Convoy!

April 2, 2010
Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
13:40

Three Days Ago:

My Staff Sergeant tells me I'm going on a convoy.

Two Days Ago:

I wake up at 03:00 after getting hardly any sleep. I have butterflies in my stomach; I was pretty nervous the night before and pretty much played my DS until the battery ran out to just get my mind off the convoy.

I get all my gear together, flak vest, helmet, gloves, eye protection, etc. With the other five or six guys from my platoon, I walk to the motor pool where the rest of the Motor T and Security platoons are headed. I feel like crap, hungry, tired. It's so typical to have to wake up this early for a big event in the Marine Corps. They can't just start them later...

I arrive at the motor pool around 0400 and wait around till 0500 when the brief kicks off in a small tent everyone is sitting in. The company 1stSgt goes over a power point pretty quickly, which I find irritating because I've never been on a convoy...ever. Not even in training. I was maybe on one, but it didn't really count because it was an admin movement and not actual convoy training.

I'm going to be an Assistant Driver (A Driver) in a seven ton flatbed truck with a bunch of boxes and cases strapped down on the back of it. It's vehicle number twenty-three (vic 23 for short).

After this brief, I get a folder called the "Smart Pad" with a couple sheets of classified information I'm supposed to keep track of. It lists some details about the convoy and has some maps. Usually the A Driver is responsible for communications, but the driver in my truck maintained the radio and did all the talking. Me telling him and the gunner "Sorry, guys. I have no idea what I'm doing, so if you could help me out that'd be awesome" probably lessened his faith in me using the radio. I pretty much ended up being "Keeper of the Smart Pad" for the entire convoy. Whenever they needed to see the papers they'd snap their fingers (because they didn't know my name) and they'd say "Hey, gimme the smart pad!" and I would hand it to them and continue reading the magazine I was reading.

The convoy begins to leave the motor pool around 0600. Our vehicle is 23, and is therefore in the back. The gunner's feet are right next to my head, in between me and the driver. That's if he's standing. Half the time he would sit with his feet resting on the edge of the hole in the cab's ceiling.

It took a while for everyone to actually leave Leatherneck and get "outside the wire." This is when I really notice that Afghanistan, or at least the southern part, is quite a wasteland. It's like an ocean of sand and gravel as far as the eye can see in some parts. And there are no roads. We only know where to go by following the tracks in front of us.

After about thirty minutes I realize that I'm way to tall to be sitting in this vehicle. My knees are constantly getting smashed against the dashboard, and there's a box in between my feet with MREs so I can't adjust to a comfortable position at all. I try several different positions and they're all worthless. I end up using some socks and shirts I brought with as a buffer between my knees and the dashboard.

The first few houses appear after about an hour and a half I'd say. I stop reading and look up to see the poppy fields scattered around. Surprisingly, they're vibrant colors are really pronounced, especially when they're sitting in the middle of a desert. I'm confused on how they get enough well water to irigate these fields. Some of them were so vast it looked just like The Wizard of Oz. And then on the other side of the road it'd be just gravel and sand.

The houses the locals live in are seriously made out of dirt. They are the most primitive living structures I've ever seen in person. It's hard to imagine living your life in one. Of course some are left in ruins, but some are well maintained.

For some reason, the vehicle with the Assistant Convoy Commander drives straight into a roll of C-Wire (kind of like barbed wire) and they have to stop while we wait. My vehicle and two others have to break off from the main convoy to go to a seperate place and unload. We take a trailer that has a large forklift on it to offload our truck with.

At some point the gunner says:

"Don't look up, I'm pissing!"

And I can hear a water bottle filling with liquid above. Later this bottle falls from the turret and lands on the platform next to my head.

"At least the lid wasn't off!" I call back up when the gunner apologizes.

"Heheh, that woulda sucked!" he answeres. Yes...yes it would have. Considering we weren't even a third of the way through the convoy, the last 60%+ being covered in piss would've been worse than it already was.

When we break off we are lead by two trucks with grunts (Infantry) who are escorting and providing security. Ironically, the time I found it most difficult to stay awake was when we had to stop and watch the grunts ahead sweep for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) and they actually brought a dog out to assist them in finding any. This sounds pretty tense and I kept imagining one of the guys stepping on a mine.

Finally, we reach Marjeh, which you may have read about in the newspapers or seen on TV. Again, some of the vegetation and grass around here was inbelievably colorful and vibrant. The "huts" were a little more built up.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention the little kids and other civilians watching us. Some of them ran by the convoy, waving. Some blew kisses. Some hid around corners and watched from their hiding place. Some tried to approach the trucks when we were stopped. There was a kid who couldn't have been older than 9 trying to sell us a carton of cigarettes at one point. Wow.

The adults would ride around on these ghetto motorcycles and pass between the vehicles if we were stopped. Some would wait but others were more gutsy. They'd fit as many people as they could on these things, I saw three people squished onto one, and possibly for at one other point but I couldn't be sure.

At Marjeh, we stopped the 7-ton and the forklift unloaded us. I was relieved because after that (it took about an hour and a half) we left and I felt like we were on the home stretch, headed back to Leatherneck.

Wrong.

The truck pulling the trailer with the forklift on it had an issue. The last axle of the 6 wheel trailer bent and the wheels were just dragging at an angle. We stopped for about an hour as they fixed that, and then continued on, constantly having to stop and wait because of it.

Eventually, the piss bottle fell out of the turret again, but the gunner didn't notice and I just put it under my seat.

When the sun went down, that's when things really dragged.

"Where's everyone behind us?" the gunner asks.

"Huh?" the driver asks.

"Where's the convoy behind us?" the driver asks.

I look in the mirror to my right and notice that not a single set of headlights is behind is anymore. The driver flashes the headlights a few times to get the ghostly sets of red brake lights ahead of us to stop. They do eventually, and we wait for the vehicles behind to catch up. The convoy ahead of us begins to leave and the gunner wants us to wait. There was a period of about five minutes where we were sitting in pitch black. No vehicles to the front, none to the rear. We were totally alone in the desert. The headlights to the rear became visible and we continued.

This went on for the rest of the night. It took about 6 to 8 hours to get back to Leatherneck from Marjeh.

I didn't get mad until we could see the lights of Leatherneck ahead, and about 90 minutes after that we were pulling into the base. I don't know if we did circles around the base or what, but it was irritating.

When we got back I felt like crap.