Soldiers Tell The Dark Truth About Facing Child Soldiers In Combat - AskReddit

warning this content may be upsetting or disturbing to some audiences she wore a pair of old neon teal sweatpants and a red Minnie Mouse sweatshirt soldiers who have faced child soldiers in combat what has been your experience my buddy said that kids would often run up to the convoy trucks in Iraq and some of the guys would give them candy even though they weren't supposed to on one such occasion a kid tossed two live grenades into the truck one of the grenades was quickly tossed away to explode without issue the other was not as easy to get rid of and ended up amongst the group of kids the guys giving out candy were put on cleanup duty no idea what the approximate age of the children was and not many other details it was pretty rare to get him drunk enough and in a mood to talk about any of it there was a kid sitting on an overpass in Iraq dropping Molotov cocktails trying to make it into the Gunners hatch of all them raps in our convoy a 50 caliber gunner saw him and cut him in half he was probably ten years old or so I'm guessing how old he looked he could have been older it's hard to tell but they would do some messed-up stuff they would manipulate younger kids and get them to do things like attack us so they wouldn't be killed and to make us look bad like we're killing kids because we can I've heard stories of them using mentally impaired kids as unknowing suicide bombers they would strap a vest to them and tell them to go up to the American troops they'll give you candy and then when they approach us they'll blow them up my platoon sergeant was on his third tour when he joined our unit heading to the sandbox I'll probably never forget the time he just dropped in casual conversation in a joking manner you can take home a lot of things from your time in service but I'd rather not have been the first guy in my neighborhood with three confirmed kills and he just kept talking from there like he didn't want to give anyone else a chance to question what he just said it worked I never asked by the end of our tour nothing really happened the whole time he was not comfortable enough with us to tell some stories from his past tours one of them involved meeting a 13 year old Iraqi boy awkwardly trying to carry an RPG in the suburbs of Baghdad and the sergeant just up and running at the kid screaming at the top of his lungs firing his weapon as fast as he could in the air scaring the kid enough for him to drop the RPG and run I never saw his file to see if he had a bronze or silver star but I think here in something that a kid was likely just being used as a mule to bring garand ammo to insurgents so he wasn't likely a threat himself but he could have been shot for carrying a weapon by someone too quick on the trigger sergeant intervened but chasing someone through the streets is likely to get you isolated and shot so he had no idea what happened to the kid my old roommate never really talked about his time in Iraq but we were hanging out getting unreasonably drunk one night and he told me about killing a kid he was so upset about it but what are you supposed to do when they're shooting at you my heart breaks for him he's had a rough life in a lot of ways the last time I saw him was when I invited him out to grab a couple of drinks for his birthday he said yeah he might have some other plans to get to but he wanted to hang out anyway we sat around drinking and smoking and his phone didn't go off once we stayed until the bar closed he's very much a loner and really tends to push people away but I try to reach out occasionally so he knows someone cares my ex was British Royal Marines and fought child soldiers this was ten plus years before I met him but he had horrible nightmares and on a couple of occasions broke down crying while drunk he never told me everything in a coherent start-to-finish way but from what I've pieced together he killed one or more child soldiers protecting his unit it catapulted him into self-loathing he got awarded a medal for it refused to accept it but was forced to attend the ceremony with members of the royal family only got through it by drinking himself into a stupor and then spent the next four to five years with a serious coke habit before being able to transition into more moderate alcoholism so yay my best friend in the world known him since kindergarten he always dreamed of serving being Captain America you know went to the US Air Force Academy after high school got a history degree in dreamed of a 20 year career in the military and teaching high school history after that after a couple of years in the Air Force as an officer who transitioned into the army went through SF training and passed served all over the Middle East Africa south Amerika etc never told any stories he transitioned out a few years ago as an Army Special Forces captain within a year he took his own life while his wife and almost newborn baby were downstairs in his house I will never know the situations he faced but obviously it's enough that the strongest man I've known could and I can't speak for others and thankfully I never had to pull the trigger but I always gave them a lot more time in the crosshairs versus an adult there were several times they ran up unexpectedly waved a gun in our direction for just generally acted like they were going to attack us I'd put them in my sights and beg God please don't make me do this thankfully every time they'd stop what they were doing if it were an adult aiming a weapon at us they'd get zero thought I remember the ones I didn't pull the trigger on so much more than the ones that I did I'm sure a lot of soldiers would disagree with me but I sleep just fine at night I remember manning a guard post when some kid about 16 jumped out of his truck holding a huge knife and started walking towards me I was like what the hell is this kid doing he's got a knife and I'm wearing body armor and carrying an m4 he kept moving on us and no one I was with seemed to know what to do so I chambered around and aimed at the kid he froze i gestured towards his knife with the barrel of my weapon and the look of realization came to his face as he looked at the blade in his hand it was like he didn't even realize he was carrying it by this time everyone else was aiming at him I thought he was going to [ __ ] himself right after I did he turned around and ran back to his truck and took off to this day I have no idea what was going on maybe he was told to make his bones and that was the best he could come up with or maybe he wanted to talk to us legit and didn't realize he was holding a knife I don't know all I know is I almost killed him and if he was old enough to have some facial hair he would have been dead before he got to steps hell I wonder what the hell he was thinking or what the hell his deal was not me but a fraternity brother and close friend who passed away told me a story once about his second deployment in the Middle East he was an Army Ranger Army Special Ops and was a breacher in during all breaches because he had balls of steel and insane reflexes he told me that he killed the kid ones who couldn't have been more than 14 years old he said the action wasn't what haunted him he said it was how it happened he was leading the team through an alleyway to a door that led to a suspected illegal weapons cache and he held his breaching shotgun up to the door and gave count and as soon as he was about to breach the door swung open and a kid leaned out through the door with an ak-47 pointed outward so he blasted the kid in the face with a breacher shotgun and he said the look of surprise on the kid's face was what bothered him a mix of surprise and inevitability of his doom there's no running from a shotgun blast to the face I was with the sad death back in Angola my platoon and I had few brushes with the MPLA we mostly met poorly trained militias armed with old Soviet gear but I remember on one occasion we were entering a village where we were supposed to get water the village if we can even call it that had around 10 to 15 actual houses and of those at least half were abandoned I remember that our spotter yelled out to us telling us to get prepared our lieutenant saw something that visibly shocked him and called out our sergeant we received the order to issue warning shots south of our position that's when we all saw it around 30 to 40 kids with guns bigger than them with a few adults who seemed to be there cos our sergeant ordered us to target the officers and we did even after all six of their adults were killed in actions the kids still continued to shoot with no control of their fire after maybe five minutes the order came fire at will I don't remember if the entire platoon opened fire I remember I did in the moment I didn't quite think about who I was shooting I don't think anyone did all we saw was an enemy eager to send us home in body bags we saw enemy uniforms nothing else nobody said anything afterwards my comrades probably all willingly forgot this or justified it by saying something like us or them it's very easy to analyze the situation if you weren't there but when you're in the moment you forget that the ones on the other side are just like you so to sum it all up I opened fire without thinking too hard about it don't know if I regret it I just know I don't like remembering I knew a guy who served and we got drunk one night and I was the idiot who asked what's the worst thing you saw while serving over there he got quiet and got this faraway look in his eyes and then he told me this story I was in an armored convoy and we were in the middle of a patrol but it had been a pretty normal day the school buses that were used were pretty much just men events so the only way to identify it was a school bus was usually the sticker they placed on the side anyways the area we were in was known for placing copper on top of their bumps because when a bomb ignites the copper liquefies and basically goes through anything even our tanks can't block this so we're on patrol and a bomb goes off about ten feet to our right and I figured I was a dead man right then a school bus drove by and provided cover from the blast so only one of our soldiers was hurt but not seriously however that school bus was blown to hell most of the kids died but the worst part was the driver of the school bus survived who was a middle-aged woman but her legs and arms had been blown away from the blast so we had to drive her to the nearest hospital I'll never forget her screams especially because she had to sit under my legs since we had no room she screamed and screamed but mostly I won't forget the arms and legs of the children that had been destroyed from that blast it will haunt me forever didn't actually pull the trigger on the kids but was ready to convoy through a village and the kid reaches into a pocket and pulls out what looks like a grenade and tries to throw it I hesitated the grenade slipped out of his hand behind him it was a rock I was ready to kill a kid over a rock if it was a grenade and he managed to throw it my hesitation could have meant my buddies lives I'm glad it was a rock if you've never been in combat it's hard to explain to people how frenetic and chaotic combat can be you don't get a red pip that highlights where the enemy is you don't have a radar you don't get a notification that your shot hit its target you hear bullet sounds passed you smack into something near you ground wall trees vehicles etc and you get behind cover you then start yelling to your squad mates about where you collectively thing the incoming fires coming form sometimes it's obvious but usually it's not your even more in trouble if you're in an urban setting where there are noncombatant civilians running around we're still when you simply can't tell the difference between the two you're tying to not die you're trying to leave cover acquire a target shoot that target and then get back behind the cover before someone sees you and shoots you this does not leave a whole lot of time for pondering how old your target is what their motivations are or how long they've been a soldier mix this in with the kids who would run around trying to pick up brass in the middle of a firefight and it's just a hot chaotic mess I didn't want to die so I shot back most people who have been in combat will tell you something similar during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004 I was on a four-week operation in northern Iraq on the Syrian border with first Stryker Division four strikers four men each spaced every five miles boring as all get-out as we were literally just watching the same paths Dane and out for for mind-numbing weeks within the first few days an old woman from the local village would show up with a few kids and some pita type bread they give us stacks of the bread to eat and we'd give them candy and water this carried on every day into the second week until one day it was all different instead of the old woman and kids this day it was alone little girl maybe eight years old immediately the five of us on my truck knew this was not okay Yesi we'd usually see them coming up over a rise in the direction of the nearest village a mile and a half away our trucks had what is called a loris on them long rank advanced scout surveillance system John could read numbers off a credit card from a great distance and when they did they were usually running and excited happy and smiling this day this single little girl slowly walked over the rise towards us sobbing uncontrollably and carrying a huge stack of the pita type bread we called it in to our platoon sergeant and applied our learned rules of engagement initially we screamed at her on the bullhorn Tomic fought like hell nah stop or I'll shoot in Arabic all I ever bothered to learn oh and Sahara cigarette anyways still she pressed on once we saw she was and going to stop and walk within 400 meters of us we began to take warning shots into the air still she walked towards us we began to shoot into the dirt 30 meters to her right or left she pisses herself and pukes still holding the bread still walking towards us now she's 200 meters from us the whole time we are relaying the situation to our platoon sergeant he's screaming over the mic to all five of us I'm gonna be there in five Mike's if the threat isn't neutralized by the time I get there I'll do it myself me and one soldier had kids so we agreed we definitely weren't shooting a kid and the other three agreed everyone just froze up between the platoon sergeant screaming over the mic seeing the girl so obviously distraught literally pissing all over herself and throwing up knowing she's probably gonna blow up and one or more of us is gonna be injured or worse seeing her still trench forward amidst the screams over the bullhorn and the warning shots ringing out madness we all just froze not wanting to kill a kid and just like that when 100 meters or so away from us we heard a shot and then saw the hit against her chest and she fell flat backwards pita bread on her chest our platoon sergeant had came up behind us on his truck and just as he said if the threat wasn't neutralized by the time he got there he would do it himself so he did we waited for four hours for explosives Ordinance Disposal to come and confirm the stack of pita bread was hollowed out and three fragmentation grenades were inside then wire loop through the pins and around the child's waist meant to be passed off pulling the pins and blowing us up two weeks later when we finished the up and were fortunate enough to get 48 hours down time me and my four squad mates on the Stryker that refused to shoot a little girl were mercilessly smoked by the platoon sergeant for 24 of those 48 hours he ran us into the ground with a fury I've since never experienced you could all be dead and that little B exclamation mark dollar and hash would have been the one to kill you she was a little over four and a half feet tall she were a pair of old faded neon teal sweatpants and a red Minnie Mouse sweatshirt her hair was dark black and she wore it down wind kicking it everywhere I can see her face so vividly now as I write this I can hear my buddies screaming and arguing about what to do I can smell our grit and grime from being unbathed for two weeks I can still faintly hear her sobs that was 15 years ago and I will never forget the ugly nature of man I saw that day on both sides on there's for forcing a child to do such a thing and our side for having to kill a kid for thanks for listening to radio TTS hit the subscribe button and activate the notification bell for more videos let us know in the comments what you think about these stories and if there are any soldiers among you feel free to share your stories in the comments below [Music]

Channel: Radio TTS

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Keywords: askreddit, ask reddit, reddit, reddit best, reddit stories, reddit story, reddit top post, reddit stories 2019, reddit comments, best of reddit, reddit creepy, Military Veteran Stories, soldiers of reddit, soldiers story, War stories, r/askreddit soldiers, askreddit soldiers, reddit stories soldiers, reddit war stories, askreddit war, reddit soldiers stories, reddit being a soldier, reddit child soldiers, child soldiers facts, a child soldier's story

Id: EbDWLOWzEYM

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019