American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

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Obviously, there was a lot going on behind the scenes that we weren’t
aware of.
Whatever.
Our mission was quickly changed from taking down the ship to
going aboard and securing it—and uncovering the Scud missiles.
You wouldn’t think missiles would be hard to find. But in this
case, they were nowhere to be seen. The ship’s hold was full of bags of
cement—eighty-pound bags. There must have been hundreds of
thousands.
There was only one place the Scuds could be. We started moving
cement. Bag after bag. That was our job for twenty-four hours. No
sleep, just move bags of cement. I must have moved thousands myself.
It was miserable. I was covered with dust. God knows what my lungs
looked like. Finally, we found shipping containers underneath. Out
came our torches and saws.
I worked one of the quickie saws. Also known as a cut-off saw, it
looks like a chain saw with a circular blade on the front. It cuts
through just about anything, including Scud containers.
Fifteen Scud missiles lay under the cement. I’d never seen a Scud
up close before, and to be honest, I thought they were kind of coollooking.
We took pictures, then waved the EOD guys—“explosive ordinance
disposal,” or bomb disposal experts—in to make sure they
were inert.
By that point, the entire platoon was completely covered with cement
dust. A few guys went over the side to clean off. Not me. Given
my history with dives, I wasn’t taking any chances. That much cement,
who the hell knows what happens when it touches the water