Surviving Twilight Excerpt

"Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway."

John Wayne

February 2004

(22 FEB 2004) The descent into madness begins. Wake-up came too soon at 0300. We arose, fired up our vehicles and did final pre-combat checks on all of our personal gear and on our vehicles. Threats in the form of vehicles cutting into the convoy were to be handled with increasing hostility. In case of a vehicle getting in our way or between us, we were to first ride their ass and blare the horn. If they didn’t move immediately we were to knock out their windows with the rocks we had in the cab. If they still didn’t move we were to either crush them or run them off the road. A passenger car doesn’t stand a chance against a dump truck sized vehicle. Weapons were carried fully loaded. The mechanical safety and a quick trigger pull was the only thing between us and a firefight.

Once we got on the road, everything fell into place. Our last few months of training led up to this convoy that we were currently a part of. There were a few tense moments on the convoy, when vehicles started lingering around our trucks or when they started doing crazy maneuvers on the open highway. The freakiest was when there was a huge cluster of cars right underneath an overpass and we were approaching it at a high rate of speed. Suddenly, some of the vehicles on our side of the road went over to the other side of the divider and went screaming at seventy miles an hour going the wrong way down the highway. Cars were weaving around, dodging the oncoming cars like something out of “The Matrix: Reloaded”. We finally did make it into the gates, but not after having our weapons pointed at no fewer than 100 different vehicles over the course of the drive. I’ve never been so close to pulling the trigger in all my life. I do not like this country.

…

Later that evening as I was going through the shelter on the back of my truck, there was a huge BOOOOM that shook the ground. The crap on the shelves in my shelter rattled. I didn’t know what the heck was going on so I jumped out of my truck and took cover between it and the trailer. On the other side of the wall that I was right next to, a big roadside bomb had just gone off. I peeked around the truck tire and didn’t hear or see any other disastrous events unfolding. Not less than a minute later I saw the black silhouettes of two helicopters. The first one swooped in low and unleashed a furious fusilade of mini-gun fire upon the area right around the explosion site. A few seconds later the trailing chopper did the same. It was amazing watching all the tracer rounds pour out of the chopper and into a small area. I sat there for another minute thinking, “If they were on those guys that fast, how in the heck are any insurgents still alive? That is some fast acting air support!”

I found out the next day that the immediate air support that arrived was complete luck. Two Boeing Chinook helicopters loaded with Special Forces soldiers were returning from a mission up north. They saw the bomb go off a mile or two ahead of them, and then saw a number of individuals flee from the site with weaponry on their persons. In typical Special Forces fashion, the lead chopper decided “Not in my neighborhood you don’t.” He shed altitude, slowed her down and opened up on the fleeing targets with his minigun. A minigun fires with a cyclical rate that burns from 1500 up to 3000 rounds per minute depending on selected feed rate. With six barrels and motorized action, a minigun can burn up its own weight in ammunition in championship time. With every fifth round flagged as a tracer, the gun shoots so fast that the lit rounds appear to be right on each other’s tail. The combined auditory and visual effect is amazing. From a distance, you simply see a laser stream of angry red light bathing the ground and turning it into a vaporous hell. Microseconds later you hear a scream of rounds that are so close together that you can’t discern individual bullet reports. Instead, it sounds like just a continuous BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP! Imagine Godzilla with a deeper sounding breath weapon. Any way you roll the dice, it comes up a big positive for us that evening. Some rejects made their last attempt at killing some of our soldiers that night. I went to bed with a bunch of thoughts on my mind. Amazing how such a big, strong Army guy can go to bed and the minute he crawls under the covers he feels like an insecure little kid again. Death, killing, bombs and firefights had all been introduced to me today. I fell asleep on my back that night. That last thing I remember was staring up at the ceiling at the mortar holes in the tiles.

(23 FEB 2005) In a sick attempt at humor, one of the residents here had painted up a large sign that reads “Mortaritaville” and hung it on the sundeck just outside of the Post Exchange. The chow hall is a short walk away. They don’t cook anything here; they go and pick up food in insulated containers from a base twenty minutes away. By the time we get it, it is lukewarm and very moist. Ew. Kellogg Brown & Root refuses to come in and do the chow as of yet because of the high volume of mortar attacks still occurring here. Hopefully things will change in the coming months.

Think you are safe? Think again. This afternoon I was walking through the damaged vehicle lot and I walked by a hardened Humvee that was hit by a roadside IED. The blast pressure alone punched through the steel in the center of the door. The two soldiers on the driver side did not survive. The door & window are resistant to .50 caliber rounds and impervious to 7.62 mm rounds, but they couldn’t stop whatever it was that hit them. The insurgents like to use old 120 mm mortar rounds and daisy chain them together to make one big nasty bomb. They hide a pack of these things in debris or tires or something on the side of the road and blow them whenever a military vehicle comes by. The entire Middle East has a horrendous garbage problem. The sides of the roads look like actual dumps. You can’t see the disguised IEDs until you are on top of them.

One thing that struck me as odd was the fact that my company, the 245th Maintenance Company, replaced the 542nd Maintenance Company. How ironic is that? Back in the Pentagon the decision was made as two generals talked.

“Hey Ralph.”

“Yes Jim?”

“How we gonna pick the folks that are replacing the 542nd?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Why don’t we try rearrangin’ the numbers and see what we come up with?”

“Good idea! If we turn it backwards it spells 245th! Holy cow, that’s some good thinkin’ Ralph!”

“Okay, lets skedaddle before happy hour ends down at the pub. I’m dying for a beer.”

Six months later, here I sit.

All over the base, subterranean bunkers are built. Since mortar attacks are such a frequent occurrence, the command figured it would be a good idea to build shelters for all the soldiers in case of a really severe mortar saturation attack. Anytime the sirens start to wail you know you are about to be in for a rather bad day. Cramming folks into these things like sardines is just another fun thing we get to do at Camp Seitz.

There is a small PX on camp here where we can shop to pick up odds and ends. The general store in Little House on the Prairie is a Wal-Mart super center compared to this place. I kept looking around, wanting to yell “Mr. Olsen! Mrs. Olsen, are you here?” The PX is open for two, 2-hour increments each day. The only way they re-stock the shelves is to drive a deuce and a half into BIAP and load the back up with stuff from the big PX there. Need something in a hurry? Rest assured they won’t have it. Batteries? Nope. Toilet paper? Nope. Toothpaste, razors or deodorant? Nope, nope, nope. We have plenty of crackers and Tang though.

(24 FEB 2004) The 1st Cav has now taken control of this area and does the routine patrols in armor now. The light armored vehicles on patrol have now been replaced with Bradleys and Abrams. If you listen to the guys here talk about the 1st Cav, they do so with a sort of reverence. Since 1st Cav took over, there have been only a handful of mortar attacks and they continue getting more and more sparse. There are so many stories of the Cav soldiers using their thirty to sixty ton armored vehicles to full effect that I couldn’t go into them all. So far we’ve had a couple of 1st Cav guys roll up to our gates asking us to fix their .50 caliber machineguns. We couldn’t be happier to do so. I swear, the weapons on their vehicles are seeing so much use that they are wearing parts out like mad. That’s what I like to see! When 1st Cav does go out now, the road is theirs. One of our armorers went out with them once and he said they are some crazy sons of bitches. You’d feel a slight bump from inside the Bradley and wonder what it was. They’d stop a few seconds later and pull security, and he’d see a car mangled up against a wall. Turns out some smart Iraqis like to play games with the 1st Cav and stubbornly refuse to move. Well, it’s either ding up Hackbaa’s piece of crap Peugot, or get separated from your battle crew. I’ll let you guess which ones the Bradley drivers choose. The coolest part is when the Abrams do get to fire. The head small arms repairman we are replacing, SPC Clark, said nobody has tried to actually shoot RPG’s at the base or tanks since the last two times the Abrams barked. That apparently quiets the insurgents down for a couple of days. Probably because the survivors have to recover from concussions and shattered eardrums.

(25 FEB 2004) Ever seen a fuel truck get hit with high explosives and make a fireball blossom up to the waiting moon? Another night, another bomb. We were in our bunks just chilling when the walls rattled. Some guys came in from outside and told us to come see what just happened. Some Iraqis detonated an improvised explosive device in the same vicinity as the bomb that resulted in the Special Forces chopper action a couple of nights before. A US military tanker fully loaded with JP8 got bushwhacked with a roadside IED. The sucker was hit broadside and the boys that were outside said they had never seen a fireball so big. Within 20 minutes there was a pall of smog over our entire camp. The thousands of gallons of diesel fuel that had been incinerated were making a fog that clung to everything and seeped in all the windows even though they were taped shut. We are under orders to shut and tape our windows every night to keep any light from leaking out and giving the insurgents a target for their mortars or weapons fire. I sure hope the drivers of that truck were okay.

(29 FEB 04) Well, today qualifies as the scariest day of my life. We were all working in our appointed areas this morning and things were going along like just another day. I was talking to another soldier in the small arms shelter when I heard a WHUMP and felt a blast. What the? WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP! Mortar attack! Ten feet from me was a bunker. I grabbed my weapon and did a flying leap into it. WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP! The sounds of the mortars were getting louder and louder. They were walking them into the center of the base. For what seemed like an eternity I sat down in that bunker all alone as mortars continued to snake around all over the base. The booms were deafening. Within thirty seconds of their termination, a big gaggle of people came flying into the bunker with me. Standard operating procedure is if you aren’t within a second or two of a bunker when mortars start hitting, then you just hit the ground, curl up and wait it out. There are tons of shrapnel holes around and above waist level all over this base. Getting down improves your survival chances greatly.

While we were down in the hole, I heard one guy say, “Screw these Iraqi pricks.” With that he pulled out a Maxim magazine and began to look at some cute chick in a bikini. Then he pulled out some jerky and began eating. I looked at his shoulder and saw he was an 82nd airborne soldier. There were four of them in the bunker with us. You know your duty station is bad when they tell you, “I didn’t even want to come on this base to pick our Humvee up. This place sucks bad. I guess you’ve figured that out.” Amen brother. Amen. All we could do is chuckle. The dang 82nd guys get nervous coming on Seitz. Ha!

After sitting down in our bunker for another thirty minutes, one of our lieutenants got word on the radio that we had three casualties in the base. I mean, the base is only a couple of hundred yards wide and about a half mile long. When mortars come inside the wall, it really starts to suck. The first casualty was an Iraqi national; he was having a heart attack. The second was a guy from Battalion who was hit in the calf. The last one shook us all up pretty badly. SFC Grady from my company. He was from my platoon. When we got back to the rally point after the attack I talked to PFC Ehrhart, who had been trained as one of our medics. Ehrhart said SFC Grady was walking back from doing the obstacle course on the back of base when a mortar landed just a few meters from him. He took shrapnel in his chest, neck and head. He was still alive but his breathing and pulse were very faint. A medevac chopper came in and rushed all three of the casualties to BIA to the hospital there. Last we heard SFC Grady was stabilized and preparing to undergo surgery. All I could do was pray.