Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
So, lo and behold, they were pretty inquisitive, the major, about what I had in the back because they couldn't see inside. He got one of the kids to climb up on the back on the front because the driver's periscopes are like three-dimensional, World War One type things. So all this kid saw was a set of eyes looking through, which was my driver sitting in the hole. He put his AK down into the driver's hole because he's scared, the kid didn't know what's going on.
And I put the 50-cal machine gun around with the barrel pointing this far from his face, and I went, "Oi." And the kid looked at me, ran off because that would have turned him into pink mist. So he jumped off. And this RPA major kept pushing the point for those many hours about, "How many soldiers do you have?" I said, "I don't have to tell you, but I know how many you've got," because I knew exactly where they all were.
And funnily enough, he told them all to move and all they did was just move position so they were still there. So my guys... Actually it's dark. We had the sort of IR stuff, so like invisible laser red beams you see in the movies. And I told them, "Look, we're in communications with them." And I said through personal radios, I said, "Look, you need to take out the RPG's first, the kids with those who were on the technicals." So all these little red dots were on these kids.
They couldn't see it, but I could through night vision and stuff. And so that was fall back if we had to hit them first because those things would definitely make holes in me. So that was sort of how I talked to the infantry, that's how we got them. And when he said, "Right, we're going," and they were going to escort us back, I said, "Right, come in now." And then, to their surprise, the kids and this major, out comes these infantry with all guns ready go. And they just looked at them. They were behind them so they didn't know they were there. And they sort of mounted up and then off we went.
