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Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:06 pm
by nowonmai
I had a pair of kecks like that once. Seemed like a great idea until I left the bottom halves on a bus and had to walk around like a twat with hooped shorts on for the rest of the trip.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:40 pm
by svizzerams
flipflop wrote:A leg stretch on the long road down from Baggers to Basrah, we'd just passed through a sandstorm an hour before. Southern Iraq, 10th June 2005

Image

Cheers


I thought you guys drove around in gigantuan SUVs. :-)

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:46 pm
by Woodsman
nowonmai wrote:I had a pair of kecks like that once. Seemed like a great idea until I left the bottom halves on a bus and had to walk around like a twat with hooped shorts on for the rest of the trip.


I've got 6 pairs of 'em. The key is bottom half management. Throw 'em in the back pockets and use the rest of the pockets for tools, etc.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:50 pm
by nowonmai
My bottom half management has always been shite.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 12:18 am
by marie-angelique
svizzerams wrote:I thought you guys drove around in gigantuan SUVs. :-)


i thought that was just for yanks.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 6:00 am
by flipflop
svizzerams wrote:
I thought you guys drove around in gigantuan SUVs. :-)


I'm happy to debunk the stereotype of the PSD/CP operator for you ;-)

Horses for courses, and each job will have it's own particular kit and type of personnel. Sometimes low profile was just perfect in Iraq, as now in A'stan.

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 6:02 am
by flipflop
nowonmai wrote:My bottom half management has always been shite.


I use the bottom halves of some pairs as cleaning rags for the shooters and keep the tops as hoopy shorts, just to knock about the flat in

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:00 pm
by Penta
What's the matter with the other guy? He hasn't got all those essential tactical pockets.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:24 am
by flipflop
48 hours before this picture was taken he was ambushed in Haditha where three of his expat mates and about 15 Iraqis were wiped out. His team were pinned down for over an hour fighting upwards of 100 insurgents. He ran out of ammunition and hid in a ditch not before taking a bullet fragment in the face and one in his leg (you can just make out a piece of dressing on the left side of his face). He told me that if he hadn't ran out of ammunition he would be dead now, as he kept fighting with the AK's that people who were killed around him had dropped. The other expat survivor hijacked a car and drove to the nearest US checkpoint, just a few klicks up the road. That's how death visits you in Iraq, a few hundred metres from safety and a nice cooked meal in an air-conditioned DFAC.

After the bad guys thought they had neutralised the threat they set about ransacking the convoy, dragging out the wounded and shooting them in the head. The Yanks then called in an airstrike, and half an hour later a QRF/recovery team went in to secure the scene. My non-tactical friend heard US voices and came out of his hiding place whereupon he nearly got shot by the Americans as they couldn't understand his thick Cork accent and the fact he was covered in mud and blood (his own and others) shit them up too, they thought he was an insurgent at first.

His team leader was my best friend in my whole time in Iraq, he got shot square in the face early in the contact. I had to scrub his name off my wedding invitation list, his wife still has not received a body. He was the nicest, funniest and easily the most popular guy in that whole company at that time in Iraq, and when he died lots of guys lost heart in the job.

You can forgive my pal in the picture for not wanting to wear "tactical" kit at this point, and he kept me awake for two nights in Kuwait re-living his own personal nightmare on our way home. He was "ambushed" again by the Irish press as he got off the plane in Cork, and now has a book out about his time in Iraq and other places. And good luck to him, a brave and lucky man. He even mentions the trip this picture was taken on in his book.

It is not that "tactical" to keep magazines, first field dressings, satphones and a good GPS on your person, because on that particular contract you were using the lot every day, so it was more like "common sense". That chest rig was not for show, it helped keep me alive. My friend's mind was elsewhere as we drove south from Baghdad, but as we had to drive through the "triangle of death" and I was team leader, one of us still had to be on top of his game, hence why I'm in full battle rig and my mate was just keen to get as far from Abu Ghraib (where we were based) and Haditha as he could. And who could blame him?

Next sneering, smart-arse question please?

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:47 pm
by Dabbi
Thanks for the pictures and stories flipflop, really inspires me to travel more and take more photos.

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:15 am
by flipflop
You're welcome

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 5:20 am
by flipflop
Cerro Allegre, Valparaiso, Chile, 27th May 2007

Image

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:59 am
by nowonmai
is that Dennis the Menace or Captain Sensible?

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 4:19 am
by flipflop
Ha, she's an amalgation of both after a glass or two of wine

Cheers

Re: flip's flicks

PostPosted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 2:07 pm
by flipflop
Where'd the spammer go?

On the KMTC ranges, Kabul, Afghanistan, 22nd August 2008

Image

Cheers