Reality of War

I think I have suppressed a lot because we have seen so much. You know you are that camera in the sky looking at everything and, you know, again like I said we worked with so many different units, so many different countries like even Special Forces guys came in and used us for some of their ops. And we were three weeks in. Right as soon as we got on the ground it was straight into operations. We didn’t have any workup training. We got qualified the equipment to go over and fly and that was basically it, there was no other training because time crunch just didn’t allow it. So we got on the ground, straight into operations and we are constantly chatting with the, we call it the TOC (tactical operation centre) and there’s a guy on the other side of the line there and we’re chatting back and forth what I’m seeing. I am telling him what I see. I am always constantly sending updates and he’s always providing the information or direction or whatever. There was a small group of individuals that were spotted in a field and they needed identification if they were farmers or if they were hostile. And with the heat and everything like that in a country like that it affects the camera so it’s not crystal clear image like you would see “drone imagery” on movies and stuff like that. So we’re doing our best to try and identify these guys. And before, I’m like half way typing my message they’re gone. It’s like a mist of bodies and stuff. So we zoomed out quite quickly just a kind of maybe we just lost them for a second but then you see things. You see the explosion and you see body parts landing and flying around and stuff like that so I just remember sitting there and I look over at my buddy and I go okay man this is the real deal. This is not Hollywood. This is not watching t.v. This is where we now need to be focused, vigilant and take this seriously. That was real early in the tour so that was the eye opener for me to say okay we need to be as professional at all times as much as we can.