E-mail:

“Rich,
As an old infantryman, I was often guilty of really stupid behavior myself. But….
1. When was the last time you saw a glass Coke bottle?
2. It’s pretty hard to lean out of a Hummer to use a cash machine; the physical mechanics of leaning out just to smash Hadji on the head with a Coke bottle seem pretty difficult.
3. SOP for most units in Iraq seems to be not to even drive near people if you can avoid it.
4. Coke bottles are, or at least used to be, pretty tough to break.
5. Any military vehicle tends to eventually turn into a rolling trash dump, but unless Sergeants have changed a lot, Coke bottles rolling around on the floorboards are going to be seriously frowned on.”

ME: Interesting points. I had wondered the same thing about the availability of glass Coke bottles, but sometimes you do see them overseas…