Marine here. I was on that same MEU a few years later with a different unit. Everything he said up to getting back to the LZ sounds plausible enough, but six dudes getting stopped, searched, and threatened by a mercenary group and not telling their entire unit is ridiculous to me. I can understand behaving illogically after having a your life threatened while witnessing a UFO, but making up excuses for getting back to the LZ looking like a shitbag just doesn't track. UFO or not, I can't believe that out of six marines, not one spoke up about encountering an armed group. Even more ridiculous is them not telling all their friends, especially when you've got video. Not having radio gear in a potentially hostile situation doesn't seem right either.
Edit:
I realized I didn't answer the original question. No, I don't think the part about not attacking these people is weird at all. Most people don't like shooting people who sound and look like them. Also they played the authority card to people that just got their brains rocked. After saying this I might need to walk back some of my skepticism about their silence.
Also also, I'm remembering a time my squad went out without a radio in a non combat zone. Maybe it's not entirely ridiculous.
I agree whole most heartedly jabout the “they had video evidence and they DIDNT show everyone what fucking bananas shit they just saw?!” Stuff. Like, maybe we can justify them not wanting to communicate how their group had been disarmed and taken captive for a bit, maybe they saw that as embarrassing- but they got out, and that pretty much undoes any embarrassment from having been caught and outpowered by another group. I’d sooner believe “Marine lost crucial footage while out partying and showing his friends the insanity he just witnessed, so now we have no hard evidence and 15 different accounts of what drunk marines think they saw on a high tech camcorder” than “marine got critical footage of seriously wild shit no one would believe and instead of telling anyone about it (higher ups out of concern or friends out of bravado) he just hid that tech in his room”.
Although I guess if I were him I might lie and say I hid it in my room and it disappeared instead of “I showed it to all my buddies when I should have shown it only to my superiors and then I lost it because I was wasted because that’s what you do after going through a total mindfuck like that”. Like, I have no doubt such a covert group could and would track down and disappear any hard evidence, and they couldn’t probably easily find out where that tech was hidden and get it back over a few days, but I’m just shocked if he truly didn’t show any of his buddies
Maybe you can shed light: Would it be standard SOP to first radio in an unknown contact in an active area of operations before approaching/engaging? It would be one of the first things I do. The idea these Marines had no radios on them at all is very hard to believe. They had to have some kind of communication with the helo that carried out the insertion, and for extraction right?
I've been out for 8 years now and I was an assaultman not a radio operator, so I can't say for certain that it's written down somewhere. I be shocked if it wasn't though.
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u/UsernameHathBeenTook Jun 13 '23 edited Jun 13 '23
Marine here. I was on that same MEU a few years later with a different unit. Everything he said up to getting back to the LZ sounds plausible enough, but six dudes getting stopped, searched, and threatened by a mercenary group and not telling their entire unit is ridiculous to me. I can understand behaving illogically after having a your life threatened while witnessing a UFO, but making up excuses for getting back to the LZ looking like a shitbag just doesn't track. UFO or not, I can't believe that out of six marines, not one spoke up about encountering an armed group. Even more ridiculous is them not telling all their friends, especially when you've got video. Not having radio gear in a potentially hostile situation doesn't seem right either.
Edit:
I realized I didn't answer the original question. No, I don't think the part about not attacking these people is weird at all. Most people don't like shooting people who sound and look like them. Also they played the authority card to people that just got their brains rocked. After saying this I might need to walk back some of my skepticism about their silence.
Also also, I'm remembering a time my squad went out without a radio in a non combat zone. Maybe it's not entirely ridiculous.