Sunday, 15 August 2004 - A Late Night Gunfight?

I was sitting in my hootch at about 2330 (11:30 pm for all you non-military types) getting ready to go to bed when out of nowhere I started hearing small arms fire.  And then I heard some more, and then some more, and then A LOT.  I sprung out of my bed and went outside to see what was the matter (sorry to sound like the Night Before Christmas).  At this point there is small arms fire coming from all over and the sky was lighting up with tracer rounds like the Fourth of July.  Either this is one of the biggest firefights of all time or the Iraqis are worked up over something, I thought.  As if on cue, one of our medics arrives at the living area and says, "I think the Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team had a game tonight..."  So I jumped back into the hootch and looked up some Olympic results on the internet.  There it was; the Iraqi soccer team shut-out Costa Rica 2 to 0.  I was quite impressed; it is not well known, but the Iraqi team was flown out of here by the Australian Air Force as there still are no commercial flights in and out of Iraq. 

I went back outside and at this point almost every person in the entire living area was outside watching the display.  Literally hundreds of shots per minute were being fired (into the air?) and there were tracers illuminating the sky.  This went on for approximately twenty minutes.  I cannot imagine the amount of ammunition these people expended.  Hopefully they will now have much less to shoot at our soldiers, although I don't think they made a very big dent in their supplies. 

I think someone could make a lot of money by opening up a fireworks stand in downtown Mosul...