Did you happen to see any looting?

Yes, plenty.

What do you mean, plenty?

Whenever you’d get to a house, like straw widows, you’d settle in for a few days and probably leave the place totally trashed. Yeah, there was looting after Operation Rainbow, Mosquito Sting, all kinds of big operations we were in. I once took prayer beads myself. But yes, there was looting. A friend of mine took this large baseball bat, prayer beads, cigarettes. How do Arabs make cigarettes? They don’t buy them, they roll them. They have this tobacco and rolling papers. Yeah, there’s looting, sure.

Any looting of valuables?

Yes. A friend of mine took a Discman. Listen, they live there, they have stuff, it’s not the third world, you know. There’s plenty of stuff to loot. They have really nice houses, they’re living the good life. Yeah, you know, you just put it all in your backpack.

Like what?

All these kinds of figurines from the living room, CD players, cigarettes, daggers, a baseball bat, prayer beads.

Was it something the commanders and officers knew about? Is it a known phenomenon?

 I can’t answer that, I don’t know. I assume that somewhere they do know, but they didn’t ask. You know, we saw nothing, we heard nothing. No one checked the soldiers for stuff, although they did come back with their backpacks bursting. But they didn’t ask. The question didn’t come up. But yes, there was looting, sure.