Operator Gator

05/27/2022

Tattoo Time

Acting team sergeant putting a little edition on a teammates canvas during deployment circa this past millenia.

07/26/2021

Epitome of Squared Away (sarcasm)

We are going to take a little break from GMVs (I know you're all really sad about that) and take a look at the man behind the wheel (or gun).

A 23 year old boy from Kansas. He was in the Army for not even four years at this point, an 18D on an ODA, with extensive combat & medical experience from this Afghan deployment alone, and pinning E-6, Staff Sergeant on this day with two other young teammates.

I had zero clue at the time because I was so green, but this was it. This war in Oruzgan, fighting from Firebase Anaconda was the pinnacle for me. I was young & thought every trip was like this, that the war would keep going, the combat get more intense, the missions more critical, the medical more extensive.

Our deployment rotation schedule was 6 months on, 6 months off x 2, then a year off, repeat. So, I expected a lot more action. It didnt turn out like that. It wasn't bad. There was still stuff to do. Still missions & combat but nothing like this one was.

However, I also got in trouble in garrison, lost quite a few friends, & ended up leaving active duty for the Guard and private military contracting chasing the same high I had back here at Anaconda. Never found it. Still did some crazy stuff but it was never the same.

The gods have a funny sense humor though, and we'll see what they have in store for the future. Its time I've fallen in line rather than suffer their wrath. Very appreciative of these opportunities and happy to reminisce a bit with pictures & stories. As long as I don't get stuck back there. Definitely not the same person & the past is in the past.

07/24/2021

Dig Bites

A young Afghan whippersnapper was carried into my clinic at Firebase Anaconda one day with these lacerations to his scalp and ears. The apparent cause was dog bites and the grit around the wounds consisted of blood and grains.

The grains were applied by the kids family members as some holistic remedy that needed to be scrubbed off anyways. For a few weeks we had an Air Force PA and med assistant working my clinic & lucky for us at that time there was plenty of work to go around.

After cleaning up this kids head with betadine scrubbers and sterile water, we injected lidocaine to numb the lacs and then sutured his ears and scalp back to his skull. That was a considerable amount of sutures. There are plenty more pictures of the final result days later & I'm proud to say he looked pretty good.

We treated thousands of Afghan & other local patients at that Anaconda clinic that deployment. Rumors stated that people from Pakistan would make the trek to Oruzgan to receive free care from us. I am incredibly grateful for that experience & opportunity because it was incredibly rare, even within the SOF medical field.

07/22/2021

Inside the War Hammer

V3 was the War Hammer on this trip to Afghanistan. Complete with a skull on the hood & riddled with bullet holes. On this closer look of the GMV you can see the butt of the tail gunners M240b, a 7.62 light machine gun, & the M2, .50cal heavy machine gun mounted to the turret. This truck alone, V3, was responsible for a lot of violence & the War Hammer became known to the enemy.

07/21/2021

GMV Convoy

A snapshot of a small piece of the convoy used for the valley clearing operation near FOB Martello on TK road north of Kandahar. This was the same mission from my previous post. A few of these vehicles, including mine, would take some incoming rounds from small arms fire. Luckily none of the enemies RPGs had struck us. The vehicle armor was definitely adequate and stopped the 7.62 rounds from completely penetrating. Pretty sure I have previous posts showing the caught rounds.

However, the volume of incoming fire pales in comparison to the volume of outgoing rounds of 5.56, 7.62, 40mm, .50cal, 60mm, & 81mm, not including the hundreds of pounds of JDAM ordinance. It was a good day for us.

07/06/2021

I got invited by Sean to be a guest on his podcast, Getting 2 Know U Pod, about a month ago. Didnt prepare anything ahead of time, but I have a ton of interesting stories to talk about and I dont mind telling them, so we went on for about 3.5 hours and it was really fun. I feel like I told maybe 3 stories of the hundreds I have. I listened to my episode last week, and after getting over the initial trauma of listening to my own voice, got a lot of pointers on what to say or ways to improve in the future. If you get a chance check out his podcast on Spotify or iTunes and leave a review. Im looking to start a YouTube channel in the near future telling stories and giving advice on what not to do. Take care - Gator

01/10/2021

10/25/2020

Now that , aka Obi Wan Nairobi, the 22nd SAS blade (now retired) is public, here is my Ghost Recon Wildlands version of him from his historic actions in Kenya (from right after the event).⁣
⁣

10/23/2020

From my brother.⁣
⁣
A talented artist.⁣
⁣
⁣
⁣

10/20/2020

Please check out my Twitch Stream Channel at twitch.tv/operator_gator

Also, if you're a gamer like me, make sure you make an account and follow.

If you've got your own Stream lemme know so I can follow you!

It'd be cool to fight along side y'all in games like Call of Duty, Ghost Recon, and The Division!

*Post specifically for my Facebook family (and not just a link from Instagram).

08/02/2020

Pull up competition...⁣
⁣
Daily. Any time we rolled from the SF compound of the FOB to the conventional forces side, which was multiple times a day if we were there, we made it a goal to do pull-ups.⁣
⁣
It started with 7 reps and increased by one rep every two to three days. To infinity. There is no limit when you're all on dBol. (haha...jk)⁣
⁣
Normally you don't need to share a bar, but it takes awhile to run through everyone. Plus this allowed us to kiss at the top. No homo.⁣
⁣