Why doesn't Holla Forums reach out to army vets? Do you know how much they could help in the class war?

the same goes for the white working class, yet Holla Forums loves them and wants to take the time to change their views, why not do the same for army vets.

well at least they're pissed off

we are them

...

We could snag a good 20% chunk of them at least.

more 43% of the right want an authoritarian leader. trump and cruz

today.yougov.com/news/2015/09/09/could-coup-happen-in-united-states/

Yup. Entryism among troops, and better junior officer, is key to a successful revolution. The only ideological constant of the military is nationalism. Soldiers have no special love for capitalism and with the rise of transnational corporations are sensitive to criticism of it.

it's true, and tbh I don't blame them when they're faced with the reality in Syria: Obama supports Al Qaeda.

syria was planned a long time ago
about when o finished college

youtube.com/watch?v=nUCwCgthp_E

Can you link the whole thing? Im interested i ln reading the rest of this

members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
page 237

The nationalism part is the part I have trouble with when it comes to getting through to them. They'll probably see any communists/socialists as spies from Russia or the DPRK or some movie shit like that.

The veterans who become homeless and shit like that will be good but I'm sure those are the minority.

nationalist or supremacist?

on the one hand they say everyone should obey the law. and if you break the laws in another country, you pay the penalty that country has.

but then these ppl go over and kill ppl

If they learn not to be patriotards then sure, but I am not going to cater to that if they are.

Syria was always a target, but there were a lot of options on the table. It must especially sting to be a low-education lumpenprole who signed up to the army to go "kill terrorists," and then end up sitting around while the CIA runs guns to the guys who did 9/11.

not by me. and why should it cost me anything for neocon schemes? I never signed up for any of this, and yet I will have to help pay for the attack and the damage

un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

I'm not saying I wanted Syria blown up. I'm saying that Syria was a target of the West for a long time, obviously I'm talking about imperialism. And what I'm saying is that if Obama had just bombed the place or invaded it, soldiers might hate him less than the current situation. That's all. Who knows though?

Article 25 for the homeless soldier.

it's a war crime.
the right may have hated him less but it's a war crime.

You seem confused. I think the entire Western bourgeois should be executed by firing squad for what they have done to the Middle East.

don't forget, these are the law and order ppl

youtube.com/watch?v=o6O3rKQfCF0

if it weren't for the righteous right, it wouldn't have happened.

do you remember the run up to the iraq war, when if you were against it, you were probably a traitor? remember the cheer leading from the right? it didn't take much before these idiots wanted to kill muslims strangers.

it's their nature

5 years later it was pretty clear that iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. but ppl were still signing up to kill innocent ppl.

youtube.com/watch?v=Gnu1WcMdTgs

And? You're telling me obvious things.

In the US, to infiltrate the Vets first you have to get rid off the "anti-Americanism" that is sometimes prevalent in most far-Left circles.

Sanders entryist or not was smart, he was in the Veterans affairs committee because he knew dissatisfied vets supporting him removed the "anti-american commie" stigma.

Most Vets obviously don't want to hear that they fought for nothing, that they are "criminals", or that they are morally guilty of anything. Instead one should hammer into them how the system that exploited them was inherently unfair that it will never reward them for their sacrifice, since only big capital profits from these wars. So while theoretically killing Muslims could be acceptable to them, returning home and fight for scraps while you get barely any mental and physical health coverage is indeed an injustice. Thus the left must avoid falling into the same sort of un-strategic stupidity of the Vietnam protest movement that completely alienated the Vets and the general populace, leading to Nixon getting elected. In this way the Left should focus on educating them on the gangster tactics of Capital and less on cultural or possibly micropolitical issues.

point is these ignominiousnesses are taking us all down with them
and they are the righteous. why should the listen to anyone?

I'm not trying blame the soldiers. I understand they are kids that think they are defending their country.
but the adults should know better. how do the republican continue to win half of the elections?

sanders is the only one that has said no more wars. trump is practically guaranteeing more

republicans run on antiabortion ( but they don't really give a fuck about anyone else)
lower taxes (mostly benefits the rich) and power ( most will never have any)

oh and hatred of the weak.

why would anyone sacrifice their kids for this?
I think it's brainwashing.you can't be free if you're brainwashed

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oh look!

Actual Army vet here, did my time in a combat arms MOS, deployed and was a squad leader.

There's always a lot of speculation and fucking "teenage communist" speak around veterans and their larger culture in these threads, and I'm always around to answer questions from people who actually want to know about things instead of make angry conjectures at things that could be a real boon to the socialist movement.

What does army brainwashing entail?

How many soldiers enter apolitical and come out belonging to the far-right?

Most military vets I meet are heavily indoctrinated or mentally shattered.

If we were crash course training to fite irl would it be better to focus on physical fitness. the ability to shoot straight, or coordination

bump for best post of the evening

because most combat jobs are filled by cisgendered White males and we all know how much faggot degenerates like Holla Forums hate White males. Non White POGs are as useful as the average savage off duh skreets uh ha'lem

oh, or psychological preparation (that isn't brainwashing for obedience)

given, say a month to train

There's no such thing as Army brainwashing. I swear man, anyone who really believes this in 2016 I'm going to assume you're a fucking dummy, or just real young and naive. This ain't the movies, there is real training to be done. Its why the American military is a competent fighting body. There's real training to be done, and…this ain't a fucking movie.

So automatically the second part of your question is also nonsensical. You're really demonstrating a distinct lack of being able to perceive the complexity in people, be them veterans or whatever group of people. They aren't homogeneous bodies that all think the same, they're regular people like you or me. Of course there are distinct cultures within the military itself (combat support, combat arms, the remf/grunt divide) but as to people they enter as people with different views, and they exist as people with different views. The military is usually a non factor. If they are a Fox News drone then they probably entered as a Fox News drone and the military won't change that.

Then I don't know who the fuck you met, but we aren't all that way. Swing by the vets lounge in your local college and you'll find twenty somethings who do shit twenty somethings do and what not.

But of course if you've seen or been through some shit, of course it changes people. Shattered? Come on dude. Maybe they just keep it too real sometimes and offend your senses, but your statement is not in the general. Maybe somehow that's your experience, but then again just because you've met people doesn't mean you know shit about them.

I would stop doing that and focus on getting yourself to 1) not be weird in public and be able to talk to people and that includes NOT resembling a ham planet 2)learn your theory, and learn to convey Marx's message in simple and understandable language to people around you.

Whatever fight you're preparing for I would just assume won't happen anytime soon. IMO. But I guess learning to shoot is not just useful in general, but also super fun. You're also fulfilling your duty of being an armed worker should anything (unlikely) happen. And it wouldn't hurt to get intimate with the outdoors.

I didn't say i was already doing that, and I already talk to people about socialist theory and convey it fairly well.

just assuming that violence is never going to happen when the country is literally falling apart is a bit stupid though.

capped

please go away

It isn't some bullshit, naive concept of "the world is too peaceful for that to happen ever again". But first off, bear with me. A common thing I hear said and I do agree with is the concept that people are "three missed meals away from revolution". The concept you seem to be behind is the notion that capitalism will inevitably slip up and stop providing those meals for the people who produce the value, working class people.

But you see, that is a ridiculous thought to me. You are underestimating the efficiency of the liberal democracy under capitalism. Things may get pretty bad, but capitalism will not just happen to slip up enough for people to miss meals…to miss their NFL, to miss their niece's quinceanera, or do any of that shit that just barely grinds most of them through their alienated lives. If things continue the way they are, even in worse condition (2008 was the biggest economic crisis the world has faced in a long time, and yet still buses kept running and the Cowboys kept playing) there will be no revolution on a mass scale.

The country isn't falling apart dude. You need to take a step back and have some perspective. Things are pretty bad, but we've been there before as a country of people. Capitalists hide breadlines with welfare, hide the poor with flashy new distractions, and hide your misery with mass produced propaganda (entertainment, yada yada). You're vastly underestimating your enemy if you think they'll slip up bud.

And as for revolutionary agitation, I give it at least most of my adult life before anyone really, really begins giving a shit about socialism. That's why this is the greatest cause and challenge to mankind. If we want to see revolution and socialism, we'll have to beat the entrenched system starting now. And we have to realize that like the saying goes, we're going to be planting a tree whose shade or fruit we will never ever see.

I don't doubt the ability of liberal democracy to continue to produce and provide However, it is very obvious that the country is crumbling. That is not the same as saying we're on the brink of collapse by tomorrow, but it is saying we're on the way out. It's a slow process that will likely, as you say, take decades. But part of the difference between facing serious problems now and facing serious problems then is that we had a period of pure illusion. For a few decades, the Dream of capitalism was achieved, and now it's slipping away again, and this time the masks are falling off painfully quick. Most people I know interested in socialism today are not the people of yesteryear. It's become to a lot of people an almost fatalist view of pointing out everything wrong and then watching as it gets worse. Am I saying revolt is on our doorstep tomorrow? No, but even if it's not, serious turmoil is back on the rise.and this time it seems like people actually question if it can ever be solved at all. .

If they could be turned, they would become a powerful ally.

Most members of the military, active or retired, generally fall within the dark triad of personality traits. The kind of people you should generally steer away from at all costs.

Autism like this should be avoided.

I've wondered about this too.

They're obviously suffering victims of imperialism. Why keep them out?

Navy vet here. Crypto/radio tech on submarines. I recall sitting in the radio room at periscope depth and talking through my nascent leftist ideology (it was primitive, admittedly, we listened to Immortal Technique and Anti-Flag, read Zinn, and watched Loose Change) with the other 4 members of this little group. Belly of the beast and all that. We discussed how we felt about being a part of the military-industrial-oppression complex as we sat in the water off the coast of Third World countries and eavesdropped on their radio traffic and tried to intercept small boats. Fuckin meta.

This is correct, but only to a degree, although probably more so in the case of army and marines. As I said above, there were 5 of us in our little lefty group, out of 130 on the crew. Remember, this is Navy, thus ostensibly less authoritarian and more skilled labor-focused in comparison to grunts, especially considering submarines, which are harder to get on in the first place.

If I had to guess, I would say that 30-40% of the crew right off the bat were right-wing authoritarians or flat out psychotic scum. We could not speak openly or frankly about certain things in front of these people, for fear of being reported or assaulted. I was once struck in the face by a chief (Navy equivalent of sergeant) who snuck up and heard me mockingly depicting to one of my friends how I had been forced to stand at attention and recite the sailor's creed as I was being punished for a separate minor infraction. I can only imagine the response to our hidden conversations. Our radio room had a locked door, due to the crypto and sensitive classified machines, so it became our de-facto meeting place.

Another 30% or so were your average law and order types. Typical small town, usually career military, family men, sometimes religious, sometimes not. You could sit in the same room with them and laugh at the same movie or joke, and in general they were decent folk (think midwest) but very unlikely to be susceptible to any sort of agitprop. Scared of the word socialism.

The bottom 20-30% were your run-of-the-mill delinquents, mechanics, supply-chain guys, cooks, etc. Essentially the riff-raff of the boat, and the ones with whom I spent my time and could be more or less open with re: my political persuasions. This group was ~50% black and latino, and most of the guys that weren't weren't were first or second-gen white foreigners (like slavs). We routinely aped and mocked the officers, stole supplies and food whenever we could get away with it, and disrespected our chain of command, A general irreverence toward the authoritarians on board, our mission and 'Murica was our baseline. This group was (and is) extremely sympathetic to leftist sentiment, and our little reading group was pulled mostly from this segment. These guys for the most part were not career, hated the military, and could not wait to get out and get on with the rest of their lives. Many joined in the first place to avoid jail time or a bad home situation or a rough town. But to repeat, this group of veterans is ==VERY== sympathetic to the left.

Identifying the veterans in this final group is difficult though, because most of us, like myself, don't advertise our veteran status. Mainly because we don't want to have to interact with right-wing jerkoffs who either idolize that shit or who (ugh) were in the military themselves and want to indulge in a bit of chest-thumping. So we learn to keep our mouths shut about it and move on. Also, SJWs and liberals love to get all weird about it too, probably because they assume we are all like the latter.

To get back to the original point, yes, there is a decent-sized swathe of veterans who are sympathetic toward the hard left, and in many cases even more so because of their experience in the military. It can be hard to suss us out though. I was on the fence about even posting this, but thought it could be useful to some and enlightening to others. If you think about the people I described, these are for the most part the working class of the micro-society that is a ship underwater for months at a time. These minds will always be open, and likely even more so from repeated exposure to authoritarian cunts.

inb4 nice redtext fail newfag

My experience with american vets online is that they're all whacky and into conspiracy theories.

It's pretty difficult to reach out to army veterans and, at the same time, be critical of the military establishment, society's cult of veterans and the deification of high-rank military officers, all of which serve reactionary purposes. There are certain groups we'll inevitably alienate with some of our rhetoric, even if we'd like to have them on our side.

see long post above. That sort of criticism won't alienate those veterans who are already themselves critical of these things through their experiences.

True. Full scoop here. Long but informative read.

newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

Also note, 2007. Long before the events actually transpired.

It's good to have you on this board comrades, you are the only posters I would tolerate having trip in here, since you provide info on actual strategic stuff and aren't like the run of the mill seasonal leftist we mostly get in here.

I'm not an American and I would like to know, is there something like a Vet network? Like a platform of communication where Vets meet to discuss or support each other? Such a thing would be great platform for using propaganda to sway them.

To my knowledge, no. I have always wanted to find something like that either online or IRL. Incidentally was one of the things we actually discussed setting up in our little group, but it sadly never materialized. A few of us kept in touch and that mostly consists of emails checking in with each other a couple of times a year, but we never were able to turn into a broader thing that pulled in guys with similar experience from other commands. That remains something that I would want to see happen and would post that info here if I stumbled across.

IRL there is one vet group in my area who call themselves left wing and tag along on some BLM marches and stuff like that but there are only a few of them and from what i can tell are mainly peaceniks and SJWs.

and thanks for the welcome, i hope you are able to find some of the perspective to be of use. as the other exmil poster stated, things are always nuanced. If you paint with a broad brush, you will lose what could potentially be a great opportunity to teach and spread ideology. If you were a cunt when you went into the military, chances are you are still one. If you weren't (and many aren't) you'll find them (us) to be willing allies.

Not really. I'm only involved locally in my college's veterans network, and that is only in the capacity that I sometimes help people with their GI Bill stuff.

I also don't think it would be successful anyway, that type of network. Like I said up above, there are distinct culture cliques within the Army itself (I can't speak on other branches nor will I try, but I feel the Marine Corps is very similar here as well) that would make this something really hard to implement. For example, when I first began my college after the Army I couldn't stand to be around those former supply clerks and cooks who liked to wear all of their little camo backpacks and American flag hats. It also really got to me that the whole veteran worship in America made people look at everyone who served like they all jumped on a grenade personally. I just found that guys who knew what it was like to take in the suck in a combat arms battalion of squadron were easier to get along with because I too endured that suck. The rear echelon guys, not so much. So the difference in experiences make it hard for veterans to even communicate with each other.

There is also the second concern, in which people that have already appeared in this thread made clear already: people perceive the veteran population to be a distinct group that can be appealed to Asa homogenous body. We're all something: killers, imperialists, shattered souls, weirdos or outcasts. When in reality, like my point about the distinct cultures within the military conveys veterans are all very different from each other. I might internalize the things I experienced on my deployment much different than the Navy person who might not have seen those things at all. We might get along because we are socialists, maybe we'd share an experience about endless cleaning or dumb check the box disciplinary actions…but as far as just being veterans it's hard to connect with someone over just that.

this.

I worked at a country bar for awhile while I was going through school. I hated telling people I had been in the Navy, because the guys from other branches who wore their flag hats everywhere and drunkenly bragged about their accomplishments ( i feel they may have been the same guys you described?) in efforts to cash in on vet worship to get laid would always try and fight me or tell me that I wasn't a real vet like them. A homogeneous culture it ain't.

Yeah Iraqi's weren't too bad to begin with but once they stared getting flooded with foreign religious fanatics with guns, I think even the most hardcore socialist would condone killing them.

come on man

is this a thing in America now? Join the military or go to prison? What the fuck?

They probably wouldn't be Islamists if the West didn't bomb them into a post apocolyptic wasteland every Tuesday since the Cold War.

if your country was being bombed and you were helpless to do anything about it,
I bet the churches would be full
and everyone would look to the extremest for direction and strength

I am not 100% sure how it works, but from what I know from folks who have gone into the mil this way, it's typically when people are looking at charges for relatively minor offenses, and on a case-by-case basis. They aren't sending people into the military to escape rape or murder charges or anything like that.

So say you are 18 years old, and you go to your plea hearing for fighting or theft or something. You haven't been in trouble much before, and the judge asks "now is there anything else you want me to take into consideration?" Saying something along the lines of "well your honor I wanted to join the *branch* when I graduated from high school and I don't want this on my record" will usually get the charges dropped, contingent on you joining. All well and good if you were really happy about joining, but if you change your mind or didn't really want to join in the first place, the charges are hanging over your head and you'll have to complete your sentence if you decide not to follow through and enlist.

amazing

A sizable portion of you guys are, though.
I never said they were all like that.
It's not much different then the mentality cops have.

I'm sorry man, but that's just wrong. I've been there, done that in Iraq. The vast, vast majority of them fear "Ali Baba" and just want a life separate of all that bullshit. I would never, ever condone killing anyone short of people who point a gun at me.

Lots of causes. I had the muh privilege of being taught about this subject thanks to a PhD who goes to Kurdistan every year on the regular to do humanitarian work and talk with the locals about their situation.

Arbitrary borders drawn by Westerners who don't give a shit about the people in those countries are my go to cause. Africa is also suffering from these arbitrary borders. Iraq and Nigeria are two notable countries that were created out of thin air regardless of the people who lived there.

When I was in, I was hearing that was a myth. I don't know if its quite true anymore, but I could be wrong.

Didn't Jimmy Hendrix go to the army to escape jail?

Eh, I think the vast majority of US troops have never shot an innocent person

Cavalry user, who true Anonymous Soldier is?

I mean the movie with Jamie Foxx

Do you mean Jarhead?

…yes

Protip: most vets see Capitalist exploitation on a regular basis and are outraged by it in the form of the egregious shit that military contractors do. One naval enlisted guy once said to me, when I brought up the prospect of being a contractor once getting out, "Hell no, I don't wanna become an exploiter!"

Some of these guys are already halfway class conscious, they just need to be made to understand that Capitalists operate within society the way that they leech off of the military.

Haven't read thread yet, but I maintain that reaching out to veterans and police is crucial, first because it's a(dmittedly small) step towards treating perps and war victims more humanely, second because it brings socialist causes to the forefront of society, and third, well, the Bolsheviks didn't win the civil war by spitting on the face of "baby killers". Speaking of which, seeing a bunch of locals here cheering on the pointless murder of cops a few days ago was painful.

The topest kek, during my 10month conscription here, was in first month, in boot camp, when one morning, instead of shooting or stance training and so on, they got us to the yard and we had some faggots selling us books on survival and so on.

I guess they are making money from faggots in special forces or whatever…

Anyway, ye, most corporals and so on, here at least, see it as "yet another job".

Then again, our officers and so on, see going to Afganistan or whatever NATO operation as career, AKA moar money and their main worry is whether their wage and pension will get lower or not. Just like public employees.

The police on the other hand.. .. well… Now them I don't trust…

But didn't you hear! One of them was an edgy right-winger! That justifies everything! … Kronsadt was the right thing to do.

I'll reach out to some of them on an individual basis, but some of them really are violent fuckers who joined because they get their jimmies from violence.
I'm lucky enough to have two step-brothers who aren't like that though.

shame, if he was white and had killed a lot more ppl he'd probably be alive today

I mean I can't speak for the sixties and shit. I'm talking about now. Every time we got a new guy who would tell that story, people would roll their eyes and just assume he's bullshitting to act like he's hard or something.

Don't know what you're asking.

I felt the exact sentiment. I mean, think about how many senior NCO's need to stay in the enlisted position wiping the asses of elitist officers for their to even be a senior NCO corps. A lot of these dudes just want to do the actual work that involves their jobs and training, and not just sit back taking credit for shit.

For me, it also shows just how apt people are to do the work they enjoy no matter the suckage. Its insane how many guys say that the military is life on easy mode because of just how structures things are, and like it. They're prime examples of what people could be like when socialism comes around; these types don't need any incentives to do their part and view doing their jobs as just that: doing your job. People who throw shade at communism just can't handle the fact that people at the end of the day work as a natural instinct. Working is the only thing I glean about "human nature", as people do it under all conditions in some form or fashion and again, these dudes show it.

Haha, that was pretty funny. I'm with the message man: some troops are definitely assholes and anyone who has ever been in the military for five seconds knows that there are assholes everywhere. Its practically one of the biggest hurdles to staying sane: they're in leadership, they're in your platoon, they're your squadmate.

Dudes exactly like who you're talking about: weirdos who are assholes, psychos who talk about killing people but are actually cowards when confronted with someone shooting back, etc. But I'll say that they are definitely a minority in the military in the way assholes in the general population are. Everyone knows an asshole, same shit in the Army.

They're still human beings like you and I. Didn't your father beat your ass enough as a kid?

really really dumb human beings

I know someone who used to post on 4chan who was a Vietnam vet, he's one of my floor managers at work

lot of Vietnam vets had no choice

hard to blame someone that had no choice
but these idiots that signed up to kill iraqis should have known better

youtube.com/watch?v=PTKTE368Xq4

some farm kid

probably never heard about 9/11 either

I bet Jeremy is pro life

"innocent ppl"

Was asking about your thoughts on the movie Jarhead

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That's probably not what he meant

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Comrade John Doe pitches in about something related to this thread
youtube.com/watch?v=8stvATJrxB8

the truth

This. Right here.

Anti-Flag is Shit-tier punk

well no shit. I said it was primitive, I was young! Errybuddy goaan start sommwhurr

This picture actually speaks a lot about some things that always relate to my experience with the military.

1. Whether it be the Marines who pissed on dead Taliban, or these dudes in the above pic related who took pictures with Afghan war dead…can you really be surprised when you give people the job of soldiering and then see them do these kinds of things? Bear with me: we can all agree that when communism essentially comes we know people will still do work. Right? We can agree that the one condition of nature that is observed to be true in humanity throughout every epoch of production is the commitment to good work (laid out in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts). Soldiering is no different. People want to be praised for the work they do, they want to compete with others (here, the enemy) in the work they do, they want to feel triumphant in the work they do. In basketball or the NFL, this means touchdown celebrations and dunking hard over someone else. In combat, this essentially will boil down to someone pissing on an insurgent after a hard fought firefight that probably lasted a couple minutes or even hours. This is the alienation that faces people when they get into combat jobs in the military, and it should be fought against like every sort of alienation we ever talk about. People in the military lose a bit of their humanity in order to do the job capitalists ask of them, imposing their imperialism through force. It is alienation, from humanity and from themselves.

I've explained this in another thread (and will keep doing this for all of you who don't know or don't think about it) but when you ask people to do savage combat with other people who want to kill them you're unconsciously asking them to put their humanity away in order for them to do that job. A year of this (length of Army deployments) will inevitably put whoever you're fighting against in the category of "foe". You're essentially taking away the human face of the enemy, allowing you to do some crazy shit a person should have never been put in that environment to do in the first place.

2. The education system helps this along with its Amero-centric version of history. "We were the good guys!" is always something that comes up. "We fought communism, now we're fighting terrorism!". People are continuously duped into these fights against a shadowy "other" that never takes any sort of real face or form, and they do this to allow us to paint a picture in our heads. Think of how people react to Arab faces in the West today, especially after today's attack. It trains people to think that we aren't somehow all human, that forever there is an enemy that is against everything good and we are all that stands between them and the good.

Its a movie, user. You want to see real shit? Watch Korengal. I knew a SSG who was there before the 173rd replaced the dudes in the Korengal Valley, and it was nasty shit.

I'm not going to defend that dude because its not my job nor do I feel anything towards him, but I will say this. In the military escalation of force is taken REALLY, REALLY seriously. Our procedure in my AO was to shout, point lasers, fire warning shots, shoot for the engine (if it was a vehicle, and finally defer to deadly force after all else was exhausted. My most traumatizing experience involved the difficulty of using these series of steps before almost shooting up a vehicle with .50.

I don't know what dudes he's talking about that shoots up checkpoints, but we ran ours with smiles and waves. I know it doesn't talk about anyone else's checkpoint, but I know we did our's right and our deployment was relatively low key because we stuck to being friendly, getting to know the kids, building schools and handing out medical care and soccer balls. No firefights, maybe a dozen IED's for the whole tour, and no causalities in our AO aside from Iraqi Army who got hit with some pretty nasty bombs including a house bomb that wiped out a whole platoon and that we had to clean up.