Things that go BOOM in the night

I was in my cave, (my enclosed bunk bed), very comfortable, with a cup of hot chocolate, my headphones on , watching War, Inc. A twisted little movie with John and Joan Cusack in Yemen. A lot of shootouts and explosions. In one scene, there are quite a few explosions, during which, my building shook.

I have a little experience with things that go boom and you can feel it as much as hear it. That wasn’t in the movie.
I take off the headphones and look across the room at my roommate George and at the same time I can hear guys yelling in the hallway and George is saying “get your boots on”.

I wonder how many times that’s been said during conflicts throughout history, (or sandals as it were).

I got up, threw some pants and boots on and grabbed my M4, when the second one went off. Voices ramped up and now everybody’s in the hallway, eyes wide, half dressed, looking for direction. One Sergeant was saying lock the back door, you see our building is a long warehouse looking thing, with doors at each end. No need for bad guys to be able to just walk right in.

Just as someone was going to do that, one of our guys came in and said that it was our guys from the other compound doing target practice with mortars, just outside the wire. Oh well, back to my movie, good practice, right? There were about ten more shots. Walls shook every time.