Weird shit I’ve seen as a Marine 3
After Bridgeport, we were given a pretty decent amount of time off due to various public and military holidays. I spent most of it sleeping and drinking, as well as indulging myself in the countless luxuries I’d gone without while I was away in the mountains. It was nice to finally relax and recover a bit!
However, good things don’t last long. Pretty soon, we packed our bags, grabbed heavy things, and headed off into the desert. We went through a few short, but boring field ops that you guys probably wouldn’t want to hear about. But this one in particular was in December and things had drastically changed weather wise. It was now winter and the temperature hovered just above freezing. The wind was the worst part. You could wear 5 billion layers and somehow the wind would cut through all of them and slowly drain the heat from your body. It was miserable.
For the first few days, we did some live fire training exercises. The funnest part was probably when they had me blow up a piece of plywood riddled with nails labeled ‘door’ to simulate a breach. Except someone cut the timefuse on the charge a little too short and it went off just as I’d gotten behind cover. The riflemen flooded in through the smoke and dust blindly and cleared the objective of those evil paper targets. It was great.
Our next destination after that was a giant ghost town in the middle of the desert. Now get this, it is EXTREMELY detailed and built to simulate a real city in the Middle East. When we got there, it was pretty dark and the street lights were on. We quickly grabbed our packs and found a vacant building to set up in. It was pretty creepy because there were paintings on the wall, furniture in every room, and there was even detailed things like an old computer or treadmill (with power outlets!). It was as if they quite literally copy and pasted an entire town out into the desert. Hundreds upon hundreds of buildings, complexes, bazaars, churches… everything.
Being out of the wind and given a few hours to sleep, I figured I could get some solid rest in before the training scenario started the next day. Nope, all throughout the night, I was woken up the entire night by a constant banging noise. I figured that the wind had picked up and there was a loose shutter or door somewhere nearby. Great. I finally had enough and put in the foam ear protection that we wear when we shoot. That worked and I slept like a log for the rest of the night.
The next morning, we started the day just as the sun was coming up. It was still cold and windy and I wasn’t really excited to eat an MRE, so I just drank some water and basked in the early morning sun in a desperate attempt to warm up. Pretty soon, our next task was explained to us. For the next few days, we would build a small base in one of the houses and send patrols out into the city to look for insurgent fighters (played by Marines). There would be civilian actors playing out roles like the mayor, local religious leader, police chief and so forth. Then we were given some annoying laser tag system for our body and our rifle. Our rifles would fire a laser everytime we fired a blank round and if we get shot by another laser, the laser tag system would start beeping loudly and repeat our status (injured or dead).
It all sounded pretty cool actually. We picked a pretty large three story building next to a road and began fortifying our defenses. First, we surrounded the entire perimeter with tons of barbwire. Then we blocked off all exits with sandbags and furniture except for one. There was only one way to get in and it was right in front of a machinegun that we had set up on the floor above. We blocked all of the windows on the third floor and the stairs to get there with furniture, just in case they decided to climb in somehow (they weren’t allowed to anyway). It was a well built defense and we were proud. No one would be able to sneak in.
During the night, my squad went out to patrol and look for bad guys while one squad slept and one squad defended our compound. All I can say is that it was super creepy. And exhausting. We must have walked for two hours and maybe made it halfway through the town. When we finally got back from our uneventful patrol, we were told to sleep for a few hours. Sure enough, I started to hear the same damn banging. This time it was louder. It was like a dull thud on an old iron door. Slowly and methodically, it never missed a beat. A few of us agreed that we would find out what the hell was making the noise and put an end to it on our next patrol. I put my foam earbuds back in and slept for maybe an hour or two before I was woken up by what sounded like a training grenade going off outside of the building.
Great. We’re being attacked. It’s 2am and people are shooting at us and throwing fake grenades. A few people’s laser systems are beeping loudly and they are notionally bleeding out. The rest of us are shooting out of windows and calling out targets. The machinegun above me is raining hot brass down the stairs. It was honestly great fun. The insurgents eventually disappear into the dark and my squad is sent to pursue them. We checked the surrounding area but all we found were unarmed civilians. They were pretty great actors, I’ll give it to them. I felt extremely immersed in the situation when they told us that they would only give us information if we gave them guns to protect themselves. Not gonna happen.
On the way back to our base, I made sure we did a quick check for whatever the banging noise that was keeping us up all night. We tracked the noise to a building that wasn’t very far away from our little base. Maybe two houses over, but blocked from our view. Here’s the weird thing, lll of the windows and doors were covered with sheet metal and bolted shut. When we got close, the banging had stopped, but we all knew it was coming from that building specifically.
Unable to do anything, we went back and posted up on various positions to pull security so that the other squad could rest. I got the short end of the stick and ended up on a window facing in the direction of the building. Before I relieved the guy standing there, I asked him if he’d heard the noise from the building. He nodded and said he’s heard it all night.
I felt like Edgar Allen Poe listening to the Raven, slowly going mad by myself. Somewhere in my dreamy stupor, I postulated that somehow one of the insurgents had snuck their way into the building and were pulling some kind of PsyOps on us by banging away all night. Just as I had passed this up, the banging stopped and I looked like an idiot.
Pretty soon the sun came up. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We set up a few checkpoints and interacted with the locals, gave them water, asked them about the insurgents etc. Typical roleplay fun. Once the sun set, we were again harassed by the insurgents but this time it was less fun because I’d slept maybe 3 or 4 hours in the last few days. It was over in 10 minutes and another squad went out looking for them. I sat down to try to get a quick nap in … and the banging started right back up.
I was getting pretty damn irritated at this point, so I insisted to head out with a few guys to check the surrounding buildings. The building with the banging had no way of getting in, so I got creative and thought maybe there was a tunnel. We went around to each house and kicked all the rugs around like some terrible guests and boom, we found a hatch. Now, we were told not to enter any of the tunnels because the fans they used for ventilation were no longer functional. They told us we could suffocate but I didn’t really think we would use up all of the oxygen in just a few minutes. So we made the decision to go down.
We dropped down and it was absolutely pitch black, so we turned on our flashlights and proceeded forward to the end of the tunnel. As we got closer to the ladder, we heard something similar to the sound you hear when you turn a really old television on. Kind of like a mix between that and when your ears start ringing. All of the hair on my body stood up. There was a slight tinge of fear creeping up on me, but I decided to ignore it and start climbing the ladder. I opened the hatch and immediately began clearing the pitch black room. Nothing. I moved towards the stairs while the rest of the guys flowed in.
At first, I thought it was something breathing hard from the exertion, but now I was sure of it. I could hear the faintest whisper of someone saying “We’re in here” coming from upstairs somewhere. We moved tactically up the stairs in pairs and began clearing the rooms out. When we got to the end of a hallway, there was what looked like a kids room and I went in. Nothing. Then the batteries on my flashlight started to fade out. Impossible, I’d just replaced them today and they don’t drain that fast.
I think it was either the corner or the closet, but I heard what sounded like a little girl’s laugh. More like a giggle. I ran straight the hell out of that room and was met with several “What the fuck’s”. Someone nervously asked if that me. I said no, it wasn’t, and I made the executive decision that we were all getting the fuck out of there. All of us were nearly panicking at this point but we tried to keep it together long enough to GTFO of that house. We started to make our way back down the stairs when we heard the laughing again. As we approached the hatch, we noticed that now of all times, there was tons of furniture stacked on top of it. Desks. Wardrobes. Couches. Even a microwave. Pretty soon our flashlights all faded slowly out and we all scrambled towards the pile of shit.
The rest of the flashlights died out. Everyone panicked and started blindly throwing and shoving things out of the way. The laughing grew louder and more sinister, like it was coming down the stairs. After what seemed like years, we cleared everything and opened the hatch. We jumped straight down and scrambled back to the other hatch and through the tunnel. We made it out and pretty much ran back to our little fort 25 meters away. All of us were scared to shit and nearly woke everyone up with our stumbling around and cursing. Our Lieutenant asked us what the had happened, we told him, and he wasn’t really sure whether to believe us or not. His only response was “Yeah, I have heard some weird stuff about this town.” and then he walked away.
We tried to sleep for the next few hours, I went up to second floor because I figured that was the safest. I knew that I wasn’t going to go to sleep with some creepy stuff going down next door, but it was nice to sit down and relax. Around 3am, I heard what sounded like someone running upstairs… loudly. Now, this is impossible because we had blocked off the stairs to the third floor with desks and couches so that no one would be able to get in from the roof. A few guys were woken up and were sent to go upstairs to clear it out. Absolutely nothing. None of the furniture had been moved.
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
In the morning, the townspeople began rioting outside of our compound. It was peaceful at first but then someone with a backpack detonated an imaginary IED despite our best efforts. As soon as the IED went off, we took fire from pretty much everywhere and a lot of us were ‘killed’. We were told to go to an aid station all the way across the city to get revived. I felt like a zombie from the lack of sleep and countless patrols.
Once we were revived, we were told that our mission had changed. We were no longer on the defensive, but we would be clearing out a sector of the town as part of a larger force. This would be our final event and then we would be able to go home. We got maybe an hour of sleep before the sun went down and the offensive started. It was pretty easy at first, until we started to take contact from various buildings. We cleared most of them and didn’t find anyone except for a few open hatches. We sat around and held security while they figured out what to do.Logically, the people in charge of us concluded that the insurgents must have escaped through the tunnels… even though EVERYONE was told not to use them. Cursing under my breath, our squads broke off and I followed my fearless leaders into one of the tunnels. It was pretty simple, but much longer this time. When we got to the very end, we climbed the ladder and tried opening the hatch, but it wouldn’t budge. Awesome. We headed back the direction we came and just as my cynical self predicted, the hatch we’d entered with was stuck too.
A few of the stronger guys attempted to muscle it open but it was like someone had put a huge boulder on top of it. We tried our radios but they weren’t working so we resorted to banging on the hatch. Nothing. A few guys started panicking, but all I wanted to do was go to sleep. So I sat down and accepted my fate as I reconsidered if I made the right decisions in life. I was never claustrophobic but I was starting to feel like I was. Guys were still banging loudly and I started to filter them out. Maybe 5 minutes later, we heard someone banging on the hatch. We knocked back. They banged again. Someone yelled “We’re in here!”. We waited a few seconds for a response, but what we back still haunts me to this day. It was the same damn little girl laughter we heard the other night. We all froze. Whatever was on the other side started to bang again. Slowly and methodically.
I felt like I was in a torture cell. I tried my best to drown the sound out and think about anything else. No one dared to knock again. It must have been 2 or 3 hours, I don’t remember, but it felt like an eternity before we heard footsteps from above. Everyone held their breath and listened. We heard some furniture being shifted and a few curse words that quickly gave away their identity: other Marines. Finally.
Soon the hatch was opened and before we were all even out of the tunnel, we were all getting absolutely chewed out to shreds. Multiple higher ups yelling and cursing. The guys in charge of us were threatened with some punishments, but I personally was pretty relieved to get yelled at. It beat being stuck in there.
From what I heard, they noticed we weren’t part of the assault and assumed we were put out of the game. They didn’t realize until AFTER they had regrouped that we were still missing. They got our last known location from one of the other squads who had entered the other tunnels near us and back tracked their way to us. I’m glad that someone remembered where we were because a lot of the buildings had the same damn paint job.
Following that incident, it was nearly morning time and we hung out until trucks came to pick us up and took us back to base. That was easily one of the more terrifying experiences because being buried alive scares the hell out of me to this day.
Unfortunately, this is the only picture I had managed to take myself. There’s an album of pictures from this article if you’re interested. There’s also a lot of information about the range itself (1500+ buildings, 1866ft of tunnels, $170 million dollars spent etc.)
Apologize for time between updates, I’ve been exhausted by the time I get off of work. Hopefully will do part 4 this weekend.
Also, for the explosive, timefuse can be kind of tricky to work with. We do a test burn to get an accurate burn rate rate, but sometimes it doesn’t always match. I’ve gotten a lot of non-creepy related questions about military stuff and life in general, I’m still considering whether I should start some kind of blog about all of my experiences, creepy or not. Feel free to PM me if there’s interest. Thanks again for all of the positive support!
