Friendly Fire Foul-Up

So, as I posted last week, my brother is back in the U.S. and he's safe in the Naval Hospital over at Camp Pendleton. His foot is healing fine, apart from the 50-cent coin-sized hole in his foot. The wound should heal up just fine without needing a skin graft, so that's good. And his shrapneled-up arm just needed stitches.

The thing is that he wasn't hit by the enemy. No, he was thrown 20-some feet by an explosion created by our guys. Friendly fire. Seems my brother and his squad mates were done clearing a house when their sargeant told him to get their packs. Now, what the sargeant didn't know is that the house next door was getting blown to shit in order to be stormed and cleared. So in they go looking for their packs, and boom! goes the house. Needless to say, being next door to an explosion can be a little jarring. This is a pretty standard procedure when clearing houses. The Marines would rather make a hole in a wall than go in through the front door which is much more prone to being booby-trapped. This practice is fine with me, but they should start having our guys next door to an explosion. Makes a little more sense, don't it?

But, at least he's fine. And he's out of the shit for at least 6-8 months. They expect him to get back as good as he was before the accident. I hope so. He's getting 30 days of leave before the 6-8 months re-hab so it's going to be great having him around. And I can beat up on him again now that he's all weak and shit. Until he gets back to Marine shape, where he'll begin to put me in headlocks again. Yay . . . argh!