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thewookie
11-12-09, 02:04 PM
***Have not confirmed if this is true, but I borrowed this from another site I frequent and thought you folks might like it.*** <br />
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From the Sand Pit. It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold...

Quinbo
11-12-09, 02:23 PM
Not touching that one but I do find it odd that you would have to scan the area for scorpions if you are hiding in the snow.

Danny C Smith
11-12-09, 02:29 PM
I've read this one befor, a while back.
Don't know how authentic it is but a good read.


Smitty:usmc:

Hotel4341
11-12-09, 02:30 PM
If this is true, the Taliban are now increasing their patrols along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River...

Integrity57
11-12-09, 09:32 PM
I swear I've read something very familiar to that before and it was rumored to have been fake, but I don't know...just seems oddly familiar.

Roger Shepherd
11-12-09, 09:49 PM
I havn't been to Afghanisran, But it sounds like they maybe some hole's in this letter.

Quinbo
11-12-09, 11:46 PM
Sounds like the romantic postulations by a high school kid of what a recon Marine does in the field. I've read it before and it really sounds like a novel.

thewookie
11-13-09, 05:42 AM
You guys are good; after further research, this is what I found about the history of this letter. Still a good read though.


This letter purportedly written by a Marine serving in Afghanistan began circulating on the Internet at the end of November 2001. It has since been read over the air by a variety of radio hosts, which has helped to disseminate the piece to an even wider audience.

We have no idea if the letter actually came from someone serving in Afghanistan or if it's the fanciful invention of someone stateside as no information has been provided about its author. Although the article has been presented as true on the radio, that shouldn't sway anyone into believing it's the real thing, because radio show hosts are notorious for reading on air items harvested from the Internet that have proved to be fictions.

No doubt this piece is so popular because it contains much that Americans would find appealing. Besides the interest (and novelty) in hearing from a soldier right on the front lines of a war in which we're engaged, it gives voice to ideas that many of us want to believe: that our soldiers are brave and tough (neither a scorpion's sting nor its supposedly transmission fluid-like antidote fazes Saucy Jack the Marine); that our armed forces are a well-organized, technologically advanced fighting machine up against a primitive enemy from a backwards country; that our foes are our inferiors, morally as well as militarily; and that the media often don't know what it is talking about, and we'd all be better off if it just butted out and let our servicemen do their
jobs.

Is the story at least believable? Not really — the narrative is rife with errors and inconsistencies: for example, Ab Gach, the panhandle, and the Hindu Kush mountains are all in the northeast portion of Afghanistan, not the northwest; scorpion antivenin is injected, not drunk; and a true "Recon Marine" wouldn't be broadcasting specifics about his position and mission to the world at large. If this really was the work of a serviceman in Afghanistan, he was deliberately trying to be misleading or funny, not to convey an account of real events.

The "Saucy Jack" letter is as popular as it is because it purports to give insight into the day-to-day reality of a soldier in the field that CNN fails to provide. News emerging from the war in Afghanistan seems rigidly controlled, and the people back home are hungry for information that is not forthcoming. A missive such as this one thus falls on highly receptive ears.