WHAT?

first, let me provide some background info. every U.S. military installation in at least iraq and kuwait, probably the whole mideast, has bunkers placed in various locations in case of mortar or rocket attack. these aren't like germans at normandy bunkers with gun ports and living space. these are basically concrete boxes with little openings on either end. anyways, we have a simple plan in place to prepare for this. if we come under indirect fire attack, a siren sounds and everyone runs to the bunkers. alright, that's the background.

now, a couple of days ago my squad was in our room talking about what had happened that day and what will happen the next day. all of a sudden the entire building started to shake. every one of us looked down at the floor, looked up at each other, then bolted for the door. that took about one second. the indirect fire siren sounded by the time we got outside and we were all in the bunker about 3 seconds after we first got going.

there are a couple different sizes of bunkers, but the one i got to is about 8 feet by 3 feet. by the time everyone was done running like mad men to the bunkers, we had about 2 dozen stuffed into mine. it was a tight fit. the ground had shook for a good 5-7 seconds, so we knew it had to be a big explosion and really close to us, so all the leaders were pretty frantic about getting accountability of all their guys.

them getting accountability interfered with our talking, which delayed some realizations. like the fact that while we could feel the shockwave from such a large explosion so easily, we hadn't actually heard any explosion. or that the shockwave had lasted way too long.

or that it was actually an earthquake and not an attack. yeah, my first earthquake came right here in iraq. measured a 5.6 and took away what little respect i had left for california. iraqi's mud huts stoood up fine to this earthquake, but california can't build sturdier buildings. weak.