Pam fixed me a really great salad with our dinner tonight, with shredded cheese, celery, nice crisp lettuce, and shredded carrots and a sun-dried tomato dressing. And I don't know what sparked it, but somehow I thought back to one of my early days in Iraq in 2004 shortly after the US had taken over the Baghdad area and the Command moved north to establish operations at the Palace.
Those were the days of the wild west, days where the bad guys were still trying to hold out and IEDs were just beginning to be a threat. Anyway, back to the salad.
Two things were getting in short supply -- food and bullets. I remember one night walking into the mess hall and there was an obvious shortage of food, bread, milk, etc. There had been a problem with the generators used to run the electricity there at the Palace, and it was a spotty thing having electricity all the time. We would go along and then lose all power and then, a couple of hours later, it would come up again. That really played havoc with our electronic operations, briefings, communications, etc. I thought it also could have been responsible for lost food. However, that wasn't the case. We were just running out of things.
The bad guys were becoming very successful at ambushing convoys bringing in supplies, so much so that the local contracted truckers wouldn't drive the routes without a US MP company providing security.
One evening, somewhere around the fourth or fifth day without a convoy making it in, I happened to walk down to the mess hall and saw a group of semis that had just arrived. I looked at one of the trucks, and it had a hole, about nine inches in diameter in one side, with the side of the truck all folded in around the hole, and with black dirt (smoke or powder residue) around the hole. As I walked around to the other side, I saw a hole, about 2 1/2 feet in diameter on that side with the skin around the hole pointing out. The MP told me that he had been hit by an RPG and it went straight through the truck and didn't blow up until it was exiting or just as it exited. In any event, it didn't hit anything in the truck and the driver, who was sitting in a lawn chair reading a paper in front of his truck, sure was a lucky guy. There were others in other convoys who were not so lucky. They risked a lot to deliver these goods and make some money. If they lost their truck, they lost their means of making a living forever. The driver told me this truck had been his father's truck -- it looked like it had been around those desert roads for a long, long time. I shook his hand, thanked him and told him he was a brave man. He seemed a bit confused at me, an American Army Colonel telling him this. Maybe no one had ever told him that before. I was with some other officers and there were lots of enlisted soldiers around looking at his truck. I didn't tell them to, but all the officers and a lot of the Soldiers shook his hand and thanked him too.
It's strange how things like that pop into my mind -- the truck, no salads, remembering the heat and sand -- especially when I look out the window and see it's still snowing here and has been for about two days. We're up to about 13-14 inches in places, with 3-4' drifts. I don't know...I still think I'll take this over that any day. You'll have to excuse me now while I go turn on the fireplace.
The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker. (Helen Keller)
Hooah
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