Well, like all of us I could go on for hours about the stupid crap we pulled while in the platoon. Here's one for the books though.

While taking part in DD92 outside of Celtic (pronounced jeltic)Turkey, RRT Corvette under the wise and benevolent leadership of Dave Bernier, had the opportunity to strain our relations with Turkey. We had been out on our second op of the exercise for probably 2 days when we got the message for ENDEX. Well, being the proactive types we all decided that since a team from force was only a kilometer or so away from us we should try and coordinate a link-up for extract and save some time.

Well, Adam is working the DCT and in contact with them so it was decided that we should try to pin-point each others locations. The message read, and this is a direct quote mind you, " we will use our IR strobe, and if that doesnt work we'll fire off 1 RSC, fire 30 rounds in the air, light a bon-fire, and sing the Marines Hymn as a last resort".

Unfortunately though we were located on a ridge roughly 100 meters higher than the valley floor, the guys from Force couldn't see our strobe and we couldn't see theirs. After several failures the Force team sent the message Fire your pop-ups. So the decision was made to fire the pop up. Some of us, Derek, Myself, and Jim had reservations about firing off this flare given the dry conditions. After a thorough lecture in just how safe it was and how prepared we were in case something happened, TJ had apparently worked fighting wild fires back in Idaho, we all said sure why not. TJ fires off the flare, and we all sat watching the warm glow of the pyrotechnic display.

Once we were sure that the flare had burned out prior to falling back to earth we all turned around to see what the next message would be on the DCT. As we waited I thought I heard a rushing noise behind me, so I look at TJ and ask if he heard anything, as we all turn around again suddenly a GIANT WALL OF FLAME comes rushing up the hill at us. As we start to have a complete conniption fit, the DCT starts pinging with the message "was that your popup?" Adam calm as ever sent back "yep, and there's our bonfire". Well, we bolted like rabbits down the hill with all our gear, only to be cornered by the local volunteer fire department and the Turkish Army.

We realized that our position was well and truly compromised when a Turk MP jammed the muzzel of his rifle into my temple and started jabbering at me like I had just raped his best sheep. I don't speak Turkish, and neither did anybody else on the team, except for the reservist augmentee who actually asked Bernier if he wanted to him to act as liaison between us and the guy trying to pith me with his rifle. After several tense minutes that seemed like hours to me, we finally convinced everyone that we were trying to help them find the "Terrorists who set of the fire bombs". We later went back up the hill only to find that our hide site had been spared by the fire. The next day after we debriefed we ran into the team from Force and were told by one and all that the fire was so big that even though they were a kilometer away they were using the light from it to make shadow puppets on the rocks at their hide site. I have a picture of us holding the infamous flare taken by the augmentee just before we got picked up.

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