The true story of how Army paratroopers traded dip for a Toyota gun truck used to secure the...

From the article: Most of the security posts around the perimeter of the airport had been abandoned, said Lt. Col. Andy Harris, commander of the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Soldiers with the battalion quickly set about bolstering the airport’s defenses, yet the situation remained volatile — Taliban fighters were just meters away, outside the airport’s gates — and much of the equipment they’d typically use, like heavy vehicles and machine guns, had yet to arrive at the airport. What they did have, however, was a green pickup truck outfitted with an anti-aircraft gun. The paratroopers had traded two cans of dipping tobacco for it.
The truck served as a primary deterrent to Taliban fighters as U.S. troops landed in Kabul to assist with the massive evacuation effort there. And the only reason U.S. troops knew how to use it was thanks to an Army paratrooper born in Iraq, who served six months of a mandatory service obligation in the Iraqi military before coming to America.



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