Test-fire

I originally wrote this one a couple of months ago but didn't ever post it.

We decided to test-fire our weapons into the mountainside the other day. Much of the area up in the mountains is off limits to everyone, so there are plenty of areas you can fire into to make sure your weapons are behaving the way you'd want them to.

So several of the positions around the valley fired a good number of rounds into the mountains and we didn't think any more of it. No other firing happened that day as there was no attack of any kind. Amusingly, later that evening we received reports that the insurgents in the area were bragging to their commanders about the large firefight they'd been in and how they'd taken a lot of fire from us but had continued to fire back and draw us into wasting our ammo. The commanders apparently enthusiastically received such news. Of course, they were referring to our test-fire as their "firefight". Omissions, exaggerations, and outright lies - I guess no one is above them when telling a story.

The incident also gives some insight into the nature of some of these people we're fighting. While there are plenty of true believers, there are also plenty of others who view fighting us as a job like any other - they'll do it so long as their paid and be happy to get paid for doing nothing if they can get away with it.