Heroism In Afghanistan--"Rambo With A Red Pipe"

Hi everyone.

I'm still alive but freezing my tail off. We got 8 inches of snow last
week and it reached 5 degrees below zero that night. That's not why I'm
e-mailing though.

You may have heard about a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul last
Thursday. It was at one of our FOB's (Forward Observation Bases) about 27 miles
from here.

But the real story is why no one was killed.

We employ several thousand Afghans on our various bases. Not to mention
the economy that is fed by the money these locals are making.

Some are laborers and builders, but some are skilled workers. We even
have one Afghan that just became OSHA qualified, the first ever. Some are
skilled HVAC workers .

Anyway, there is this one Afghan that we call Rambo.

We have actually given him a couple of sets of the new ACU uniforms (the
new Army digital camouflage) with the name tag RAMBO on it.

His entire family was killed by the Taliban and his home was where our
base currently resides. So this guy really had nowhere else to go.

He has reached such a level of trust with US Forces that his job is to
stand at the front gate and basically be the first security screening.

Since he can't have a weapon, he found a big red pipe. So he stands
there at the front gate in his US Army ACU uniform with his red pipe.

If a vehicle approaches the gate too fast or fails to stop he slams his
pipe down on their hood.

Then once the gate is lifted the vehicle moves on the 2nd gate where the
US Army MP's are. So he's like the first line of defense.

Last Thursday at 0930 hrs a Toyota Corolla packed with ex plosives and
some Jack Ass that thinks he has 72 Virgins waiting for him approached the
gate.

When he saw Rambo he must have recognized him and known the gig was up.

But he needed to get to that 2nd gate to detonate and take American
lives. So he slams his foot on the gas which almost causes the metal gate to go
up but mostly catches on the now broken windshield.

Rambo fearlessly ran to the vehicle, reached thru the window and jerked
the suicide bomber out of the vehicle before he could detonate and commenced
to putting some red pipe to his heathen ass.

He detained the guy until the MP got there.

The vehicle only exploded when they tried to push it off base with a
robot but know one was hurt.

I'm still waiting for someone to give this guy a medal or something.
Nothing less than instant US citizenship or something.

A hat was passed around and a lot of money was given to hi m in thanks by
both soldiers and civilians that are working over here.

I guess I just wanted to share this because I want people to know that
it's working over here.

They have tasted freedom. This makes it worth it to me.


JOHN W. ****, *** , US ARMY


(for this soldiers' protection I've deleted his title, last name, and rank)


Bagram Afghanistan