In da field / Hurricane Abdullah

I know that on my last blog I said I was going to cover the different ethnicities here and the mechanics of the country but I recently had an experience that I want to put out before I do that. While it was happening it was absolutely miserable but as it is with most bad experiences I have had I can now look back and laugh because some of it was comical.

My section and some others were recently tasked to go out into the middle of no where and pull security for some engineers that were working on a project. The weeks leading up to this adventure were filled with days of gathering materials from cots to tents to burn latrines. Burn latrines are big wooden stall toilets in which you have to burn the waste at the end of the day. I had a lot of experience with them during Desert Storm so imagine my joy when I heard we were bringing them out to the field with us. We started our grand adventure early one Monday morning by meeting up with all the trucks from the engineers and some other elements out in the dust bowl. The dust bowl is a large open area here on base where the larger convoys stage their trucks before rolling out the gate. We were originally tasked as convoy security but ended up doing route security instead. This means that we roll ahead in our trucks about an hour before the main convoy and make sure the road is clear of IED’s and whatnot. Added to our convoy was a bomb sniffing K-9 unit and the base EOD team.

The convoy out went well and we had no problems which was a good thing. It was actually a fairly nice day, the sun was out and it was pretty warm. We arrived at the work site around noon and the Engineers went right to work offloading their equipment. The K-9 unit was deployed to search the area for IED’s or any unexploded ordinance that might be in the area. As soon as the dog got out of the truck we were suddenly surrounded by all the local dogs. This caused quite a scene and at one point I was actually preparing to shoot the dogs which would have sucked but there was a point where we thought that was what we were going to have to do. One of our guys finally diffused the situation by using a slingshot with rocks to shoo the dogs away ( don’t ask why they have slingshots, you don’t want to know, I will save that explanation for when I get home ). By the time the dog had sniffed the whole area and announced the all clear the engineers had unloaded all their gear and went straight to work. I am not sure what unit these guys were from but I do know they are a National Guard unit from Indiana and they do not fool around. They worked 24 hours a day ( except during hurricane Abdullah ) the whole time we were out there.

We were pulling security for the sight so we had a truck parked on each corner of the project area. When pulling security you must have a gunner up in the turret and at least one other person in the truck at all times. About 4 hours into the project the wind started to kick up and an hour after that it was gale force winds with a full compliment of dust to boot. By 6pm the few trees I could see were being blown sideways and we could not see anything beyond 20 feet. We had 5 guys in our truck initially but once we arrived on site one of our guys had to go help commo ( the communications section ) set up the radio station. Around 8pm we get a call on our radio that 3rd platoon would be coming out to our truck to trade it for one of theirs that was broken down. They were working in another portion of our battle space ( the area in which a unit is responsible) and their truck broke down so instead of having to go back to base to get another one they came and stole ours ( bastards). We were currently in an MRAP which was nice and big with a good heater, and what we got from 3rd platoon was a broken down HUMVEE that would not run so we had no heat. This would probably have not been too bad except that shortly after they dropped the truck off and we had moved all our gear over it started to rain. Not any silly little rain either, this was rain in buckets accompanied by the gale force winds and lots of dust. I am actually hard pressed to remember ever seeing a storm like this either here or at home, that is how bad it was, and we were out in it. Let me tell you that standing in the turret of a truck in a full blown storm like that goes beyond any words to describe it. We were truly “in the suck” as they say in the military. Around midnight I had had enough of being in the turret ( about 15 hours of enough) and decided to take my gear and go to the tent that they had set up earlier in the day. The tent was approximately 200 meters from where my truck was parked which is no big deal under normal circumstances. But with that rain and wind and trying to hump my rucksack ( Army backpack, usually filled with way too much stuff ) through the mud it was a difficult task to say the least. By the way, the mud out there was different then the mud on base. Out there it was like pudding and slick as hell, I almost face planted on many occasions.

I finally get to the tent completely exhausted and ready for some serious rack time, so I set out my sleeping bag, lay down and all is good in the world and then I completely pass out.. One hour later I am woken by one of my buddies who affectionately kicks me and yells “get the heck up, the tent is blowing down“. Mind you I have been awake for 30 hours and have only gotten 1 hour of sleep. I lift my head up and look to my left and ………yes, the whole end of the tent is gone and by gone I mean gone ( for my Face book friends there are pictures of this ). This really is no way for a civilized person of my stature to be woken up but this was the situation I found myself in that evening. As I madly scramble up to stuff my sleeping bag back into my ruck and try and account for all my gear the other guys are frantically stuffing gear under a tarp which is where I finally deposited my gear also. Once we got all the gear under the tarp we used some very wet sandbags to hold the ends down. All the guys that had been sleeping in the tent had originally come from the trucks that were pulling security. The Sergeant Major puts out a call for those trucks to take turns pulling up to the tent area to pick up their guys, the first truck in got stuck in the mud so no more trucks coming to the tent. That equates to Jim and one of the Terps (interpreter) having to walk out into the weather to get into a truck. My truck was too far away so I was sent to another one ( which in my humble opinion was farther away than my truck , string of curses). By this time the storm was in full gear and I was really not happy to be going back out into it but since the tent was disintegrating around me I really had no choice. I was totally soaked within 10 meters and the wind was gusting so hard that at times I would have to stop and brace myself against it. It was gusting so bad that when I stopped and braced, the wind would actually push me over the surface of the mud, kind of like wind surfing but different. The Terp and I finally reach the other truck only to find out that they were not expecting us so there was some arguing about what in the hell we were doing there. By this time I was in no mood for anything so I plainly stated I was staying and that was all there was too it. I finally pass out while sitting on someone’s rucksack and get about 4 hours sleep before I am woken and told that they need me back in my original truck ( not really my original truck , more like the broken down piece of junk that 3rd platoon had left us). I get back to my truck and I do not leave it ever again for the following 4 days of our stay out at the sight.

The next day all the trucks rigged ponchos over the top of the turrets, it rained a bit that morning but by the afternoon it had all cleared up. For the ret of our stay we worked 3 hour shifts on the gun and took cat naps in between as you cannot get any real sleep sitting upright in a truck with body armor on. By the second day 3rd platoon was kind enough to drop our MRAP back off to us and take away their HUMVEE, it was really nice to have heat again and I do not think we ever turned it off the rest of our stay.

On the third day my truck got moved to the southern part of the work site and part of our job was to observe the traffic that was using a bypass road because we were doing some work on the main road. The bypass road was really just open desert that the people were driving across to bypass our area which was completely blocked off. The problem was that about halfway down this road was a low spot where a lot of water from the rains had collected and created a big muddy mess. Around noon of that day we noticed that there was a huge traffic jam building up on the bypass road. Basically a couple of large trucks had gotten stuck in the mud and were completely blocking the road. So we had to call up the engineers who sent out a bulldozer to fix the road. Another soldier and I had to dismount and provide security for the bulldozer operator while he worked. So I am standing out there in the mud with all my gear on sweating my ass off as the sun has come out in full force and I have all these Iraqi men surrounding me gastrulating wildly and pointing at their stuck vehicles. I just want to mention that I do not speak the local language, so I basically just stood there with a goofy grin on my face and nodded a lot. The bulldozer finally pulls out all the vehicles and fixes the road but he is only able to make one lane. As soon as he moved the bulldozer, traffic from both sides starts to move forward and before you know it we have a traffic jam. It took about half an hour of cursing and wildly waving arms to get them to cross over one at a time but we finally got our point across and the traffic jam cleared up. The rest of our stay was pretty uneventful, although I will say that 90% of us never tried to sleep in a tent again. Never get out of the boat, words to live by.

And in the end the best part of the whole trip for me was I did not get stuck on poop burning detail.

Sergeant Major to me: Clarkson, you getting any sleep?

Me: Roger that Sergeant major.

Sergeant Major: Your not lying to me are you?

Me: Negative Sergeant Major, I wouldn’t lie to you about that sergeant major.

Sergeant major: You know it is illegal to lie to a Sergeant major about anything.

Me: No comment.

Comments

Unfortunatly I had to set my blog settings so that only registered viewers of my blog will be able to post comments. This is due to the fact that some hacker or some such person was posting comments on how to pirate software. So there you have it. I will be posting another blog soon. Just got back from 4 & 1/2 wonderfull days in the desert so I am going to sleep for 14 hours now.