Day 22; Mounted Gunnery

My soldier sent me an incredible email today.  The first video looks black (because it is at night), but click on the play icon to hear the audio.

Mom,

Just to give you an idea what we're doing right now.  We were wearing night vision, so you can't see anything except for the tracer rounds (one of them for every 5 rounds fired), but you can hear me and my gunner communicating.  You may have to turn up the volume to hear everything.  I call out the targets, he identifies them once I give him the description and direction, I tell him to fire, he responds "on the way," and he lights it up. Pretty fun.  

I'll try to get a video during the day but my camera battery is almost dead.  If so, I'll try to get one on my cell phone.

I also attached a video where I took my night vision goggle off and put the camera in front of it so you can see the literal "night and day" difference between pitch black and using the goggle.

Also, among some other pix of my soldiers, is a picture of the shitty 20-year-old gun trucks we're using out here. My gunner, SPC [classified], was setting up his M249 in the turret.

By the way it's in the 30s out here and we're sleeping in tents, hah.  I kept my computer turned on and plugged in inside my sleeping bag to keep me warm.  Worked like a champ!

I had to listen to the video twice before I could believe it was my son, yelling commands to fire.