I don’t normally share this story, as I am kinda ashamed about it. I lost a Surefire 6P flashlight in Iraq.
Well, I kinda lost three Surefire 6P flashlights in Iraq.
To the best of my fuzzy recollection, I didn’t loose any other gear in Iraq, just the three Surefires. I’ve told people 2 of these three stories, but not the third.
The Surefire 6P was an amazing flashlight back in the day. In 04-05ish, I got my first one. I think I was looking for a new flashlight and I read that the Secret Service used the 6P. It would run for an hour at a blinding 60 lumens. You could drop in a replacement bulb and get 120 lumens for about 30 minutes. Blindingly bright with a respectable run time.
One of the marines I knew really liked mine, so he decided to buy one the following weekend. We went to mainside PX and he got one. When he was driving us back, he was talking about how durable it was, and he bet it could survive being thrown from a moving car. Of course, minutes later, he turned it on, and threw it from his moving car. Pulling over, we backtracked and easily found, the still running Surefire. Barely damaged, running just fine. These lights are still amazing. I would be fine with every day carrying one today. But I’d prefer something small and lighter, with a longer run time.
Now in no particular order, lost Surefire 1.
We were issued some non-Surefire flashlights and a weaver 1″ ring to mount it to our rifle. They were good, but I decided to use my 6P instead in this weaver ring. These rings sucked. They kept coming loose many guys lost their issued lights to these rings falling off the rifles.
Another marine and myself were in the back of a highback Humvee. We were providing security from the vehicle as we drove along. Our convoy went fast down a really bad condition washboard road, and we were bounced all over the place. The other marine and myself could barely keep ourselves from being bounced out of the vehicle. Finally, when we were on smooth terrain I found that the mount had come loose, and I had lost that 6P. Quite a few of the issued lights were lost because of these mounts. Constantly re-tightening them didn’t work. They just sucked.
At one point we set up a patrol base in a sandy area. I’m not sure if it would technically be called sand dunes, but imagine something like that. We dug holes in the sand, and lived in those holes. Due to the slow ops tempo, it was a pretty nice time.
We had to leave that area in a hurry in the middle of the night. We used white lights to pack up quick. We also had to fill in those holes we were living in. I was strugging to try and pack up quickly, as I thought we had less time than we had. I stuffed all my stuff in my pack using my Surefire 6P to give me the light I needed to do the job. Once my pack was packed, I set down my 6P on top of my pack, and filled in the hole. When I returned to the pack, the light was gone.
While it is possible that someone else might have stumbled across my pack in the darkness and took the light. It is more likely that it got bumped and/or the light rolled off the pack into the sand. I crawled around a little in the dark feeling around the sand for the light, but didn’t find it.
Sometimes you have a bad day. During a patrol, I fell into a canal and got completely soaked and covered with mud. Back in the patrol base I have to strip, clean gear, clean myself, etc. When I emptied my pockets, I put my stuff on top one of the sandbag walls at our patrol base as I cleaned them.
There was a local kid that was coming by our camps and patrols. He offered to help out so we would give him some money to do simple tasks or buy and bring us snacks, etc. He built up a pretty good rapport with us.
It was now nighttime, I was nearly hypothermic from being soaking wet as it was cooling down. Someone suggested paying the kid a few bucks to clean my BDUs and some of my gear and I don’t recall if I got a say in that. Either way, I was very grateful for the help. When I stood watch that night, I borrowed another marines body armor. He had a size smaller than I was issued. I had lost enough weight in Iraq that it fit me so much better that I kept trying to get my armor switched out after that, but it never happened.
In any event, the following day when I collected my stuff off the sandbag wall, my 6P with clicky tailcap was missing. I wrote it off as lost.
Soon after, we were told by higher ups not to talk to the kid, and that he was banned from being near our encampments. He was found with a military flashlight. He claimed it wasn’t stolen, but it was decided that he couldn’t be trusted.
I never told anyone it was my flashlight. When I think about this I wonder if he stole it or found it laying around and decided to keep it instead of handing it over.
Losing all three of those 6P lights were my fault. Failing to keep better accountability of my gear, failing to dummy cord a known failure point, etc. But I think because it was my personally owned lights, I was a little more lax than with my issued gear. Still cost me the cost of a few lights.