15 July 2008

Al- Asad, Iraq

From the Soldier side: To continue with my adventures in Iraq... lets see I think our last story had us on a trip to Fallujah again. From there we took a very long convoy to Al Asad air base... We rode with the Navy See Bees again. The bad part of their convoys were they usually had to escort some old POS Iraqi gravel trucks that could only go about 25-30 MPH. So, the convoys were at night, very long and very slow. This took all night, about 7-8 hours. We got to Al Asad and did what we had to do...(my conclusion was it was a total waste of time, but I just follow orders.)
After a few very hot days there, we turned around and convoyed back to Fallujah, almost. Our convoy was supposed to leave at a certain time, but it was delayed over an hour because one of the Iraqi trucks was broke. As we left, another unit ended up ahead of us on the route. We had contact with them via "Blue Force Tracker" (google that). The unit ahead of us stopped when they came across and car on the route. The car was full of explosives and set to go off when an American convoy came along. If we had left on time we may have been blown up. I keep telling people, somebody is watching over me. We turned around and went back to Al Asad and left the next night with no problems. A few nights later, that See Bee unit was hit with an IED while on another convoy. Convoy duty sucked in Iraq...anybody who had to do that for their whole tour had some huge spheres.

No comments: