Stucked in a minefield, a very boring and long day...

Sorry that I have been away for some time, Mai was not really my office months... Sometimes even time for a small blog input is not possible... Been travelling a lot... But I will get back to that another day...

During a very interesting day soon many years ago me and my military brothers where on our way out on a routine survellience mission... I was going to take a small shortcut to get up on the correct dirt road. The weather was fantastic and even if it was morning I my shirt was wet of sweat under the bulletproof west.

I was the driver that day and when I turned the big military vehicle up on the gravel road my tailgunner started to scream: "HALT"

I pushed the breaks max and we came to a sudden stop...

Out to the left in front of us was a pole-mine that was connected to a piece of thin cable that crossed the road. Behind us we saw another one with just the same kind of setup as the one in front.

My SGT went on the radio and reported the situation in to the base and the rest of us went up on the roof off the truck. After a couple of minutes he came up on the roof, with a sour face:

"We have to wait here until a EOD unit is available (EOD=Explosive Ordinance Disposal), and all of them are a couple of hours away..."

So what should we do on the roof of a APC = (Armoured Personal Carrier) for a couple of hours.

hmmm....

We had the following items available:

- 1,5 kilos of pistage nuts

- 15 MRE (Meal Ready to Eat)

- 95 litres of Water

- A lot of tobacco

- 10 magazine of the kind that boys likes sometimes... (you can decide what you think yourself)

All of us bored to death already the first hour, started to dig in to the nuts and water and food. The problem was that we had to behave and act proffesional due to the fact that this situation was seen as a "serious-issue" and a small mobile-crises-base was put up on the nearby hilltop overviewing our vehicle and the minefield, with company commander tent, medivac etc.

So the biggest question, how do you sit on the roof of an APC and look proffesional????

After some looooooong hours a british EOD team came and cleared the area for us and their first comment when they arrived to our vehicle:

- HAHAHA... THAT IS A LOT OF NUT SHELLS....

We said:

- 1,5 kilos of pistage-nuts creates a lot of shells, but it is ok no mines under the shells, what took you soo long...

We had during the time ate all the pistage nuts and of course created quiet a big pile of shells around the car...

When I look back to what we actually did on the roof this day I dont rememer really, I only can think about the nuts...

hmmm... Interesting...