A Trip to Baghdad
A few days ago I finally was allowed to break out of the Brigade Headquarters and see a little bit of the world out there. My assignment was to make a presentation in Baghdad at a place I’ll just call “HQ" for now. The presentation was about… ha ha, thought you had me there. No, I can’t tell you that either. But it was an important subject, and I was rather happy to have been the BCT’s representative to discuss that subject with the people at “HQ." After having my 20 minute presentation whittled down to a 5-minute shell of its former self, I was ready to go. I just had to get there.
I could have gone by air, but that would have involved some complicated flight routing. Also, passenger service in this theater makes Northwest Airlines look good, so I ruled that out in favor of ground transportation (no offense to the Air Force – they do the best they can). Since one of 1/34 BCT’s two main missions is escorting logistical convoys, this was not a major problem. I got linked up with a CET (Convoy Escort Team) from the 1-34th Brigade Troops Battalion who were traveling in that general direction. The CET commander, SSG L, is a strong leader who is going to get a chance to go to Ranger School when the deployment is over and before he demobilizes – a very rare opportunity for a National Guard NCO. My colleague in the Plans Office, CPT J, used to command this company.
As an aside, that’s one big difference between the National Guard and active duty – years after leaving command, CPT J can go back to his old company and still know a lot of the people there – almost all of the NCOs, in fact. If I went back to D/1-9 IN to visit, there would not be a soul there who recognized me… the last one I knew to leave that company was Coax, the company mascot.
I met up with the CET a while before their departure time, so I could participate in their pre-combat checks and in their convoy briefing. It was a little awkward for me to just sit there and watch – I felt like I should be doing something. But my brain told me to hold back – it wasn’t my company, and SSG L knew what he was doing and certainly did not need any “help" from a Brigade staff officer! After making sure everything was working, he gathered the team together for the convoy briefing. He talked about recent enemy activity on the route, reviewed some other basic information, and reminded everyone of certain basic items of information such as their order of march.
I rode in the back of one of the vehicles. Again, I felt pretty awkward. From where I was sitting, I could see very little and I certainly could not direct anything. Once again, my brain told me that there was no need – that SSG L could handle any situation that we were bound to encounter. Still, a part of me wanted to be up where I could see, be able to issue instructions – basically, I wanted to be a company commander again. I always felt that while D/1-9 IN was a successful company, I never got things quite right. I often think about what I would do differently, knowing what I know now and with three years of perspective on the decisions I made then. True, you can never go back… but that doesn’t make it any easier to be a mere bump on a log, like I was. I really felt like I was a burden to those guys although again, logically I knew my presence really didn’t affect them much.
The crew I was with was an interesting bunch. The vehicle commander was a SGT who was on his third deployment with the National Guard in the last five years. He’d been in Bosnia with the MN Guard in 2003, and in 2001 he had been deployed to Kuwait. As it turned out, he had arrived in Kuwait shortly after I left, back when I was with 1-9 CAV. So he remembered a lot of the things that I did – the primitive desert camp known only as “The Kabal," Mutla Ridge, Camp Doha, its gym and the 24-hour MWR place called “Uncle Frosty’s." I didn’t get a chance to speak much with the driver. The gunner must be one of the youngest soldiers in the BCT: he had celebrated his 19th birthday just a couple months earlier. It’s hard to believe that he was born in 1987. I remember one day when I was the HHC/2ID commander, I observed to 1SG Tager that the new soldiers who were arriving in our company had absolutely no recollection of the Cold War, since they were only 4 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. Well, this gunner was younger still! No, wait… he wasn’t younger. I’m just older. Damn.
The vehicle that I was in had an air conditioner that worked extremely well. While it is starting to cool off here – the temperature barely cracks 100 now, as opposed to the regular 120-degree days in July – it still gets warm in a vehicle when you are wearing body armor. It felt a little silly to be sitting inside an armored vehicle wearing what felt like enough armor to protect another vehicle, but there’s good reason for wearing it. I was glad for the a/c, although I am of the small hard-core group that thinks it is not strictly necessary. I spent three hours one day riding in a HMMWV that had no working a/c and had the heater stuck on full blast. It was about 120-130 degrees outside the vehicle and noticeably hotter inside. I also remember back in 2000, some of my battalion’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews had to shoot gunnery while it was 140 degrees out, AND they had to wear their chemical protective gear (MOPP2). So I just shake my head when I hear about how important air conditioning is.
We linked up with the trucks we were escorting and departed the base. The first leg of the trip was uneventful – just hours of sitting there, unable to see a darned thing. My feet were resting on a box of 40mm grenades, to my right were two M16s and an M4, and to my left were a box of flares, several drums of linked 5.56mm ammo, and a cooler full of water bottles and Gatorade. I didn’t have a headset, so I could rarely hear the crew. I passed the time by going through the greatest hits of Johnny Cash from 1955-1983.
We made a brief rest stop after a few hours at another base. I was impressed to see that SSG L quickly got out of his vehicle and went around to all his soldiers to remind them of their priorities of work. It’s easy for soldiers on a rest stop to immediately go for the Gatorade or for a snack, but SSG L made sure that their first priority was to make sure their vehicles were still good to go – cleaning their windshields and mirrors, checking their tire pressure, etc. He sent a couple of guys to grab some chow for the others, and kept most of his guys working. After a few minutes, they completed their checks and then could relax. Then we started on the second leg of our trip. Before long, we had some excitement.
I still had no headset, so I could hear very little of what the crew said. I do know that we were rolling along, when suddenly – WHAM! It sounded like someone popping a balloon next to my ear, and it made the vehicle shake. The vehicle commander immediately yelled to the gunner to make sure he was OK, and then asked what he could see. “I see a big cloud of smoke and sparks behind us, about 25 meters off the road!" Only seconds later, SSG L came on the radio asking all the vehicles to check in. Everyone checked in – our vehicle had been the one targeted. Nobody had seen anything other than the explosion. SSG L asked if there was any damage – none that we could tell. So wisely, he elected to continue the mission without stopping.
The rest of the ride was uneventful – for us. Occasionally the vehicle commander would yell out reports that he was getting. “IED detonation at Checkpoint ___!" “IED discovered at checkpoint ____" It was all either behind us or not on our route. Overall, not a terribly busy night in this part of Iraq. Obviously I can’t give any numbers, but there was a lot less going on this night than there usually was. Of course, if you’re the one who has an IED go off 25m away from you, it’s a pretty exciting evening.
We arrived at our destination, delivered all of the trucks to the truck yard, and then went to grab some temporary billets. The Movement Control Team at that camp is made up of soldiers from 1/34 BCT, so they take good care of our guys who show up there. I was a little embarrassed when they said they had a separate room for me, since the soldiers were staying in a tent. I went and grabbed about 5 hours of sleep, and then I had to get up to get breakfast and make my way over to “HQ."
The experience at “HQ" was certainly interesting. On my way in, I met the two people from our higher headquarters, the 13th Sustainment Command, who were also attending this meeting. We got to the briefing room pretty early, and were the first ones there. As others filed in, I soon realized I was one of the lowest-ranking people in the group – it was mostly COLs and LTCs or the equivalent – Navy Commanders, RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) Squadron Leaders, etc. Not an NCO in the room. When I gave my presentation, the reaction was very positive – but I felt like a lot of the people present were thinking, “Wow, here’s a guy who has actually talked to REAL SOLDIERS who go ‘outside the wire.’" I don’t mean to insult them too much – it’s tough for Corps and Division staff officers to get a good picture of tactical realities while still doing their staff jobs – but it sure did feel strange.
After the meeting (of which my presentation was just one short segment) was over, I got stuck there for over an hour answering questions and having sidebar presentations. A number of officers just asked me to send them a copy of the presentation. I had one long conversation with another officer about some points I had raised regarding shortfalls in home and mobilization station training back in the US, and how we could better prepare units for deployment to Iraq. The officer I was talking to had some great ideas, and was interested in my thoughts. Unfortunately, he was an RAAF squadron leader – there didn’t seem to be a lot of US Army interest in those points. It figures.
After all of the sidebars and handshaking, I made a brief foray into the Operations Center at higher HQ, and then made my way back to the truck yard to meet SSG L and his team. I arrived in plenty of time to depart with them on the return trip, which was a relief – I knew they were a good bunch and didn’t want to take my chances with some random team! I’m sure there’s no bad teams in our Brigade, but still… I knew these guys and felt better about returning with them.
The trip back was not as smooth as the trip up. Our first hiccup was just trying to depart the truck yard. Something happened out on the road, and traffic was held up for quite a while. So, we parked the vehicles in the truck yard and waited… and waited… and waited. Finally the word came that we could “SP" (SP means “Start Point." Convoys will be assigned an “SP Time," which is the time they are supposed to depart their originating camp. “Being allowed to SP" meant we could start driving). Once again I was in the back seat and could see nothing – but this time I had a headset! At least that let me feel less oblivious.
This time we were about halfway to our rest stop when the excitement happened. I was staring over at an LCD display in the vehicle when SSG L came on the radio: “SAF! SAF"? (Small arms fire). “12 o’clock!" That confused us for a while. If the small arms fire was coming from 12 o’clock – straight ahead – what were the enemy doing, standing in the middle of the road? It turned out that a convoy ahead of us was under fire. SSG L and his crew put their pedal to the metal and screamed down the road toward the convoy under attack so they could render assistance. Now, I can only imagine that there are some people out there wondering, “If you see that people ahead of you are getting shot, why would you speed up TOWARD them." Well, being a soldier means thinking about things a little differently, and to SSG L and his crew, that meant that rendering assistance to other soldiers (even though we had no idea who they were) was of paramount importance. So he tried to get up there and help them. Meanwhile, we were still confused by the initial radio call, trying to figure out where the small arms fire was. The vehicle commander was yelling instructions to the gunner, and I relayed them because his intercom box had gone out. “3 o’clock!" he would swivel the turret to the right, “No, 9 o’clock!" Around to the left. Finally, “Go back to 6 o’clock." It was almost funny looking at how eager the gunner was to shoot something, but we never saw anything. At least in relaying commands I felt marginally useful.
It turned out to be an intense but brief fire-fight, and by the time SSG L caught up, everyone had moved on. There were brush fires on the side of the road from the tracer rounds that the other American convoy had been firing. A few minutes later, when the rest of our convoy drove past, I just noticed a slight orange glow inside the vehicle.
We made it to the rest stop without further incident, but when we tried to start the next leg of our trip, we got held up again due to weather. This seemed odd, since it was a clear night with no wind and a nearly full moon. We later learned, though, that our destination (well over 100miles away) had been suffering a pretty substantial sand storm. We had to wait for it to clear up. Another convoy pulled up next to us to wait, and it turned out to be from the same platoon as the guys I was with. One of the soldiers remarked to me that “this is the first time we’ve seen these guys from our platoon in weeks." The teams have such a high operational tempo - escorting convoys all the time - that they rarely find themselves in the same place as the rest of their platoon!
Finally the word came to continue, so we drove the last leg of the trip – completely without incident. We dropped off the cargo trucks in the truck yard and then went back “home," long after sunrise. I grabbed my gear, wished the crew well, and that was it. I walked over to the headquarters, dropped my gear, and put in a full day’s work. My trip was over – no more talking with real soldiers, no more going outside the wire. Back to the powerpoint, the emails, and the bureaucratic squabbling. So much for being useful.