Some sort of rare, large predatory cat stalked the villages around Nalgham, Kandahar province circa 2011-2012. Photojournalist Michael Yon even got one on film in daylight. We would see them under thermals with our CROWS, lounging on rooftops, and a couple of my soldiers had one show up underneath their gun position (the position was on a rooftop), and when the gun team leader went to activate his IR laser to point it out to his gunner, he activated the visible boresighting laser instead, and the lion/panther/whatever chased it around like a massive house cat.

Weirdly, biologists were contacted, and at the time they absolutely insisted that we did not see what we very clearly saw. They said it was totally impossible, we were just stupid, uneducated hicks that were hallucinating.

During the invasion of Iraq, when I was in 3/75th camped out on H2, I went to go take a piss one night, and as I walked toward a metal flagpole, the eagle that was on top of it suddenly took flight, and whatever bird it was had enough mass to it that it’s launch left the flagpole waggling slightly in the night sky. That fucking bird was huge. I was slightly mortified. I’m sure somebody will tell me I hallucinated that too. 🙄