I’m a grunt for the U.S Army. (Marines suck, Army rules!). I’ve done 3 tours, and on my last, some crazy shit happened.
I was rolling through a country which name I can’t say or else they might come after me. Anyways, I was rolling through the main road at night, looking for a camp reported to be disguised as a motel. I was riding in the humvee, and I was in the middle seat. I could see nothing out the windows, but the windshield provided some vision. I was bored as hell, cus we were driving several hours on end searching for this supposed motel.
Eventually, we came across a motel. Not the motel, but a random one. We got out of the humvee, and investigated. I asked the owner of the motel since I was the only one who spoke Farsi. He said he knew nothing about a camp, and he lived up to his word. He was middle aged, with a goatee and a pair of glasses. He wore some conservative clothing, nothing else. So we got back in the humvee and got back on the road.
But 30 minutes later, we got to the same motel again. I said it must have been a coincidence, and that they both must have the same design. We got out, searched the place, but for some reason it all looked the same. It was uncanny. Even the owner looked and spoke the same. I asked him, “Did we already pass by this place?”, and he replied no. It was weird, as if it was a fever dream. We got back in and kept on driving.
30 minutes later, the same motel again. We did our routine, and decided that I wasn’t playing games. I pointed my sidearm at the owner and yelled at him, “Stop playing games, what the fuck is going on!?”. He raised his hands in fear, and was visibly shaking, stuttering, “N-No sir!”. My teammate made me holster my sidearm and took me back to the humvee. I insisted that something was wrong, and that we should check it again. They searched again, and found nothing. At this point, my teammate came up and said, I know this is some weird bullshit, but just keep along with it and we all go home early. So I calmed myself down and got back in.
15 minutes later, I checked the time. It was 7:45AM. But the road was still pitch black. I asked my teammates why it was still pitch black even though it was 7AM in the morning. “It’s 7AM!? I have no goddamn clue why the fuck it still looks like it’s 2AM.”, they replied. We kept going until the next motel. I went to the vending machines and got some grub for the crew. I bought everything, 5 cokes, 2 pepsis, 4 bags of doritos, and 7 packs of spicy peanuts. I didn’t interrogate the owner this time, and just got back in and we went on.
Eventually, we all just decided to stop stopping at the motels and just keep going. The humvee had a full tank throughout the entire trip. After that, Actual radioed in, “Lima 2-2, where the hell are you? You were supposed to RTB back 3 hours ago. Come in, over.”, the radio garbled it a little, however I did respond, “Actual, Lima 2-4, we’re stuck, and we cannot RTB, over.”. Actual replied, “Where the hell are you, your squad is off-grid and we cannot locate you, over.” I replied, “We’re on the main road, few miles down the road, over.” “You’re on the way back to base, report back in when you can. Out.” At that point, I knew that we had zero chance of getting out of this.
Eventually, I passed out after being half-awake for hours, and I woke up back at base, on a bed, with my squad nowhere to be seen. When I got up and walked outside to the hangar, the others started to question where the hell we were. I was replying with “I don’t know” to all of the questions. Turns out, my squad got into an encounter with the camp disguised as a motel, and I was the only survivor, which explained why I had a bandage wrapped over my body. I eventually went back home in the U.S, but I still can’t forget it. I decided to post it here in case anybody knows what the fuck happened to me and my squad. Lima 2-4, out.