Page 133 - 100 Hours to Destiny

Army beret on, and I yanked that off of his head and checked that he did not
have anything under it and gave it back to him. Then I told him to sit back
down. As I went through the rucksack, what a pitiful bit of items I found in
there…mostly just ragged clothes….but I did find a second Iraqi beret, as well
as a set of dog tags. I noticed he was wearing dog tags. (The dog tags were
hand made with a little punch device, a very rudimentary way to create a
dog tag. They were made of aluminum. Marine dog tags are made of
stainless steel with a stainless-steel chain and professionally stamped.) I told
the POW as I gestured, that I was observing that he had two berets and two
dog tags. I sat the rucksack down and held the two items up and showed him
my two fingers, and said, “You have two of each, correct?” He nodded his
head to say yes. Then he pointed his finger, gesturing as to say you can have
them. And I accepted the offer. I reached for his portion of food and water,
but before I did, I grabbed my ka-bar knife from my side and opened the
MRE for him. I re-scabbard my Marine Corp fighting knife and turned my
attention to the second POW. This man was very haggard and much larger
than the other POW. This man was unkempt and seemed to smile easily. I
told him to stand up and I patted him down to check for weapons….nothing!
I handed him his food, and as with the other POW, I opened his MRE with my
knife. The men were ravaging through the MREs and drinking the water.
They were truly starving and dying of thirst. They emptied the water bottles
and started begging for more water….it was a pathetic sight, so I grabbed
two more bottles and hustled back to them.
On my way back over a Marine came up to me and said, “Hey
Witcher show them this.” It was a Hustler girlie magazine.
“You think we should?”
“Hell yes. They probably have never seen one.”
So, I said WTH… “You have to get a picture of me with them and I’ll
do it.” I took the waters and magazine over to the larger POW. I threw the
other water bottle to the other POW and he caught it mid-flight. So, knowing
that neither POW was armed, I sat down with the big POW. He looked at me
and I looked at him for a moment and I handed him the magazine. He looked
at me with the biggest eyes because the girl on the front was absolutely
beautiful and naked as a jaybird. A big voluptuous blonde…. But something
was amiss, the POW started thumbing through the magazine from the wrong
direction and he had it upside down.
“Are you dyslexic?” I grabbed the magazine and flipped it right side
up. “Read it like this.”
He looked at me and said, “No.” and flipped it back upside down and
continued reading in the wrong direction.