The difference between war stories and fairy tales....

Fairy tails begin with "once upon a time" and war stories begin with "no shit there I was"

So my war story will begin the same way.

No shit, there I was, naked as a jay bird under the blankets sleeping like a babe.

BOOOOOM!!!!!!!

I jump up, naked, and scramble madly for my pants.  Years of experience have trained me that loud noises and lack of pain mean I'm still alive and probably need to do something.  The first thing I did was put on pants.  After the pants, with 9mm pistol attached to the belt I forgo socks and slipped into a pair of boots and ran to the nearest bunker.

So there I was, armed with a pistol, pants, and boots, hunkering in a concrete bunker with three other guys in various states of undress.  Small arms fire started going off in the distance, so a few of us take up positions at the mouths of the bunker and get ready to shoot at any bad guys coming over the walls.

To make a long story short, I then got the call for section leaders to assemble, helped gain accountability of my section, and finally put on a shirt.  I'm still getting razzed for being shirtless in front of the most of my colleagues.

Anyways, the BOOOOOM turned out to be about a thousand pounds of explosive packed into a truck that was trying to force it's way through the entry control point.  A half ton of boom will whack you pretty good out of your sleep, even if you are 150 meters from the boom point.

Lessons learned?  Sleeping naked is good in the heat, not so good for react to bad guy drills.  If you have time to grab your pants, you are obviously still alive and should grab a shirt too.