Michael Yon Afghanistan Photos October 6, 2008
Posted by Lipstick in Food, Heroes, Travel.trackback
Michael Yon did an amazing job of telling the story of the Iraqi War. Now, with that winding down, he has moved on to where the action is: Afghanistan.
He has a fascinating photo essay of his day at the market, including some old rifles.
Check it out:
Good gawd, that looks like a Lee-Enfield .303
That thing could be a hunnert years old.
Afghanistan is famous for fake antique armaments made for Western tourists — both rifles and swords. You can read about it in the comment thread to Yon’s article.
Duh. Martini Henrys, circa 1879.
I like food.
Afghanistan, that Horrible nightmare that it is, still has, a bazzare filled with stuff I have never cooked with.
Those buckets aren’t filled with ammo, they are filled with food.
Granted, many of them are obviously rice, but, many of them are not.
Have any of you read his book?
Haven’t yet — it’s on my list. Have you read it?
Dave, don’t be so quick to give yourself a “duh”. Most of the old Martini-Henry rifles found in Afghanistan have been converted to .303 British from the original .577-450 chambering. The British did that back in the late 1800’s when they were changing chambering so that they could still use the old rifles.
They were marginally safe back when the .303 was chambered in black powder, but with smokeless powder loads nowadays, they’re pretty much wallhangers. I have heard of people loading .303 brass to lower pressures so that they can fire these old guns, but why take a chance on having a nice old rifle blow up in your face?
That would ruin your whole day.
I wonder if women generally are allowed in these markets. I don’t see any in the pics.
test
^
Flunked. It went to the filter.
Sorry.
Yeah, I fished out your #10 KC and sent another bitch note to Mark at Akismet.
I swear, I cannot understand why this is so friggin hard to correct.
My guess is they use a lot of open source software and trying to debug somebody elses code is a bitch.
Or they just don’t care…
DING!
What’s kind of funny about the Martini Henry is that I saw one on the rack at The Powder Room during the IBSBP Shooting Event. It was an original .577-450, which means that you’re gonna pay AT LEAST $6 every time you pull the trigger on the old girl, since the ammo’s currently running in the $120 range for a box of 20 rounds.
They only wanted $200 for it, but Janis gave me the stinkeye when I mentioned it to her at the time.
Fired my buddies .303 enfield (he got it for like 70 bucks in 94, now the ammo was more expensive than others)
Kicks like a mule.
Janis was dissatisfied we didn’t empty your ammo can.
Those pics were in Jalalabad? Wow.
That’s right in OBL territory. Or it used to be, anyway. I can’t believe Yon has the sack to walk around there without heavily-armed bodyguards.
Imagine if the rest of our media had that kind of courage.
Yon’s got the sack, for sure.
have you seen his sack?
You did say “for sure.”
You know for sure about his sack.
I don’t wanna know about his sack, I wanna know how you know about his sack.
Well, you know I’ve traveled a bit . . . Met a lot of interesting people. . .
Go ask Sobek, he first talked about the sack.
Actually, wicked, you can still get surplus .303 for about $0.20 per round. Compare that to surplus quality .223 at $0.35 a round minimum, and the old Enfield is a cheapie to keep fed. Plus, it’s a hard hittin’ mofo.
I’m affraid of sobeks wife.
Very nice, but also protective.
I will never forget me mentioning a McCain Huckabee ticket, and she cut me off.
“Don’t Say that to Him!”
Not loud, just “mommy.”
I was cowed, Mrs sobek, as small and young as she is, she got a mommy cannon ready to open up. In fact, after that, I almost always addressed her before talking to her son, I meen husband, sobek.
I can’t remember russ, aren’t there two enfields? Buddies was a rimfire.
is that standard, or something different? I think different.
also, hatted loading the F’er, rim front, slide back, rim fron slide back, rim front slid back rim front, OH! thats right, a 7 round mag can only hand 4.
Also random thing, I’ve mentioned I’m not a big gun guy, don’t own them, and rarely ever shoot them, but I’m well informed on the mechanics of gun.
I’m a boy, I like to take shit apart and put it back together, thats one of the things that makes guns AWESOME!!!
You are SUPPOSED! to take them apart! Unlike my fischer price cassette player when I was like 7 or something, but thats besides the point.
My buddies enfield was just coated in damn near solid cosmoline, and we started to clean it at my house, and, irresponsibly, my friend fired a round out to test the barrel.
He fired into the air.
A few days later, he called me up, even though we saw eachother all the time, he rang me up. “I think it’s clean, but, wheres this thingy go?”
“What thingy? What the eff are you talking about?”
“well, going to see my dad, and we gonna go shooting, wanna take my gun”
(first, it’s illegal in indian to use shoot a modern rifle outside of a range, but nevermind that)
“COOL!” (he didn’t spend much time with his dad.
“but I need that thingy, the you know, the *ping* thingy and I can’t find where it goes.”
He removed the ejector spring, and didn’t assemble the bolt correctly.
Here’s a guy, Me, who has only shot a real gun maybe twice, and both were handguns, illegaly purchased, putting together a rifle for someone who was raised with guns (his moms a cop his gramma kept a shotgun next to her kitchen sink so she could shoot varmints outside her windo) so that he could shoot his rifle with his father.
Of course I shot that rifle later, the enfield, and I regreted it, but I took joy knowing that my friend and his father got their asses kicked by that bitch.
Forget the gun…I want some of that couscous.
I thought that was Turkish.
That thing about my buddy’s gramma shooting varmints? ABSolUTELY TRUE!!!
His grampa, before he died, had a short barrel 10 gauge, and there was a 10 and 12 next to the counter, loaded.
The wooden deck was pebbled all over the place with shot.
FUNNY SHIT!!! cuz his gramma was just so FLOGGING SWEET!!!
We visited her every weekend for a few months (before I joined) to help her familiarize herself with her computer, cuz she had to be put into a community (not a home, an honest to goodness community. We actually asked why they put his gramma in a 2 level townhouse, and one of the nurses said “she needs something to complain about, it might help her enjoy the other things.” THATS GENIUS!!!! Her grandson agreed)
She missed her gun, but she also really enjoyed her computer. My buddy is a 4 finger typer, he doesn’t touch type like I do, and she just latched onto his method, and went hogwild.
For a short time she was a gamer.
Did I lose track again?
ARGH!!!! I hate doing that.
Well, that buddy had a long history of guns.
He’s also the same guy who’s a “furry.”
I understand (ain’t talked to him in a few years, we have nothing in common, but he’s still my friend) he’s doing well, got a partner who’s prosperous, and buddy is a sorta small time erin brokavich.
Charismatic guy, (”He was such a beautiful boy! and every woman would kill for his hair” thats a quote from my mom, she likes this guy, even though he’s bizarre, My family is accepting)
Is his grandma sill around?
You actually know a “furry”? I read a long article about them a few years back. What does he say about it?
Yes, and your response is almost exactly Mesa’s. “no, really? You know a furry, he really is?”
Yes, he’s a furry, he’s also a “Sub” and I have a number of stories about him being a furry, like the scotch tasting that I told at the IBSBP.
Yes, he’s really a furry. Other than temperament, a VERY normal guy, Gay/bi, but really gay, he’s a very normal guy, and an EXCELLENT musician.
As for his gamma? I don’t know, we don’t talk or see eachother often since I got back from the Corps.
Really? What do we have in common, but I understand HE is doing well.
He was and I would allow is, despite the distance, a very good friend.
He kept me sane for about 2 years before I joined, unfortunately I kinda screwed him over (”FUCK THAT SCHOOL!” he was going to a local vocational school for HVAC work, but, I don’t know, maybe it was a favor in retrospect)
Furry’s really aren’t any more bizarre than BDSM’ers. Furry’s just roleplay in costume, or in character.
Meet the guy, you would never guess he was bizarre, other than his gayness, cuz he likes womens shoes and ocassionaly dresses as a woman, but rarel dresses, but he loves womens shoes.
Gonna pick a fight with a man who loves womens shoes?
I like shoes, boots mostly, but I have a lot of shoes.
The womens thing gigs me as unusual, but he’s my friend and a damn good one, though we are mostly in the long past. A shame, he’s a good guy.
He’d like my shoes then — men’s 9 1/2.
Wonder what makes people like that?
Born that way? Or tweaked by exposure to weird things?
GTFOOH!!!!
You wear a ments 9 1/2? He’s only a 10.
You are probably right.
Awkwards moments consist of us going to “shoe carnival.” and him doing his best at the gay exclamation, thing is he doesn’t have a lisp or a high voice, and rather than “FABULOUS!!! OPEN TOES IN MY SIZE!”
It came out “AWESOME DUDE! I Gots me some Red Pumps! Hows that shit!!!”
It was awkward.
But he’s my friend, so I found the funny.
Lip? gonna be active in 20 minutes?
I have to buy some maruchen, and I will describe my and more than one gay friends opinion.
I’ll be here.
In MY opinion, with the 2 gay people that I grew up with.
I believe One of them, (the furry) chose it, and I think the other one, was just always more interested in men.
All the lesbians I know I believe chose it, it’s kinda like chicks say to themselves “You know? I LOVE THE COCK, but I can get one at a store within 1/2 a mile, why do I need a man to go with it?”
As for gay men, I think it’s split.
One guy, the one that I knew from day one was gay since middle school, had a perfectly standard style household, though they were more upper class.
The Furry, one of my best friends, was brought up in a house with only his mother, an aggressively masculine mother (she’s a cop, actually FBI now) but also very feminine when her sisters visited, we used to joke about it.
I think we all have a predilection towards bisexuality, in some way, for instance, I would be HAPPY to be gay, if guys only had tits and poots, unfortunately men are hideous, I don’t know how you chicks put up with us, especially considering the mechanics of sex, and I would like to know exactly what Mrs Eddiebear is thinking.
We are all indiferent to sex in terms of mechanics at birth, but like all things we tilt. Many tilt one way, and others another, and some are tilted one way, but act another.
Example, this guy, the girls loved him him in highschool “he’s gay.”
and he “dated” girls, “no really, he’s gay,” “how do you know, You are just jealous!” “no, he’s gay.”
3 years later, GTFOOH!!!! he’s gay!!
He is one of those people who was always gay (not the norm, and I would wager, that those who always knew they were gay from childhood are bottoms, I’m just saying)
Now my buddy, the “furry” I believe he actually tilted hetero, but he was moved towards gaydom because of his upbringing, and so did he at the time (a butch mom, doesn’t make up for a father who actually is butch)
He described it as “it’s easier to have a relationship with someone just like you.”
Which is odd, cuz he’s a “pet” “furry” so really what he is describing is a desire for Fixed and easily defined relationships, but hey! you know, just cuz gays are more than happy to play, for lack of a better word, “the woman” or “the man” in relationships, that makes us non gays homophobes, even though homosexuals, and very bizarre fettishers do the exact same thing to a much greater degree.
As for gays, it’s a combination.
As for fettishers?
Well, the answer was always there lipstick. Imagine how much you hated your parents as a teen. Stretch it into your twenties, somethings gonna break. Sometimes you develop a good relationship with your family, sometimes, you develop one of the most anti-social behaviours in history.
I’m not saying Gays are anti-social, but homosexuality is almost universaly despised by society.
If you are a man who lay with an older man while in all accepting rome, you know what happens?
They get beaten to death by their own breatheren.
“fustuarium”
Sorry, not “older” but “adult”
It was okay to bang boys in old rome, then again, Greece really wasn’t that different, though there were parings.
Wow, Pinto, thanks.
My hairdresser in LA said that when he and his friends were teens they just decided that it was “cooler and more out there” to be gay.
And no fake dick could replace the real thing. erm, unless the real thing doesn’t work all that well. . .
Warm water, and baby oil lipstick.
Was that out loud?
It’s the tilts.
I support gays, because of my friend, partly, and mostly cuz I don’t give a damn, I ain’t gonna bang them, let them find their own happiness.
The ones who say “I was always gay” tend to be bottoms, the ones who say “I never knew I was gay” are tops.
That would be an interesting poll.
hehehe, poll.
I hate that stupid argument.
“what do you think of gays?”
“well same thing I think of fat chicks when I’m sober, NO FUCKY! WHY IS THIS A QUESTION!!!”
The Gay Marriage thing is stupid.
Do I think gay couples who have lived the equivalent of common law, or specificaly defined by that partner visitation, or in the will? or defined as next of kin?
YES!!! I do!
Let them, they can do it anyways, at less expense than most married couples.
But “Gay Marriage” is a civil right? NO IT IS NOT!!! it is etymology, and manipulation.
Okay, Gay Marriage will be accepted as soon as Gay couples are acknowledged as heterosexual.
YOU ARE NOT HETERO, YOU CANNOT BE MARRIED! For the love of god!!!
Hey, Everyone is a Marine, it’s just words, why don’t you allow everyone who never went through bootcamp become a marine?
WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT!
BTW, in that link, the Fustuaria, the act of executing the fustuarium, is inacarate.
Within the Legions, EVERY! Member of the legion MUST strike the living or dead body of the man killed.
The Fustuarium is HORRIBLE!
And laying with a man in his adult years was worthy of it.
Not only will you die by blunt force, (actually the legions fustuaria requires the LOWEST ranks strike first, and even if the individual is deady, EVERY member of the legion must strike the body.)
In the Marines, you used to have to “walk the gauntlet,”
Meaning you walk between formations to get punched.
I refused it. I turned my back.
Hazing is stupid, especially, when I am better than everyone else.
Those are some great pics. Wonder if those rifles are copies made in Afghanistan, they’re known for making copies of the SMLE and other old British rifles.
Oh, and all you IBers are welcome to join the debate chat we’ll be holding at my place.
What about MY PLACE!!!? Asshole?
I will only take part if you can dig up some legos.
Odd, why am I still moralauthority here?
I thought I changed everything to the hostages. HRM.
I’m starving, mom really needs to drive faster.
at a safe pace.
WP, that was psychotically hilarious. Well done, sir. Mrs. Sobek laughed, too, but not as hard as I did.
Re: Michael Yon’s sack, I have no further comments at this time.
It’s not all that funny.