So, I saw the “Mystery High Speed Dude” post and it reminded me of some of my experiences working with CAG guys way back when, so I felt like writing some of them up for my Army “diary.” Might as well share.

I was an 11B in the 82nd, nothing special, but I was lucky enough to be on the right deployment in 2005 when two companies from my battalion got peeled off and assigned to the JSOTF hunting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in western Iraq. This meant we were assigned to directly support CAG and we rolled out with them near nightly and either acted as their hammer or their diversion while they did their hits. It was not any thing I ever expected to do as a “regular” guy. Here are some funny/noteworthy things I remember. I’m going to be vague in places for obvious reasons.

We always had at least one CAG guy (let’s go with CG from here on) with our platoon when we went out. They were basically the liaison between us and the main team so we didn’t fuck anything up. On this particular mission we had one CG and his interpreter. The terp was a former service member who spoke fluent Arabic. He swore to us (later) that he was a civilian, but he was well armed and indistinguishable from the rest of us (in uniform). We go into this town one night and immediately get bogged down in a firefight. We do some shootin’ and maneuverin’ and after a few minutes we’re stalled in an alleyway. My PL is mixed in with my squad so I can hear him talking on the radio. After a few minutes of not moving the CG walks over to my PL and says, “Hey Sir, we gotta get moving or we’re gonna miss our hit time.” My PL says something about getting a handle on the situation before we move and the CG walks away to his terp. The two of them talk for a minute and then he walks back and says, “OK. We’ll meet you there.” And then the two of them walk off into the night. By themselves. During a firefight. In Ramadi. When we got to the hit house they weren’t there and there were no signs they had been there. They showed up at our temporary CP the next morning like nothing weird had happened. No idea where they went all night.

On another mission we had our company posted up in an Iraqi “mansion.” Since the whole company was there, there were about 8-10 CGs and their support personnel with us. One night another private and I were standing guard at the main gate to the compound when this CG walks up to us in full gear. He asks if we’ll go out to the field nearby with him and pull security. I told him we couldn’t leave our post, but he said, “It’s OK, I got eyes” and pointed at the sky. Can’t argue with that, so we went out. He put both of us in position on opposite sides of the field and told us the bird would be there soon. After a few minutes a single Little Bird comes in and lands in the field. The CG runs over and grabs something out the back of the bird and comes back towards us. He motions for us to get up and follow him back, and once we get back in the compound he says thanks and walks back into the mansion. Once we were in the light of the house I saw what he had grabbed. A case of 12 20oz Gatorades. He’d gotten a personal fucking delivery from the 160th for some Gatorade. How much did that cost in dollars and maintenance?

Another night we were on Chinooks flying into our AO. Our CG was sitting at the back of the bird near the ramp. I was sitting across from him looking out the back at the lights of the town we were flying over. I was daydreaming when I caught him making a lot of movement in my NODs. I look over and he’s holding a Gatorade bottle in front of his face trying to see how much is left. He takes a big swig, puts the cap back on, and tosses it out the back of the bird. All I could think about was how many Article 15s I would get if I did such a thing.

Last one. My platoon was sitting in an Iraqi house after a raid waiting for the helicopters to come pick us up. ACUs had just come out and we were one of the first units to deploy with them. We’re just shooting the shit about random stuff when one of the CGs asks my squad leader what he thought of the ACUs. My SL starts to go on a rant about the shitty stitching in the pants and how stiff the sleeve pockets are. He especially hates the sleeve pockets. After his rant the CG says, “Well, I told them to do the pockets like that. That’s how I like mine (points at his DCU sleeve pockets). Guess they didn’t do what I said.” My SL immediately starts to eat crow and reverses his position and says hey you know what, maybe the sleeve pocket design isn’t so bad!

Adding another I just remembered. One cool thing about rolling with those guys is that you always have AC-130 support. We go out on a mission one night, pretty early, like 10 PM, and clear houses all night. Another platoon in my company finds a car being outfitted as a VBIED and blows it in place. Because of that threat, we all hunker down in a barn/warehouse around 3 in the morning and wait for any other threats to be cleared. What does that mean? The AC-130 overhead blew up every. single. car. it could see around our warehouse. There were a lot. I remember trying to sleep while the ground shook and shrapnel pinged off the roof and walls of the building for an hour straight. Fuck yo car.