War Stories and Poetry

A Ride Along

Excuse me for saying, but I don’t think a person ill prepared should want to go out on mission just to say that they did. This is what happens a lot of times though. Especially, when it came to what my job was in Iraq.

I was part of a route clearance team; we cleared the routes of I.E.D’s so that other units could travel them. If an infantry unit needed to get to a certain village to detain someone, we were the ones who had to clear the route for them. Or, if a supply unit needed to take supplies to another FOB (forward operating base) it was us that cleared that route.

Officers wanted to ride with us a lot, especially those who haven’t left the FOB. They knew that if they rode with us, they would receive some award that they were lacking such as a CAB (combat action badge). They were assured to get an award for riding along.

During one of my deployments to Baghdad, about midway through, we had a change of command. We got a new commander and he came from working in a TOC (tactical operation center). He hadn’t left the FOB up to this point and becoming a commander of a unit such as this, he needed to get out and see how we operated.

I don’t think that he was an award chaser; I think that he really wanted to observe how we operated on mission. He himself chose when to go out and who he would ride with. He was to ride in the vehicle that I was in.

Each vehicle we rode in typically traveled with four people; the driver, the TC (truck commander), an observer, and a gunner. I was a buck sergeant, team leader, and I was the observer. I rode in the front passenger seat observing, looking for I.E.D’s.

By the middle of the deployment, we had grown weary of people wanting to ride with us. Many of us thought it was a joke anyhow. This mission however, was supposed to be a quick mission and back without any problems; Intel.

Route Clearance personnel always knew how to make light of things and joke around; maybe a little crazy. Even on so called “easy” days we knew that there was a huge chance that something could happen.

When the gunner and I found out that the new commander was going to ride with us, we starting joking that we were going to get blown up. That’s just how it worked when we had someone ride along with us; always. We joked about it during mission prep until we left the gate.

When we were loading up to go, we joked back and forth, “we’re getting blown up today within the first 15 minutes.” We also joked, “three days off.” That’s what you would get for getting blown up good. I looked back at our new commander and I could tell he wasn’t amused. He was a serious guy anyhow and to joke around like that wasn’t his kind of humor. He wasn’t out there to gain an award like many others that wanted to ride along, he was there merely to observe.

After we stopped to lock and load our weapons at the gate we got serious about our jobs. It don’t matter who you are, when you left that gate, the inevitable could always happen. You never know what was going to happen and the longer your outside that gate, the more of a chance there is for the worst case scenario. And this was truer for route clearance, we had the biggest vehicles and the biggest bounty on us because, the terrorist didn’t like us cleaning up what they put out there to disable a unit.

As we left the gate, it was business for everyone, including the Iraqi’s. Some of the locals would carry on about their daily business not paying us any attention. Some of the locals would wave; they were the ones that were glad we were there. And of course there were some who just gave us looks of contempt.

This day was no different. The people all reacted to us the same. The streets were busy with vehicles and pedestrians; it was Baghdad. There were two streets we needed to clear before we made our way to the main route through Baghdad, route sword. These two streets were cluttered with people and vehicles. They were short local streets with a college and businesses on them.

The drivers in the cars, much like every other day, tried to rush by or push the limit as far as they could. Some of them in a hurry to get somewhere and some just didn’t like us being there to stop them. It didn’t matter what their reason was, we couldn’t trust them to be anywhere near our convoy. A couple of warning shots into the air would stop most vehicles.

We finally made it to route sword without any out of the normal problems. We staggered our convoy and started our search for I.E.D’s. The Iraqi’s had gotten pretty good at hiding the I.E.D’s so, we had to drive at a slow pace to look for them and find them. It was monotonous, but it was our job.

You can always count on it being bright and hot. It seemed as if it was going to be a slow day, after a few miles of driving 5 mph, we had found nothing. Many of our days started out like that, but ended up finding many I.E.D’s, maybe just finding one, or ending in disaster.

My vehicle was the second in the convoy and was on the right side of the road. My eyes were stuck on the side of the road. You can’t take your eyes away for even a second or you could miss something that could end up wounding or worst, kill the people in a vehicle behind you.

I didn’t have a chance to get the words out, “I.E.D,” when it went off. All I heard was a big blast and a thump. It was well hidden and I couldn’t see it before we got to it. But, that’s the way it is doing route clearance. If you do see it before you get to it, you can stop the vehicle you’re in and the whole convoy. If you see it and lucky enough to keep going passed it, once you roll passed it, you stop the convoy. In that instance, the terrorists don’t want you; they want another vehicle in your convoy or in another convoy.

But, that day apparently the terrorists wanted my vehicle or they made a mistake. My ears were ringing, I was dizzy, and vision was blurred. For a moment, I couldn’t even bring a thought to my mind.

I shook it off and looked out my window. The window was struck by a piece of the artillery round. It was totally shattered and sunken in. The windows of the vehicles used in combat were coated and six to eight layers thick. The piece of artillery that struck my window almost made it through all of the layers.

I looked around to check on everyone and I could see that there was blood coming from the gunner. I grabbed his pant leg and tried getting his attention. He responded which I was really glad. The TC and I helped him out of the turret so that I could get up there to pull security. He was in no shape to do it.

His face was pouring blood from where his face had taken shrapnel. He was wearing his protective helmet and safety glasses. The blood was coming from his cheeks and around his mouth. His protective helmet and safety glasses had lots of pieces of shrapnel in them as well. When I got up in the turret I saw that the 240B was destroyed by shrapnel too. I had to use my m-4 in the turret for security.

Our vehicle was immobilized. Shrapnel peppered down the side of the vehicle leaving holes all over the vehicle. The tires were flattened and liquid was pouring from the motor. It wouldn’t start and we couldn’t move it.

After all secondary sweeps were done to check for secondary I.E.D’s, the medic made his way to our vehicle to check on the gunner. An emergency vehicle was dispatched to come get our immobilized vehicle.

Everyone was all right other than some concussions and the gunner got the worst of it. His face took shrapnel and he had a concussion. I was off the next day replacing the window and helping repairing the vehicle. The gunner was off for a lot longer to heal.

We were on mission, outside the gate, approximately fifteen minutes. The commander did go back out on mission again the rest of our deployment, but he never rode with that gunner and me again.