Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Michael Yon: Part 1 of Death in the Corn

Michael Yon has another moving account of the magnificent performance of our friends, the Brits, as they take on "Terry Taliban."

Some choice bits:

The soldiers are living like animals at a little rat’s nest called FOB Gibraltar. They call it “Gib.” Named after the lynchpin of British naval dominance in the Mediterranean, this cluster of mud huts in the middle of hostile territory is more like Fort Apache, Afghanistan. The British soldiers from C-Company 2 Para live in ugly conditions, fight just about every day, and morale is the best I have seen probably anywhere.

-snip-

On Thursday nights, the ANA have what the Brits call “man-love” night, or “man-love Thursdays.” Interestingly, Iraqis would sometimes say that a man is not a homosexual unless he has sex with other men when he is over thirty. At that age, they say, a man should stop, or else he’s a homosexual, which is a perversion of faith. I recall reading Ahmed Rashid’s fantastic and prescient book Taliban, which was published before the war. Mr. Rashid described a tank battle waged between warlords over the services of a young boy. Boys are for pleasure, women are for babies, they say. Such is this land, Jurassic Park.

Read it all here.

May God bless and keep you, Michael Yon.