Kaboom!

We just got boomed for what seems like the thousandth time. It was one of the biggest shock waves I have experienced. It shook our entire facility, which is made of reinforced concrete. No one hurt, no one injured. Not here.

VBIED? Not sure, but it was really big, or really close. It’s good to be reminded of the fragility of life. The explosions cause me to continually reassess whether I’m spending my time wisely.

The explosion turns out to have been a mortar near miss, not a car bomb. One of the soldiers in my unit saw it fly over and land as he was on duty outdoors at the time. One of the interesting things about explosions is that you can’t tell the difference between a distant bomb if it’s large enough and a nearby mortar, which has a smaller concussion than a car bomb but which is still quite loud and powerful if it lands near enough to your general area. Today’s mortar was quite near us. They usually come in pairs, and this one was a single, but the insurgents use old ordnance and thankfully, their mortars often just land without exploding. For all I know today was a two shot that had a 50% success rate on impact.

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