Not So Jolly Now

It was a dry, scorching day in Al Anbar, Iraq. We had been tasked to hold a blocking position on a busy road in east Fallujah. Another unit was conducting a day long raid and we were to prevent any insurgents from entering or exiting the area. Sounds exciting, right? That's what I thought too, until the seventh hour of not seeing a single moving vehicle - insurgent filled or otherwise. I did, however, unwillingly shoulder another daunting task; fending off annoying Arab kids.
They came in scores, babbling shattered English with their hands in the air, screaming, "I lob you meester. O zey khan you see!" and asking to trade ridiculous items like bowls and sticks for laptops and rifles. It was tolerable for a little less than 12 minutes. Then, as the crowd of smelly, brown adolescents grew to mob standards, my teammate and I decided to launch our own mission; Operation Jolly Rancher.
It started by simply loading Jolly Ranchers ( 5 pound bags were issued to our team by the corpsman to maintain blood sugar levels) into our slingshots (issued to us by our unit for warding off wild dogs) and launching them as far as possible. The intention was to get 100+ kids to sprint 120 yards to find a single Jolly Rancher buried amongst the trash and debris of the breathtaking cityscape. It didn't work.
The crowd was growing and we needed to think of something quick. I looked down to see a tall Iraqi boy holding up a pencil.
"Meester, meester, give me money Amerikhan, I give you peeyencil." He wriggled through the crowd as though his idea trumped their persistent yelling, begging and bowl-bartering. His eyes were fixed on me. I watched him carefully as he pushed closer to the vehicle. I was amazed at his confidence and faith in the practical value of his pencil. Just as he opened his mouth to pitch his deal once again, a super sonic, grape Jolly Rancher whizzed through the air and impacted with a fleshy slap just below his left eye. I turned to see my teammate, Paris, standing on the hood of the vehicle, freshly fired slingshot still in hand.
"All right you little pricks!" he yelled. "Who's next?" He loaded another Jolly Rancher. "Watermelon this time, assholes."
We split the bag. He took the right side of the truck, I took the left, and together we unleashed assorted flavors of pain and carnage. It was like a parade gone horribly wrong. Within one minute, the road was just as void of pesky kids as it was of terrorist filled getaway cars. I felt kind of bad, still do. Kind of. But we did what we had to do. All is fair in love and war.