Back in the Moment

Military vehicles are notoriously loud.  An up-armored HMMWV is no exception.  When I was in Iraq we were in and out of them all the time, as well as up-armored LMTVs, 5 Tons, Strykers…  They were all loud and it was frequently difficult to be in the moment and know what was going on.  If you were lucky you had a working vehicle intercomm system, and enough headsets for everyone.  These headsets both drowned out the noise and connected you to one another, but they had almost as many problems.  Guys would always accidently “hot-mike” and override all important communications with sounds of them moving around or whatever.

About halfway through our tour we were told to pick up everything from one base and move it to another base 15 miles down the road and outside of the city limits.  We were going to turn the base, and the responsibility for patrolling that portion of the battle-space over to the locals.  This was a giant pain in the ass, but we did it.  Multiple convoys were run to cart all our stuff, contractors were brought in to move the really heavy stuff, etc.  The last convoy for us from that base included our FOB runners, or FOB queens.  These were vehicles that were deemed too unsafe to go outside the wire.  We were able to tow one and load another on a trailer but the last was a 2 seat pickup configuration that was driveable.  It was one of the original vehicles in country, so it didn’t come with armor, that was hodge-podged onto it later.  Because it never left the FOB it didn’t have a radio system in it, and it didn’t have a turret.  I volunteered to drive it.  The folks higher ranking than me needed to be in more heavily armored vehicles and on the radios to control the convoy.  Honestly, out of the group I was the only one left that I trusted to be in that vehicle.  I took an interpreter with me instead of another soldier.  We suspected him of being at best a criminal and at worst a spy, so if our truck blew up, it’d be no loss.  We took off and the vehicle was loud as can be.  No intercomm system to muffle noise.  It was the last run of the day and it was after sunset.  As we were going thru the city I heard a loud “thunk”, then several more, accompanied by bright lights across the windshield.  Not quite sparks, kinda like lightning bugs on speed.  It took a minute to process.  A flash for my brain to catch up and sort out the normal vehicle noises from this new “thunk”, a flash to realize I was being shot at, and a flash to realize that there was nothing I could do.  We weren’t an infantry company out on a movement to contact mission.  No search and destroy here.  I didn’t have a radio to warn the other vehicles and call in a quick-reaction force.  I didn’t have a gunner to have return fire.  Even if I did, we were in the middle of the city and rules of engagment probably would’ve limited our ability to protect ourselves.  The only thing I could do was to keep driving and get through the kill-zone as quickly as possible, give the pre-arranged signal that I was taking fire and from where (and hope that the vehicles in front and behind me recognized it) and watch the rear view mirror and count vehicles behind me, praying that they all made it through.  Funny part of all of this?  The fear of the moment, the feeling of helplessness was forgotten or suppressed.  What I remembered was looking at the interpreter to tell him to get little and having him scream at me “We are being shot at.  I know.  I have been shot at before and this is what it sounds like!” and just cracking up at him.  His voice and the look on his face are still one of my funnier memories of Iraq.

A couple of weeks ago I was having a movie night with a friend.  Except that everything went wrong.  DVD player didn’t want to recognize the disc, NetFlix wasn’t working, etc.  So we ended up watching “Mercy” instead.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s on HuluPlus and it’s the story of three nurses in a ICU ward in a hospital in New Jersey.  One nurse is freshly minted and naive.  One is jaded, not a nurse because she loves helping people but because it was a way out of her terrible upbringing.  The last is an Iraq vet.  In one of the early episodes there’s a loud noise and she scrambles for cover.  Everyone looks at her and she’s embarrased as hell.  My friend asked me if that had ever happened to me and I said “No, not really, just to friends”.  A good buddy of mine used to be a diesel mechanic and was sitting around in his shop, talking to co-workers.  Someone else was moving a plate of steel on a fork lift and somehow the plate fell off the forks and hit the ground.  He instantly hit the floor and rolled under a table while everyone stared, then pointed and laughed.  Fortunately the shop foreman was older, and a Vietnam vet and he told them to shut-the-fuck up and get back to work, took my buddy into his office and talked him off the ledge.

We had our first snowfall yesterday.  I think about 8 inches landed, probably six by the time I woke up.  I brushed as much of it off the car as I could, but I was in a hurry and didn’t do the best job getting it all off the roof.  It proceeded to soften up yesterday, then freeze into nice chunks of ice over night.  It’s a gorgeous day outside today.  Warmed up nicely and a clear blue sky.  I left the office for a bit this morning and while I was driving on the interstate one of those chunks melted loose from the roof and slid off, hit my driver’s side mirror and exploded into little chunks that hit the windshield and driver’s side window and exploded some more.  I’d been knob-dicking, playing with the radio or my cell phone or something, and all of a sudden I hear the clatter against the window and see the white flecks pepper the window and in an instant I’m back in the moment, expecting the glass to give and a round to end me at the same time I’m checking for the other vehicles in my stick ahead and behind me and swerving.  Like before, it took a moment to process, a second to realize it wasn’t incoming fire, another to remember where I was, another to get back into my lane and look around, scared that I’d driven someone off the road or into an accident, then when I knew I hadn’t I was able to be mortified that I’d looked like a fool, drawn terrible attention to myself, that I was going to see looks of scorn in fellow drivers’ faces when they passed.