Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox

Chapter 25: Gator

Who said you could never bring toys to combat? In all the madness and mayhem, the one thing we needed was a toy to bring us a little fun and excitement. That toy ended up being a Gator.

White Platoon was out on a regular patrol doing the usual IED, counter-mortar, and counter-rocket missions when something came up. A supply convoy had been hit, and they needed some support while they cleaned the mess up. The vehicle that had taken the brunt of the explosion was a trailer carrying John Deere Gators to one of the camps nearby. Somehow, some way, White Platoon was able to acquire one of the Gators in return for their assistance. As fortune would have it, the supply convoy was hit about two miles outside of base, so the trek back to Camp Baharia wasn’t too bad. Lieutenant Nunnally had two of his scouts drive the Gator back; one was for security while the other drove. If you could have only seen it: two big, bad-ass Marines armed to the teeth driving around in a tiny, quad-style golf cart. Hilarious.

I was sitting on my cot watching a movie when I heard a bit of commotion from outside. It sounded as if someone had a dirt bike and was having one hell of a time with it. A few of us stepped outside the hooch and saw Gunny Rossignol zipping back and forth across the dirt parking lot, throwing in a few donuts from time to time. To see a man who had been in the Marine Corps for sixteen years as a hardcore infantryman doing donuts on a golf-cart-looking vehicle was comical. To add to the amusement, First Sergeant Sprague came out and jumped in the passenger seat. They switched off driving and were doing all sorts of tricks, spitting up sand as they went. The two of them were like kids in a toy store.

That was when it all started. There were over one hundred men and only one toy to play with among them. They had to make a logbook for the Gator so we could sign up to use it at a designated time. Everyone in the company wanted to use the Gator for some task or another—go get food from the chow hall, go to the small PX on base, help with the sandbag-working parties, and about anything else that you could possibly think of. And of course we didn’t drive it responsibly. We drove it as if we would never see it again. One would think we were constantly racing an imaginary opponent.

Although we goofed around on it a lot, it did bring some sorely needed assistance. It had a flatbed on the back, which allowed us to use it to transport items. Towards the end of the deployment, Gunny would send someone down to the base chow hall to pick up our portion of food for each meal. No matter what anyone was doing, when we heard the Gator come zooming up to our area around chow time, we would drop what we were doing and line up to get some food. It was such a privilege to have chow delivered to us rather than walk a half mile to get it, especially after a long day of work and patrols.

Another big use was for working parties, sandbag and ammo in particular. Before the Gator, we had to have the whole company line up and pass the ammo or sandbags down the line to reach its destination. This could take hours sometimes and wasted a lot of manpower that could be used elsewhere. The Gator could take on a heavy load and transport it anywhere in a matter of seconds.

However, we abused the poor thing. We would add so much weight to it that it would run like an overburdened mule. By the end of our deployment, it barely ran. We had no more spare tires, it made weird noises, the alignment was off, and it didn’t run as fast as it used to. Gunny wanted to try to load it into one of our containers to bring back to the States, but it wasn’t worth it. After we handed it over to our relief, Alpha Company, it was on its last legs. It probably didn’t run for much longer.

To this day, it will forever be remembered as the trusty workhorse and backbone of the Outlaws. BEST. TOY. EVER.