Our journey to Iraq started with such a frightening blur that it is difficult to remember the exact order in which everything happened. In the space of two days we went from moving with alacrity to moving so quickly there wasn’t time to waste the time to take a deep breath. Before a unit prepares to move anywhere a series of blocks have to be checked to ensure the safety of the movement – and in the space of 18 hours we went from unprepared to completely armed and ready to roll into the very maw of hades. I won’t get into the literally dozens of PCC’s and PCI’s (Pre Combat Checks and Pre Combat Inspections) that occurred to ensure everything was prepared, but suffice it to say that the most difficult part of the process was ensuring our drivers and TCs (troop commander i.e. the guy in the passenger seat) had enough sleep.
Only a select few of the battalion personnel were chosen to make the movement, since the mission requirement was for minimum personnel to convoy up to Baghdad. As the sun crawled into the sky early that morning the air was thick with a raw mix of tension and excitement. It was immediately apparent who was moving north on vehicles and who was taking flights, those of us driving were checking our weapons and equipment with a deadly purpose while the rest of the soldiers did what they could to assist with last minute preparations.
It was an amazing sight to see so many people working with such determination, the soldiers moved between vehicles like bees moving among a host of flowers. By noon all the last minute preparations were completed and we started our movement out of the staging area. An outside observer looking at our faces would never have been able to tell we were going to combat, there wasn’t a soldier that wasn’t smiling. That may sound odd, but after 6 months of preparation we were ready to go and start our mission.
The first leg of the journey took us to the dusty border of Iraq. It was a rather uneventful convoy with little to differentiate it from any other journey we had taken through Kuwait. We stopped in one of the Army’s CSC’s (convoy support center) and settled in for a few hours of sleep before the long drive north. The next morning started hours before dawn with a last convoy brief and the last minute checks that accompany a combat movement. The entire line of vehicles was alight with flashlights. Their narrow beams were sweeping over the smooth armor plate and blunt nosed weapons like so many fireflies. We crossed the border into Iraq in the dim light of our vehicles lights, made all the dimmer by the fields of dust kicked up by our movements.
The border between the countries was little more then a chain link fence and a dilapidated guard shack. We had been briefed that as we passed into Iraq passed a gargantuan slum there was a good chance indigents would attempt to climb on our vehicles and steal anything that wasn’t tied down. Apparently the people of the region are in such dire straights that the older children think nothing of throwing the younger ones into the convoy to get American vehicles to slow down. Fortunately all we noticed as we flew by the urban blight was a few skinny dogs and mounds of trash. As our vehicles swept through the dark desert landscape there was little to see, but as the sun rose high in the sky the terrain started to reveal itself.
Southern Iraq completely surprised me if for no other reason then the people. All along our route of march children would come running up to the vehicles waving and laughing. They were poorly dressed, and several of them alternated between waving and pointing to their mouth to ask for food. As heartwrenching as it was to ignore their request we were under strict orders not to throw food out so we responded with smiles and waves of our own. I questioned the order later and found that several children had been run over because they would run in front of a vehicle to get food. It was a far cry from what we had been briefed we would see and I resolved to do my level best to not break the trust our nation had made with the people of Iraq. I wish I could have taken a film crew with me on that leg of the trip, it would go a long way towards dispelling the skewed viewpoints that America sees on the news.
Back in the states the majority of what I heard about Iraq was focused on the illegitimacy of our time in Iraq, and the quagmire the soldiers were embroiled in. What people don’t begin to grasp is how badly these people really had it under Saddam, and how just our presence in Iraq brought hope to these childrens lives. On that long road you could see children running to the road from the fields just to wave and smile at the Americans. My time in the third world has left me a little more jaded then most, but seeing the children’s bright eyes and animated waving went a long way towards restoring my faith in the resilience of the human spirit. As the distance ticked by the landscape grew progressively more barren, until at the midpoint of our trip there were few signs of any form of civilization other then sporadic herds of camels.
One thing that we had been briefed but had to see to believe was how insane the traffic was. As an American convoy rolls down the road we have to be alert to VBIEDs (vehicle borne improvised explosive devices aka car bombs). Because of the threat all vehicles have to stay at least 50 meters behind our convoys, and any vehicle attempting to move into our line of vehicles is removed immediately. Instead of just moving behind the convoy the Iraqis just jumped the highway medium and drove full speed down the wrong side of the highway to get past us. It was bizarre watching the vehicles swerve in and out of traffic to avoid head on collisions.
After several hundred kilometers we headed into the graffiti tagged warren that marked our last CSC. The first sign that we were entering a safe zone was a enormous barricade marked with a quote from the Chepelle Show… “I’m Rick James… Bitch!”. Ahhh, America.
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