Firefight Nostalgia

With the upcoming holidays, the Marine Corps birthday and Veterans Day, respectively, I thought it a nice little treat to harken back to the days of being the jolly green...well tan giants with guns. Those were great days bros, those people we smoked were the finest...ehhhhh well they were there at least, let's not get carried away too much. A firefight was an interesting experience, I think I speak for all of us when I say that because well, to quote Churchill,"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."So with that being said, this one time in Iraq, these asshats decided to ambush our CAAT Team. An IED and then engage us with small arms fire while we were in the kill zone. Pretty standard tactics for the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) or Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), except Mr. Bomb Maker despite his expertise in explosives, did not have expertise in reading what type of mortar round he was using. As we turned right down...I think it was Hospital (the members of CAAT Red Bravo will surely correct me if I'm off on the street name, but I think it was Hospital) we heard a pop. Tons of smoke started billowing up from the left side of the road as we all drove through it, some of us reaching for gas masks before realizing, the mortars they used were illumination rounds. It was daylight. They created a big cloud of smoke. That's it. No explosion, nothing exciting, not even chemical warfare.Now, had they opened fire while all four Humvees were immersed in smoke, that would have been brilliant. They were not so brilliant that day though as all four humvees cleared the smoke with the last humvee being clear of it by like 30 yards or some shit. Then they opened fire on the up-armored gun trucks with AK fire. Not even an RPG.Trucks three and four stopped, adjusted their turrets and ran talking guns with a Mk 19 and 240G. Not long after Bravo 3 & 4 began painting the houses where the fire was coming from, the fire stopped. The battle damage assessment conducted by CAAT Red Alpha didn't find much in the houses save for some casings. Who knows what happened to those guys, all I know is none of us got hit.As I sat in my dismount position in Bravo 3, I couldn't think how ironic it was that they had this whole thing planned out and in the end, it still went tits up for them. They had smoke, they had the high ground and the advantage of surprise. Yet...nothing came of it. Granted we had up-armored Humvees and heavy machine guns, but still..."Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."