What was it like?

Clint easily kept pace as we walked the back 20 one night, that portion of the base that contained a very beautiful quiet lake, a mosque, lights flickering in the distance just behind the wall, a wall that allowed us to feel somewhat secure in this dangerous foreign country. He looked at me in all honesty and asked, “What was it like?” I looked at him with a shine in my eye and a slight question in my voice and asked, “What was what like?” “Your first round” he said looking at me expectantly. Despite his extensive deployment time, almost 18 months straight in support of peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Macedonia he had never experienced the hard-core rounds that rained from the sky on a nightly basis from the start to the completion of the Iraqi war. I became deathly quiet; I was playing the situation over in my mind, something I had gratefully not done for a while.

Our ship had come in weeks ago, Milvans loaded with equipment stacked off in a corner to preserve space. Six of those holding life saving, crucially important Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) defense equipment belonging to our soldiers, in a place where a chemical attack was considered imminent. But due to priorities and equipment constraints ours would be one of the last to be shipped to our current location, too late for the departure of our units over the berm. The term REMF (rear echelon mother fucker) coming to mind every time we tried to obtain anything of importance from our higher headquarters in a timely manner. Waiting was not an option, war was at hand and it required action, our troops would not leave Kuwait without their basic requirements. We departed our area of operation with one five ton and three deuce and a halves with one desperate thought in mind, how much equipment can we load on these four vehicles and will it be enough? Our departure dampened only by the frantic search for a viable fuel source. The first position oddly devoid of fuel vehicles, vehicles that had been sitting there since our arrival into camp weeks before. The commercialized position closed to normal traffic for the day, leaving us crawling over to one lone fuel pod looking for an operator to get us anything they could and this was our own fuel point. We obtained the fuel but now were behind the power curve, hours removed from our already tight time line, the road trip minimally two hours, loading another four, then our return trip of two more if nothing went wrong.

We entered the shipping port of debarkation (SPOD), trucks upon trucks of flatbeds lined up entering the restricted area in order to load Milvans and bring them to their respective units. We rolled past enviously looking at the trucks, pulling our vehicles up to double stacked Milvans, wondering exactly how we were going to down load equipment from vans sitting well above our heads. We tracked down our six specific vans, opened them and then split the downloading requirements amongst 10 hard working intelligent diligent soldiers. The occasional question referencing a size or an item thrown my way, downloading smooth and uneventful, one truck complete packed to the brim with suits and boots cramming little individual items onto the very end, decon kits and mask parts. Soldiers scurrying like ants onto the next project, pulling the deuce up to the double stacked van, opening the door then crawling in to start tossing equipment down to the waiting worker bees to stack on the back of the next truck. The process almost complete, night having fallen hours earlier, vans lit only by the floodlights near the port area, the air suddenly shimmered painfully followed by a loud thunderous boom. We stood there shaking; only one thing could have created that sound and feeling, artillery. We panicked, taught only one thing, if you know about it before it hits, find cover, if it hits and your still alive get your NBC gear on as fast as possible. Boxes were instantly dropped from numb fingers, soldiers flung themselves off the back of trucks and out of Milvans, terrified that the NBC gear they had brought was not where they had placed it upon exiting their vehicle. We donned our gear, the mask feeling abnormally loose, slipping from side to side on slick skin, eye lenses steaming up as we tried to tighten down the last two straps on the back of the head. Gear dropped haphazardly onto the ground from individual camouflage bags as each soldier tried to find the next piece of personal equipment still tightly sealed in plastic, slipping through sweat-slicked fingers. One soldier, extremely panicked, still mostly undressed, his equipment had been moved and he couldn’t find it. Our concern strong, we pulled forth gear from the Milvans and outfitted the soldier in record time, an audible drop in stress seconds after the soldier completed his entourage. All the while bull horns blasted in the background subliminally screaming at us to get out of there as quickly as possible, the SPOD was one of the most highly targeted areas by the enemy at that time. We donned our gear in the allotted amount of time eight minutes, hearts racing, sweat pouring over the increase in body temperature because of all the additional gear, but we had a mission to complete. We picked up where we had left off when the initial blast wave had come through, pushing geared soldiers back up into the stacked Milvan and deuces, stacking boxes and tying down gear. An hour later, ten minutes from completion, a cop car off in the distance, lights straining in the dark, bull horn oddly muffled gave us the all clear signal. We dropped our posture by two; not willing to take the chance another round would land in this area while we were still there. Finished packing, all misc. gear loaded, we policed up the area of plastic bags from our mad scramble to open our own personal gear, loaded ourselves up and drove off.

Driving down the blackened Kuwaiti road following a detour set up by the military to keep military vehicles off certain routes, we looked off into the distance, industries lining the horizon, hearing the faint sound of horns again, the SPOD had another round coming in. We were safer on the move, moving away from the impact area and the industries that could easily create some of the best fireworks of the century if impacted. We felt better for the distance, but not much better than that, we still had a long route home and this particular detour wasn’t on our strip map.

27th July 2003
CPT Jeanette Husman
HHC, 22nd Signal Brigade
Baghdad, Iraq