Snook - Reddit War Stories

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

Thank you guys for listening! These were some of the saddest and weirdest stories I have ever read! Let me know if you would like to see more content like this in the future! But they are all amazing, so make sure to watch the whole vid! Thanks for watching, like and subscribe! IF ANY OF THESE STORIES BELONG TO YOU, PLEASE EMAIL ME AT - [e-mail] before filing a copyright takedown or anything. Please, we can get it sorted out through email or some other form of communication, thank you. NEXT SUB GOAL - 100,000 followers I love you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twizzlers as a little pallet cleanser for whatever's queued up. Which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going.

Hey, what's up guys and welcome back to another Reddit Stories video. video. This video will be about war and military stories. So yeah, we'll be focusing on stories like that. So make sure you sit back, relax, and if you're new here, subscribe, it's the channel's goal to be at 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year. And I think we can do it. It's free and you can always change your mind. So please subscribe. And all right, anyways, let's get into the first story. They're burning down the mountain. The two-week prank war on the Taliban. It's 2012, and I'm a Sapper platoon leader tucked away in some forgotten base in a forgotten corner of Afghanistan. Word has just come down the pipe that I'll be assuming the role of a senior platoon leader

in charge of the mobility support platoon. My replacement is on its way. In the meanwhile, though, the company my platoon is attached to is also having a change of command. Change of command in theater means two things. Command of command inventory layouts are stupid. Fucking missions to impress the bosses. Anyone who has ever been to. in the military knows what I'm talking about. Whenever a new commander takes over, you can bet that the next couple of months will involve a whole mess of over-ambitious or poorly thought-out missions and or training so that a new commander can impress his new bosses. Some commanders are better than others in this respect, and I'm just as guilty of it, but everyone seems to do it.

Once the layouts are over, the planning begins and it's pretty clear what our target is, Galang. Galang, our company area of operations, area of operations otherwise known as AO. was something to behold. It was twice the size of the AO of the entire rest of our battalion, even more impassable. And worse still, we weren't even a full company, just two platoons. It had been made clear to us that, on the outset of the deployment that Task Force Spartan was the entire brigade's economy of force operation. The brigade wanted to mass forces in certain critical districts, and that meant they had to find a place to cut forces. Our job was simple. hold onto the ground we had, don't get overrun, as the last coalition forces to occupy these

bases had and try not to die. Despite how challenging that mission already was, you can't tell a bunch of pumped-up young soldiers that their job for the next year is to hole up and just try to survive. That meant that we took on an aggressive defensive posture, patrolling constantly and always working to keep the Taliban in our AO guessing and on their back feet. Sometimes that meant conducting patrols deep into the Taliban territory, and the deepest we would go was a town called Galang, situated at the base of Galanggar, or White Mountain. Galang was basically the equivalent of the Taliban's FOB. The mountains stood on the way of our optics and ISR assets, so they could comfortably mass and

play in back there, and the mountain itself overlooked all of our bases, given their spotters a commanded view. Even better for the Taliban, the road to Galang was so treacherous that the route clearance vehicles couldn't drive it, meaning they could in place IEDs along it easily and effectively ensure that our mounted patrols wouldn't be able to reach it. We still went to Galang occasionally, though. Every month or so, we'd plan a big operation, team up with special forces, bring some ANA special forces, line up some special assets, and move into Galang just to send the message that we could still get there. We'd show up, talk to some folks, and then leave. Trouble is, this time,

the new commander didn't want to just show up, chat, and turn around. He wanted to show up and stay there for two weeks. The problem going to Galang was one thing. Even going there for a couple nights was reasonable. Going there for two weeks, though, was a provocation. It was us barging into the Taliban's backyard in picking a fight. To be fair, that's something I wanted to do too. For months, I've been agitating for us to go extend our networks of COPs and

OPs deeper into Taliban territory, and I specifically wanted to construct an O.P. On a small hill overlooking Galang and then occupy the base indefinitely. The base would still have been a clear provocation, and it would still have been a fight. But it would have been a fight on our terms, and it would have had a point to it. It would allow us to push the Taliban out of the area of Galang. Going into Galang for two weeks, sitting on that hill and twiddling our thumbs, though, that just struck me like picking a fight for no reason. That wasn't even the real problem, though.

The real problem was the time frame. See, the Taliban doesn't have many heavy weapons. They're hard to move around without being detected and intelligent works, hard to track their mortar, recoilless rifle or an RCR, and heavy machine gun, HMG teams. What that means is that if you show up in a middle of a random patch of Taliban territory in armored vehicles, you're generally, pretty safe, unless you're right in the middle of their district HQ. It's unlikely they'll have

the weapons necessary to really hurt you. If you show up in some spot for two weeks, though, invite them to come fight you and then sit around without constructing some serious fortifications. Every heavy weapons team in a two-week radius is going to converge on your position and turn you into a cautionary tale for every American that follows. That's especially true when the only defensive position you can occupy is directly observed by a giant mountain and is immediately adjacent to a village, meaning they can fire down into your positions and sneak up your position with no standoff. The plan as an army leader. You don't get to say no, I don't want to go there because we'll have to fight though. Instead, I had to figure out how to keep the Taliban from massing every

H-M-G-R-C-R and mortar and Kandar provenance there and murdering us. The solution was actually fairly simple in principle. It was basically just an extension of our current strategy. Keep the Taliban guessing and keep them indecisive. If we could just do enough to interrupt their command and control, their planning processes, and sabotage their confidence, we could probably keep them off our asses a little while. It would let us show the flag, demonstrate to the, local Afghans that the Taliban wasn't as tough as they said they were and good us out of there

safely. But what would keep the Taliban guessing? What can we really do to keep them off our asses? We could prank them, bro. So as we planned for the operation, I also began planning out a two-week schedule of fuckery. Every day or every other day, we would have a new surprise in store for the Taliban. Don't dig there, sir. For the first three days of the mission, we kept things pretty straightforward. We knew it would take a while for the Taliban to realize that we were here to stay. So we had some time to just get ready. What that meant for my platoon was digging in. Our strikers were already upgunned. We were a company minus in size, but had a full infantry company of weapons, so we had a couple extra 50 cows and 240s. So circling them up on the hill, overlooking Galang was

already imposing. To add to that, I brought out a couple extra 50 cows on tripod. and we dug them in on the top of a hill and placed trip flares all around the base of the hill. The trouble with Afghan soil, or at least the soil where we were, is that it's rocky as hell. Digging was a slow and arduous process. It would take all day just to dig a ranger grave, and it took us all three days of almost constant digging just to get some shoulder-deep fighting positions. In those kind of conditions, it would be tempting to take shortcuts. So when I saw my commander, who was accompanying us for the mission and his RTO building a fighting

position out of a few giant piles of rocks in the middle of our position, I advised him not to use those rocks. I should have been more specific about why and were paid attention to him after, because later that same day he came back and tapped me on the shoulder. Bonsai, he whispered, we were using that pile of stones to make a fighting position and we dug up some bones. Yes, sir, that's because those are cairns. The center of this hill is a graveyard. The new commander went ghost white. For a second there,

he must have been certain his career was over. The guy's previous deployment had been to Iraq, and Iraqis are a lot more sensitive about things like that. In Iraq, digging up a graveyard would have been a huge incident and led to tons increase in surge in activity. Thankfully, the Afghans were pretty cool about that kind of thing. Three generations of endless warfare have produced a pretty pragmatic people. I explained that, Afghans, wouldn't be so upset as long as he placed his stones back and wasn't obviously done on purpose or as an attempt to disrespect the site. He was happy to accept this alternative to an international incident in losing his career. And after that, he and his RTO dug a proper fighting position closer

to the rest of our trenches. Artillery shenanigans. Day four was the first day we had surprises scheduled for the Taliban. We knew they would be observing us from on top of the mountain. It was pretty obvious that the best way to disrupt the Taliban was to disrupt their spotting. Here's where field artillery really got to be my heroes. See, apparently, when they're in theater, field artillery has to fire a certain number of rounds of each type every so often just to certify their guns or something. I forgot what the process was called, but it basically meant that every couple weeks, every gun would have to fire a round or two at the side of some empty mountain.

Knowing that we had the mission coming up, I worked with our fire support officer to make sure that the Galang Gar would be the target of all those test shots at once every other day intervals throughout the two-week period. It was a way for us to essentially fire artillery randomly at a mountain without actually breaking any rules. Certification rounds weren't the end of it though. For the last few months, we had also made a habit of firing illumination rounds over random Afghan ironing bases in the middle of the night.

It was our sort of way of spooking the Taliban and reminding them that if they tried to sneak up on an Afghan base at any time, they could suddenly find themselves bathed in flare light. That worked real well. But by this point, the Taliban were becoming fairly used to the illumination rounds. Planning for the mission, though, I looked over the full roster of rounds the battery and our AO had and noticed something I hadn't expected to see. Smoke rounds. Smoke rounds are designed to airburst and release a massive curtain.

of smoke. They're great for doing things like cover a tank battalion charging through the folded gap or covering your sapers while they reduce a minefield under fire. But in a low-intensity conflict like Afghanistan, all they really do is take up space. I was a little shocked to see they were even in the battery's inventory of rounds. Still, they gave me an idea. The Taliban had probably never seen a smoke round fired. Hell, I had never seen one fired. I knew that if we ever wanted to scare the plants off of them, we could fire off a few smoke rounds, even better. Because smoke rounds weren't dangerous. We wouldn't be restricted from firing them near villages like Galang, so it came to be that about a week into the operation, we did a pre-planned smoke mission on top of Galang Gar. Over the course of

about 30 seconds, the mountain top went from perfectly normal to billowing curtains of smoke down the side like a massive avalanche. The whole mountain was covered in smoke, and that's when we started to hear the spotters chirp up. The Taliban uses encrypted comms so we can hear the spotters when they chat and they were going nuts. In the midst of all the panicked cries and confused radio checks on their end, one of them finally cut through the traffic to cry out. They're burning down the mountain. Honestly, if I didn't know that it was just smoke, I would have probably thought the same. But the absurdity of this panic Taliban spotter crying out in fear as smoke rolled over him, surely thinking he was about to be doused in napalm, left us all laughing.

In a few minutes, all the smoke was gone, but we didn't hear the spotters again for another day. Helicopter shenanigans. As the days progressed, we began to receive intelligence that exactly what we feared was beginning to happen. The Taliban were beginning to consolidate in the region, and they had moved at least one mortar team into our vicinity. The pranks had slowed things down, but the last week were going to be a real. nail biter. That much was predictable, though, and we had stacked up most of our air support requests for the second week we'd be out there. Among these requests, we had two wild cards, and the first was a pair of empty blackhawks. See, in terms of how air support is prioritized,

it goes something like this. Special operations, support for air assaults or big missions, support for operations in our brigade's main effort districts, support for our battalion in their main effort a.O. And somewhere, way at the bottom is support for these idiots we told to just hide in their bases and survive. So when we put in our request for any and all air support throughout this two-week mission, one of the bottom of the barrel offerings that came back was essentially, you can have two empty blackhawks, but we can't support an air assault. So you can't use them for that. Basically, all you can do with them is have them flying around for funzies. Do you still want them. Maybe two Blackhawks aren't useful for a real operation, but when you're just fucking with

the Taliban, they'll do the job. Day night. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat. That could be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Talk to Banner?

I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand new day. In theaters, July 31st. The Blackhawks check on station for their mission. It's simple. They're going to perform false insertions at two points on top of Galangar. We perceived their landing with more smoke to really sell the idea that we're actually putting troops up on top.

Nothing's up there, but the Taliban doesn't know it. And it would be another couple days before a spotter worked up the balls to go back up there and check. The second wild card was a repeat. hunting team. The army had some cool guy name for the teams that I've since forgotten, but the basic idea is that you can request an Apache teamed up with a Black Hawk with radio direction finding equipment on it. They would come out, fly around the area, use the RDF to pinpoint a signal's location, and then the Apache would destroy it, either a spotter or the repeater.

Trouble is, when the repeater hunting team finally showed up, the local Taliban commander was wise enough to know what was going on. I honestly don't know how this I was smart enough to figure things out, but as soon as the team showed up with the chatter when something like this, there are two helicopters. What kind of helicopters? One with the guns and one with the soldiers. Shut up then. They're looking for us.

The spotter shut up. Now there was no radio traffic coming in. And with the team on station for only about a half hour, we had a very short window to get them talking. After being here for over a week two, there was very little news for the spotters to actually call in about us. So the radio traffic was also a little sparse already at this point. That's when I had my epiphany.

As an army leader, I spent all my time working hard to keep my soldiers from doing stupid things and getting up to hijinks. But right now, that was exactly what we needed. I went running around the hilltop and let all of my soldiers know that they needed to start acting like jackasses. Do anything you can to get the spotters talking. Honk the horn, dance, do backflips, whatever the fuck you can do. to be spotted and get them talking. Pretty soon the entire hilltop had erupted with the stupidity of 30 combat armed soldier

embracing their ape selves. I even got into it when my gunner ran over to me with two long whip radio antennas, tossed me one, and challenged me to a sword fight. It was the most fun you could have in the combat zone in the middle of enemy territory. It didn't take long before the radio came back to life. The Americans are fighting each other? Be quiet. They're trying to find the repeater.

One of them is dancing with his pants down. Stop talking. But the spotters couldn't stop talking. It was like he was hypnotized by the jackassery. Eventually, the commander stopped trying to tell him to stop because he could tell that he was only adding to the chatter. But the spotter never stopped giving updates. For the next 10 minutes, a constant string of chatter came in

until we finally heard the Apache call in that he found the repeater. A short burst of chain gun fire later, and the radio chatter got a lot more statically. End of the Afghan prank war. Somehow, all of our stupid planning paid off. The Taliban did eventually do some fighting, but it was limited to just long-range harassment fire around day 12. Nothing that was a real threat. And the mortar team that entered the area never even fired around.

I can't say for sure that what we did did anything more than scare a couple spotters and blow up a repeater, but I'm pretty confident that if I weren't for all that, we would have had a seriously deadly fight on our hands by week two. Afterwards, I would go on to lead the mobility support platoon in Operation Goat Fuck, and the new commander and my replacement would go on to do an awesome job on their own up there. More importantly, everyone in that platoon and the company came home safe. For the Taliban's part, I'm sure there's some former spotter somewhere out there telling their own version of the events,

where the Americans went crazy after only two weeks occupying a hill near Galang. There's a reason they have to print front towards enemy on Claymore Mind. When I was in the service, I worked with power generation equipment in an M1A1 Abrams tank unit. One type of track support vehicle had a small generator mountain on top to power the equipment inside, such as radios, computers, etc. The vehicle driver was responsible for normal maintenance checks for the gas engine that ran the thing, which was pretty small. I'd get a call during a field exercise that one of my tracks.

mounted units was having a serious problem and was putting a ton of thick white smoke out of its exhaust and wouldn't stay running. Thick white smoke? I resignly confirmed. Don't tell me. Let me guess. Private dumbass, right? Nailed it in one, beamed corporal Sherrodfrewd. Our motor pool, Schroeder, this particular soldier was one of those truly special individuals who couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the bottom. I head over to the vehicle, line and follow the still lingering smoke signals to his rig. What did he do to it now? I asked. Nothing. It stopped running, so I checked the oil this time like he showed me. He proudly replied. My eye twitched at the memory of the untimely demise of his

previous generator belonging to his vehicle. And was it low? I queried. Starting to confirm my working hypothesis. Man, was it ever? He excitedly replied. I filled it back up, but it took an entire oil can. Then I started it back up, but it started smoking. and died again. I've been trying for the last 30 minutes, but it won't stay running. Twitch, would you mind showing me exactly where you were able to pour nearly five gallons of motor oil into this engine that holds no more than a quarter so normally? I asked with a deceptive calmness. This guy couldn't find his own asshole with both of his hands in a flashlight. But he was finding his way to the conclusion that he had fucked up somehow fairly accurately.

To my utter lack of surprise, he began to unscreen the generator's gas cap. I, poured it in here. And where do you normally fill it with gas? I asked ever so sweetly. He looked at me, looked at the gas tank of the generator, looked at the empty five-gallon motor oil drum, and then looked back at me. Oh, he explained. And all right, that wraps up the war stories or write at war stories video. And I hope you enjoyed watching. I only had two on this because I couldn't really find any more good ones, to be honest. So if you guys have any stories make sure to send them to me my email is down below my official email so yeah send some stories or comment them down below if you want me to read them uh yeah i'm just still looking for good

stories so thank you for watching to the end this was a shorter video but i'll have a longer reddit stories video coming out soon but uh yeah thank you for watching until the next time see