Editor's note: This is the first post I ever got from Zeno, back in 1995. Before he started posting them himself, he used to email them to me to post. Zeno is an alt.tasteless legend - and along with Pierre (Prophet of the God Glub) Ketteridge, among the best writers around. Zeno is a long-time friend, and he's getting married today, so "Cheers, mate! This entry is in honour of you". - Dr. Grogan.
From Zeno:
Date: Tue, 23 May 95
This is a story that is entirely true. There is no fiction involved in any way or circumstance. The only exaggeration are the adjectives used by the author.
When we were in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War, and we got to experience some pretty silly things. Some of which would probably find their home here in the a.t. world. I have been lurking for a while, and I deem it appropriate to open my pie hole at this time.
The ground war lasted for 100 hours. Fun stuff. Tanks running over Iraqis buried in their trenches and underground hideaways. I'm sure their last memories were the rumbling of 60-ton tanks overhead, the choking of the dust, the pungent odor of their own unwashed bodies, and the collapse of the ceiling. I wonder if most of them suffered or not. I'll bet that a lot of them were able to endure the pain of running out of air. But not just running out of air...they got to breathe alittle of the sandy air mixed in with the dirt that buried them. I'm sure that some of them were able to suffocate without the privilege of thrashing around some.
But that isn't the reason I'm writing. I wanted to tell you all a little story about an Iraqi tank commander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was somewhere in the Neutral Zone between Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia on the last day of the ground war.
We, as members of Task Force Thunder Echo, tore through the desert like there was no tomorrow. We were shooting everything in sight. It didn't matter if it was a tank, a truck, or a bucket loader. If it was live or dead....didn't matter. Everything was equal in our eyes... "Gunner, HEAT, tank!" Hell, even a privileged few Iraqis were able to receive a main gun round full in the belly, but I'm sure that they had no remains to be seen afterwards.
One gunner, who I am sure was born to the world of a.t. in a past life (or future one for that matter), decided that he was tired of all the Iraqis surrendering. We run up on about the third group of Iraqis with white flags on that sunburnt third day, and Steve thought it was really funny to open fire on them with the mounted machine gun. He was partially out of my view, but I could see his tracers ricocheting across the sky in my scopes. He was on the radio yelling "Take that you fuckin' ragheads! Take it! ...... Hey, Zeno, I got him! I got one of the bastards in the leg!" After that, it was just incessant machine gun fire for a solid 5 minutes.
Well, I'm sure that you all think "Sure, it happens, big shit." Well, I'm getting to the good part. It was a couple days after the ground war was over, and they told us that they were moving us to the Kuwaiti border for guard duty (which took up a month and a half). We weren't thrilled with the idea, so we headed back into the desert in our offtime to poke around a bit. Well, we rifled some bunkers, kicked around some dead bodies, almost killed ourselves with unexploded ordnance, and tried to ferment koolaid.
Back to the story of the Iraqi tank commander. He was riding in a BMP. A tracked vehicle that carries about 8 infantry or so. It has a 76mm gun on it (which couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at 3 meters in broad daylight), a 7.62mm machine gun, and several other fun gadgets that don't work because Soviets couldn't design a fucking war machine if the goddamned Martians supplied invulnerable alloys.
Well, somebody hit this BMP while the tank commander was standing in his hatch looking at all of the American tanks rolling his way (which by the way, were supposedly composed of a lot of wooden armor, per Saddam Hussein). I guess he thought that he would get his medal of honor or cross of valiantry or some other horseshit that peeons like himself never get. He stood there until his tank was hit. A high explosive round hit the side of the BMP and flipped it up in the air and onto a sand dune. The tank commander's legs were pinned by the tank and he obviously had a moment to reflect on the shitty situation, because when I saw him, he was not a happy camper.
To make matters worse, the BMP burnt to the ground around him. All of the ammunition exploding, the gasoline, the other bodies. It burnt down around him as he lay there pinned. I'm sure it was an agonizing final few minutes for the poor old guy. But the worst wasn't over for that pitiful tortured soul (if indeed, he had one, if he didn, I'm sure it is a miserable one).
Lo and behold after it was all over, here comes Zeno, Derek, and Chuck. Let me tell you something about these three guys. They have been stuck in the desert for quite some time. They are pissed off. Sure, they are horny, but they aren't truly developed a.t.er's yet. Still working on it.
Yucking it up, they find the burnt corpse of previously mentioned tank commander. The guy is your typical fry daddy crispy critter. With sand stuck to the oozing pus of his burnt flesh (the result of a recent sandstorm). This guy doesn't even look like a guy. He looks like a molten mannequin rolled in bread crumbs.
Well, the three of us (amateur sick-o's) start throwing rocks at this corpse. We're just laughing because we found another dead guy, not realizing the true capabilities of what we had to work with. It only took about ten rocks or so before someone cracked the bump of a nose he has off of his face. And it was a truly gruesome sight. Dark, ichorous ooze flowed out of the hole where his nose once was. We all shuddered at the sight of it. But Derek (being more advanced in the truly malicious sense) wasn't satisfied. He kept on throwing more rocks harder and faster. He started laughing hysterically and Chuck and I threw a few more lobs of rocks to be cool.
Finally, we heard the bone of the skull crack when a particularly good shot by Derek took the tank commander full on the cranium. "Yes!" he shouted, and we all moved up to the corpse to look. It looked like a kind of dark red/black/brown eggshell where all of the sand was knocked away, and there was a lot of nasty ooze on the ground.
We could see the spot where Derek had cracked the skull of the guy. Again, we all shuddered. But Derek, being the truly evolved bastard that he is *still* wasn't satisfied. "One more thing," he said. Chuck and I had no idea what he was up to.
Derek took a big hunk of Coke bottle glass or something and started picking at the crack in the guy's skull. A few seconds and he had worked the fragment loose. He peeled it away and flipped it to the ground. I almost lost my lunch at the sight.
The guy's brain had literally been boiled inside his skull. It looked like old, grey cottage cheese. Chuck turned away. I looked at Derek. "I don't have the heart to stir it up," he said.
I guess he should've just for a.t.
He probably should've squicked him. But I think that might've been a health hazard.
* May your children fall into the rotting, maggot-infested dungpiles of a thousand camels.
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