Back in the fall of 2003, a few short months after we invaded, we were searching an area on the Tigris south of Baghdad. It was all agriculture, using water from the river, just as in biblical times. It had been a quiet day and I was humping “The GUN,” aka the M240B. After finding a few weapons caches, we started to take fire from some stone huts and farm buildings. We moved into a house in order to get the guns on the roof so we could lay down suppressive fire for the line squads to maneuver. As I was waiting in the courtyard with our medic for my AB, AG, and Sqd Leader to clear the back staircase and roof, all was quiet then I heard this huge crash over head and thought someone was trying to jump out of this tree on me. I maneuvered the 30lb gun as fast as possible, orienting it up toward the sound with the 7.62 belt across my forearm. Fully prepared to see a grenade come dropping out of the tree, it wasn’t an enemy at all, it was a HUGE Turkey, HUGE, that somehow got up in this tree and none of us noticed. I nearly had a heart attack.

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