Well writing is therapy so you win the jackpot.

In the fall of 2003 we started getting attacked by lone shooters and IEDs. The shooters were relatively easy to handle as long as we were actually keeping an eye out in every direction. The IEDs, were not easy to handle. And they got worse over time. They got larger and more frequent. The randomness of them was definitely starting to wear on us. Near towns they generally hit units that treated the locals poorly. Which wasn’t great but we treated the locals good so we weren’t too worried about it. On the highway though the larger IEDs hit pretty randomly. And it wasn’t uncommon to hear this on the radio, “Ambush, Ambush, Ambush, Need immediate air support at grid 12341234, break, … 4 Kilo 1 Whiskey Urgent over.” Which is someone yelling for help because they got hit, they have 4 dead and 1 wounded. It’s not the official radio call but it’s the most important information right away and the official lines were sent after that, once the Tactical Operations Center had started the medevac and gun helicopters to respond and was paying attention thanks to the topline there.

Most of the time we were doing our own thing and didn’t have the time or orders to respond. By the time we drove by all that remained of the scene was a humvee that looked like a giant had taken a pair of plyers to it repeatedly and blood and medical debris. Sometimes it happened the other way. We left the FOB one day with a convoy behind us, and we opened up spacing as was the standard at the time. They could not have been more than a minute or two behind us on the highway. That night on the way back we saw one of their humvees on the side of the highway. Back at base we found out we never knew because different brigade, different radio frequency. But they lost that humvee and everyone in it right behind us. Unit morale was already low but that put us right in the gutter.

Then it was our turn. The day before the bad guys had blown a bridge on the route we needed to take. They nearly got it done with several humvees on the bridge but ultimately mistimed it. As we approached the creek that ran under the bridge there were two paths, one with car and truck tracks and one with no tracks. Our convoy leader chose the one with car tracks because why wouldn’t you? Well it’s actually an axiom in the infantry not to take the predictable path if the choice is that easy. Our leader fucked up there. If he had taken the other path I wouldn’t be doing writing as therapy.

As we neared the creek I saw something absolutely chilling. I saw the locals flinch. I don’t blame them, they’re in a hard place between us and the AQ guys in their town who mete out justice at night. but seeing that flinch was the moment I knew our dice had come up. The only thing I remember next is the world disappearing and feeling something akin to the hand of god slap me down into the humvee. I would probably have been ejected if I hadn’t been tied to my machinegun. (For you young’uns before you had gunner belts we just used parachute cord and carabineers) A minute, or more later I woke up in my armor hanging from the gun. Nobody knows exactly how long but it was absolutely longer than 60 seconds. Which is a diagnostic threshold for a traumatic brain injury.

As I come to I hear, “Ambush, Ambush, Ambush, Need Immediate air support at grid 12341234, 1 vehicle catastrophic, 3 kilo, over.” There were only three of us in the humvee that day so they didn’t think there were going to be anymore numbers to follow. But our driver was more lucid than I was at first and he got the handset, “Correction 1 wounded, 2 Killed, over”. At this point something in me figured I should yell and let them know I was alive. So I yelled all the nonsense. Literally could not make a sentence or any word approaching what I was trying to say. For those keeping track, this is another diagnostic threshold. But our driver, who is an awesome person by the way, got back on the radio, “correction 2 wounded, 1 killed, over” It was at that point we heard a moan from the the guy in the front passenger seat. He did not look like he was alive. He looked like he had completed a personal appointment with an improperly used wood shop machine. Also one of the greatest guys I’ve ever known. Our driver got back on the radio, “correction again, 3 wounded, 3 wounded only, over.”

In the aftermath we got the area under control without anyone else getting hurt and agreed on a medevac location for our passenger. Wait, no, it would be dishonest to skip that part.

The driver yelled at me to get back up on the gun and I climbed my way up the pole, from the bed of the truck. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I was so weak I had to climb it, like it was a sheer cliff. Another diagnostic threshold. When I got back up on the gun the driver and I saw 4 or 5 young men sprinting away. We immediately assumed they were responsible and gave chase. Our squad leader, in a different truck, got on the convoy radio frequency and yelled at us directly to stop. No radio formalities, just told us to stop the vehicle. In my mind I wasn’t letting bad guys get away. It was still ROE at the time that you could shoot fleeing bad guys if you had positively identified them. My squad leader must have seen me pull the charging handle on the machinegun because he got on the radio again, just in time, and ordered us not to shoot. So I didn’t and those guys are still alive as far as I know. If I had shot it would have gone through most of the village. I was on a .50 caliber M2 that day.

So nobody else got hurt and we pulled out to go to the medevac spot. For some reason, known only to god, the IED hadn’t killed our humvee. At the medevac spot another platoon had secured the area so it was the first time we were able to just sit down and take stock. The driver and I compared our eyes and ears. Both of us had one pupil blown and the other pinpricked, and clear fluid leaking from our ears. Another diagnostic threshold. Our buddy got on the helicopter and they offered to take us as well but they had only brought one replacement. The driver and I were not in any way ever going to willingly leave our friends down 2 guys so we refused. We also didn’t really trust the replacement to drive, I can’t remember if he didn’t have his license or whatever but I ended up driving. On the way the original driver, now in the passenger seat and I, actually driving, had to keep waking each other up. This wasn’t actually abnormal with the operations tempo earlier in the deployment so I don’t think we thought too much of it at the time. But passing out repeatedly after a head injury? Yup, another diagnostic threshold.

Later we would find out that the IED was exactly as big as the ones that had been taking out entire crews. It was because it was buried in mud and water that we’re alive. and I only have my legs still because the shrapnel had to travel through our water, our MREs, and our steel equipment box before it could reach me. To outward appearances I survived with little more than some scratches. But I while I didn’t dodge everything in this story I think I dodged an impressive amount of stuff.

So it’s late March 2003 and we get the order we were waiting for, to cross the Iraqi border. We set off in lines of humvees and cargo trucks that go from the horizon in front to the horizon in back. We felt pretty safe at this point, pretty powerful. After all this was as big a can of whoop ass as any we’d ever seen. As night fell, the wind kicked up. Visibility varied but generally we were able to see a couple hundred meters with no problem.

Then a worrying radio call comes down, reminding us that the minefield between Iraq and Kuwait was notorious for shifting in high winds and the loose sand. It’s worth noting that the convoy was crawling, doing no more than 20 or 25 mph. The worst thing that could happen at this point was a “loss of contact”. Where the front of the convoy leaves the back behind. The digital map technology was in only a fraction of our trucks and breaking into different groups could be a major waste of time or even disastrous if there was no digital map with the group.

As visibility dropped we had to drive closer together. And as we passed the first stakes marking the breaching lane, it went straight down to zero. So we tried to find the rear infrared marker light of the humvee in front of us. Because we’re also doing this in black out, depending on night vision goggles to see. And we found the humvee in front of us all right. We tapped them right on the bumper. Just to explain how low visibility is, we’re riding in a pickup style humvee. Only 2 of the 6 of us are inside. I’m actually standing up behind a machinegun. And not one of us saw the humvee in front before we tapped it. Nobody and no thing was hurt but we got told to back off and trust the stakes on either side for ten minutes or so.

So we did. And then the stakes betrayed us. It was a few minutes later when visibility flashed higher and we saw we weren’t in line anymore. We were next to the convoy, on the other side of the stakes. We were all sure we were about to hit a mine. But we can’t stay there, so we all cringe as we slowly turn back towards the convoy. We made it back, in the correct spot even. Visibility dropped again and we decided the humvee in front of us was our humvee too, nobody complained about the small taps that occurred several more times that night.

We didn’t know it yet but the American invasion brought with it a record breaking amount of rain to southern Iraq. Over the next couple days we would be driving routes that were an inch above shallow lakes and we were constantly wet and gritty. But visibility never again dropped that low for us.

Okay, in the summer of 2003 it wasn’t uncommon for the locals to show their appreciation. We had mostly taken over the role of policing and maintaining order until local, non Baathist police could be trained. We had an older gentlemen in the neighborhood near us who took it upon himself to feed us at night. This lasted several nights and the food was way better than our MREs. Things had also calmed way down, so we felt safe to take our body armor and eat with him in front of the small cement hut we slept in. Any soldiers reading this aren’t going to make sense of this happening without realizing that we weren’t in the secured perimeter of our patrol base. Leadership didn’t mind because we were having positive interactions with the locals and that was the priority at the time. Even after this, things didn’t heat up again for several months. It really was this peaceful summer where we all thought it was going to work out easily. Iraq would quickly get a new government and we’d be home by August. Well, we all know how that went.

So one night, unbeknown to us the last night we’d have this guy at our little camp, we’re sitting around and enjoying falafel and some kind of sour cream with the ever present flat bread. It wasn’t Greek pita but it was also too thick to be Indian naan. And this stuff was awesome. Later on we got the local bakers enough money to buy cheese and other halal toppings and create mini pizzas for us. At any rate, about 15 minutes in, after we were done eating, the world’s most polite ambushers rip off an entire magazine from an AK in our general direction. They also shouted something in Arabic but we weren’t exactly stopping to ask questions. We immediately ran into our hut where we had left our body armor, (I know, bad infantryman, bad, but remember we were trying to look friendly) and threw it on as quick as we could. We cut the cords on the poncho over the Humvee and the machinegun and got it into action and the dismounts charged right up to the elephant grass under the cover of the gun. Our buddy was fine thankfully and had sensibly gone home at a high rate of speed.

As we discussed how to handle the elephant grass we heard more Arabic on the far side and the dismounts moved in slowly. The Iraqis most have known somehow because they came bolting out the other side and were visible for about a second before disappearing into the alleys. We decided chasing Iraqis in the dark without back up was a great way to end up on an Angel flight. So we settled for checking the elephant grass for any explosive devices or traps they may have left behind. After all the local kids played there.

We never did figure the why or wherefore of that ambush. They could easily have killed the five of us if they had fired controlled bursts or in semi-auto. Were they the first blush of Al Qaeda? Did they just not like our friend giving us food? (the food situation at the time was still recovering, but not to where we needed to give them humanitarian aid anymore) Had we unknowingly wronged their honor and this was them reclaiming it? Never found out. But I do think that to this day where we might have trouble as Americans in Mosul or Kirkuk, in that town we’d just had have to tell them what unit we were with and we’d get fed again.