It’s kind of scary when the indirect fire (mortars, rockets, etc.) alarms go off and you run to a bunker.

While you’re sitting in the bunker, which is really just a few slabs of concrete, there’s this feeling of complete impotence. In all the war movies you’ve ever seen, an enemy attacks and the soldiers rush forward with their weapons to meet the attack head on. In reality, when the Taliban is firing mortars at you, there’s nothing you can do except sit there and wait.

So you sit down in the bunker, with a crazy loud alarm screaming at you, and you know you’re completely powerless to do anything. You sit there and you listen for small arms fire, you listen for people screaming (if they got hit), and you listen to the explosions coming closer and closer to you as the Taliban adjusts their aim and tries to land rockets on your head.

The worst part is that when you come back home, every fucking thing sounds like that IDF alarm. Somebody scoots their chair back on a tiled floor, and your heart rate shots up to 120 and you reach for a weapon that you’re no longer carrying

Edit: added picture of a typical bunker on an Army Forward Operating Base