User blog comment:Griever0311/Ask A Marine: Hammerdown/@comment-1260687-20100410183640

@Gen.Cain: My first firefight was honestly the most surreal thing I'd ever experienced; our entire platoon was on line across a burm, firing into a palm grove a couple hundred yards away. QRF had responded, and a few HMMWVs were rocking .50s and 240s over our heads, and a tank squad was on scene, with the 120s rolling. After about 15 minutes, a Cobra and Huey gunship team showed up, and they expended their ordnance into the grove. I remember looking off to my right, and seeing one of the Abrams firing as the Cobra took another pass and fired a volley of rockets, and I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen in my life. The Huey was angled so that its minigun was pointed at the grove, and it looked like a solid red finger reaching down to touch the ground, and that badass WHNNNNNNNNN sound was loud as hell. The trees were falling each time we sent grenades or any explosives down range, and a few of the trees were on fire from all of the tracers. In its own weird way, it was indescribably beautiful.