Story of Marines using "Shake 'n' bake" (White phosphorus)

[kpete]

Shake 'n' bake
I can't believe this is a story from my hometown paper!!!

Joking and rousting each other like boys just seconds before, the men were instantly all business. With fellow Marines between them and their targets, a lot was at stake.

"Gun up!" Millikin yelled when they finished a few seconds later, grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube.

"Fire!" Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it.
The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call "shake 'n' bake" into a cluster of buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week.

They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it as they dusted off their breakfast and continued their hilarious routine of personal insults and name-calling.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/04/11/military/iraq/19_30_504_10_04.txt

[EuroObserver]

1. Good find (from Saturday, April 10, 2004)

more...

<snip>

Fighting from a distance

After pounding parts of the city for days, many Marines say the recent combat escalated into more than they had planned for, but not more than they could handle.

"It's a war," said Cpl. Nicholas Bogert, 22, of Morris, N.Y.

Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.

"We had all this SASO (security and stabilization operations) training back home," he said. "And then this turns into a real goddamned war."

Just as his team started to eat a breakfast of packaged rations Saturday, Bogert got a fire mission over the radio.

"Stand by!" he yelled, sending Lance Cpls. Jonathan Alexander and Jonathan Millikin scrambling to their feet.

Shake 'n' bake

... Above text here ...

Say 'cheese'

Every day since they started firing rounds into the city, other Marines have stopped by the mortar pit to take a turn dropping mortars into the tube and firing at some unseen target.

Like tourists at some macabre carnival, some bring cameras and have other troops snap photos of their combat shot. Even the battalion surgeon fired a few Saturday, just for sport.

Everyone wants to "get some," the troops explain, some joking that Fallujah is like a live-fire range.

Some have started to think of what happens after all the guns go silent.

"I just don't want to come home and have someone calling me a baby killer," Alexander said after firing dozens of high explosive mortar rounds into the city. "That would piss me off."

Alexander said no one has told him what the charges have hit.

<snip>

[don954]

2. "have someone calling me a baby killer".....

well...
possibly....
you should think before obeying an illegal order in an illegal war.