Heard of a lot of story when I was in Afghan.
I was told from day 1, don't pick up stuff that you did not drop, I thought it was a saying about IED.
Anyway as I was a Intelligence Officer for a Battalion, I read a lot of crazy report. Like Phantom Firefight, where you fire into an area thought you were being advanced but afterward you cannot find any sign of life up there. Another I read is a platoon was up on the ridge looking down on a road, the road is not a busy road and was not travelled a lot by the local, one day they saw lights and I quote from the report "Uniformed soldier with AK-47" travelling along the road, walking the stretch of the whole road. They send a team to investigate and when they got down to the road, the "squad of soldier with AK-47" is gone, that's seems strange to me, because that was a long stretch of road, you usually drive thru, not walk, and we don't have any friendly unit in the area that uses AK-47 and Taliban don't wear uniform.
Perhaps the most (Or the closest I get to) is a story about a dog.
There is this OP up on the hill, a platoon of soldier operating in our AO just take over from another platoon that is about to rotate out. Normally I will be the one that fly up there and get their butter bar situated, but was busy that day, so I handed it out to someone. But overall, I was in charge of communication of that base.
A few week passed, the base was under attack by Taliban, monitored their radio chatter, what do they need we bring them up, and after the firefight, they come back with a sit rep, and I was listening to it as it was my job. They report they have some WIA (I forgot how many) and Their Dog is MIA. No where to be found. Then I ask them if they bring the dog up, because I don't know they have war dog with them, they said no, it was there during the transition. So they ask me to ask the former tenant of that OP to see where the dog would be hiding. I track down the unit, and get in touch with their CO, their CO send me a e-mail back and say "They do not have a dog or saw any dog in that OP during their 180 days rotation."
Well, I found it odd but well. That's a lot of bad juju in that place you never know
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