finale. I see we have a Carl Gustav 80 mm recoiless rifle, excellent for you deer hunters out there! These things have so much explosive percussion, that the Army only allows a soldier to fire it 5 times in one day, for fear of acute lung injury---awesome.








This is one of the 80 mm shells you load into the weapon. In case you missed them, they are located all the way in the back of the fireworks tent on the really really expensive table.







This is so cool, I had to include video. Turn up the volume and imagine you are here.






And for another grand finale, we decided to just have an all out murder the mountain fest, and see how much ammo we could burn through. Boy, I hope there is no one hiking in those hills today...






This is a little restaurant here on the FOB. It is run by an Afghani man, serving up the local food. It was great! It seemed to me similar to Indian food. We had bread, lentils, rice, beef stew, a pita packed with beef and cheese with a cream/yogurt dipping sauce, and hot green tea. Yum. All for $5.

Here we are (my CRNA partner and I) standing outside the bazarre. We saw these KPF (Khost Provicial Forces)--some of the good guys here in Afghanistan--vehicles with their rear mounted AK-47's, and had to get a picture. I was looking a little rough, because due to work in the OR, I hadnt had a shower in 2 days. Oh well.
Happy 4th of July America!