Photo By Spc. Sharla Lewis | Sgt. Raymond Mandap, with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Brigade Special...... read more read more
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CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER, Iraq – At barely five feet tall and very reserved, Sgt. Ray Mandap seems as though he would sooner sit in the crowd and watch a live concert than flash his talents on a stage.
As the saying goes however, one should never judge a book by its cover.
Mandap is a mechanic for Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 3rd Advise and Assist Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division and is deployed to Contingency Operating Base Adder, near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
Recently, Vertical Horizon, an alternative rock band from Washington, D.C., visited COB Adder to put on a show for the soldiers and civilians stationed there.
Part way through the show, the band’s leader, Matt Scannell, called to the audience for a guitarist to come on the stage and play for a song.
In a totally out-of-character act, Mandap rose from his seat and made his way to the stage. Picking up the guitar, he played right along with Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.
“[Sgt.] Heine got up and everybody was yelling, but he was walking to me and pushed me up on the stage,” Mandap said. “They told me to play B minor, G and E so I did.”
Earlier in the concert, Mandap, who hails from Jersey City, N.J., had been bragging that he could play each of the instruments on the stage. His friends didn’t think he really could.
“He was saying he could play the guitar so when they asked for someone to go up on stage I talked him into it saying, ‘Yeah, you have to go up now that you were talking about it,’” said Sgt. Wesley Heine, also in Headquarters and Headquarters Company.
On a day-to-day basis, Mandap is a quiet individual, leading by example with experience and professionalism. A former Marine, he said that yelling isn’t always the answer and asking soldiers to do work you’re unwilling to do only creates hostility.
The act was pretty out of character, Mandap said later, but not something he didn’t think he could do.
“I didn’t put it past me, but I never thought I’d do it,” he said. “It feels good that I played with them.”
| Date Taken: | 06.07.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.18.2011 08:57 |
| Story ID: | 72330 |
| Location: | CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER, IQ |
| Web Views: | 37 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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