Sgt. Pole's Horrors of War Pt. 1: Operation Donkey Train

There we were, working a patrol outside some shit village up Crap creek somewhere off the Euphrates. The sun was giving us neck burns and swamp ass, there was nothin' to do but keep the dust out of your eyes and throat, and it was so hot, even the insurgents were too tired to jump out for a spray and pray. My buddy Cpl. Trout had the binoculars and was trying to scout something, anything that would make a 120 degree day go quicker. Well he found something, and what he found made me wish we had in fact engaged the enemy that day. What he saw and shared with us made me sicker to my stomach more than an exploding case of ball bearings splitting a Shi'ite's head like a rotten cantaloupe.

Trout was perched in the turret of a Hummer when he caught sight of it. He just kinda cocked his head to the side, and said, "Huh." He was partially inquisitive, but mostly just confused. Our platoon sergeant asked what was up and Trout told him, "Well, sarge, there's about six Iraqis about three clicks away from us. One of them has a donkey on a leash, and..I think he's punching it in the face."

"So he's giving it a donkey punch?" chuckled Pvt. Morris. Morris is a dumbass who still laughs at his own farts, so the rest of us just told him to stuff it. The platoon sergeant got out his own pair of binoculars and spied in the same direction as Trout. His expression turned from curiosity to a mixture of shock and repulsion.

"Motherfucker..." the sergeant said as the rest of us got too interested to just sit and miss whatever those Iraqis were up to. Taking turns with the binoculars, we all watched a piece of the next chain of events unfold, a horrific series I will now burden you with imagining and remembering.

First there were about six Iraqis. Clearly these weren't your civilized types of Iraqis. These guys were the Arab equivalents of Joe Bob and Bubba Ray from Wassahatchee, Georgia. They probably couldn't read, write and haven't had shit to do but the kind of shit we witnessed that day. They had this donkey, which was probably their only source of transportation, and one of them did in fact beat it in the snout several times. The donkey looked pretty dazed, and that's when the other five men started to line up. The donkey was lead by the first guy to a kind of hitch-post, and he smacked it around some more so it wouldn't get nervous or resistant. The other five then engaged in what seemed like a terrible, rehearsed desert redneck ritual. The men would randomly walk off to take a dump in plain sight, by just dropping trou, squatting and shitting on a little patch of sand. They'd wipe their asses using extra sand and then go back into the line. Afterwards they started playing with themselves, but not to the point of climax. It was clear they were getting ready. For what is something we all found out when the first guy in line took the donkey from his buddy and mounted it from the rear. To the horror of the whole squad, these six Iraqis were running a train on this donkey.

When one of the guys was finished, he'd go to the back of the line, work himself up again and the one behind him would take his turn. I'm not sure how long this lasted, or how long we looked, but it felt like hours. I've seen people burned down to the skull from bombs dropped on an insurgent camp, but I have never seen anything this fucked up in my whole life. I guess you just don't know what depraved is until you happen across an Iraqi donkey show.