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DEL.ICIO.USExplosion punctuates monotony, unifies us
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Sgt. Brian Lancey, 36 (kneeling, right) checks for bomb damage along with his driver Spc. Greg Carter, 37, (left) while gunner Spc. Jason Roberts, 32, scans the desert for the bomb's triggerman.
Ramadi, Iraq — The bomb exploded after I let my guard down.
I’m usually on the lookout for bombs while I’m riding in Humvees. But after hours of rolling past featureless desert landscapes, my mind wandered.
Then came the deafening explosion.
During 15 weeks of reporting from Iraq, I have ridden in five military convoys that have been hit with roadside bombs. On Thanksgiving Day, I felt what it was like to be inside one of those vehicles.
I was riding with three Georgia National Guard soldiers in a Humvee. They were guarding a supply convoy on a highway between the Jordanian border and Al Asad Air Base.
Nothing much had happened the first several hours of the trip, lulling me into a sense of comfort. And then at about 8:40 a.m., I heard the blast.
I felt the shock wave vibrate through my body. I felt the wind sucked out of me, as if the bomb was burning up all the oxygen around it.
A thick cloud of smoke and dust enveloped us. We sat for a few moments, stunned and speechless.
Spc. Steven Riley, our 20-year-old gunner from Savannah, was halfway up in his hatch when the bomb exploded. The blast snapped his head back. He heard shrapnel ricochet around his metal gun turret.
“Riley, are you OK?” I shouted.
He quickly responded: “I’m OK! I’m OK!”
As if to prove it, he popped back up in his turret and fired off several rounds. Gunners are trained to lay down suppressive fire immediately after a roadside bomb attack. They want to keep triggermen from detonating additional bombs or hitting soldiers with small arms fire.
Through the dust and smoke, I could see our driver hunched over the steering wheel. Sgt. Curtis Wilmont, 45, of Pembroke, had dipped his head and taken his foot off the accelerator.
The vehicle commander, Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester, reacted quickly. He knew he had to get his men out of the insurgents’ kill zone, where secondary explosives could be planted.
“Drive forward!” Winchester, 30, of Jesup, shouted to Wilmont.
Wilmont hit the gas, moving up the road a short distance until we saw a house on the left. Riley kept an eye on the house as two other Humvees in our convoy peeled off in search of the triggerman. I could see Riley’s legs trembling from the adrenaline. Gunners are often the most vulnerable to roadside bomb attacks because their bodies are exposed.
“It felt like I was getting kicked in the face,” he said later. “It felt like my nose was broken.”
When Winchester perceived the danger had passed, he ordered Wilmont to drive back to the site of the explosion. We found a 3-foot-wide blast crater on the right side of the road. Insurgents had placed the bomb in a storm drain there.
We stepped out of the Humvee. The bomb had scraped and gouged the side of the vehicle with shrapnel. It left two dents in the front passenger-side door, near the level of Winchester’s head. It broke the left back door handle and smashed the right-side mirror. It drilled a piece of shrapnel into the front right tire but failed to deflate it.
Scattered across the road were jagged pieces of black shrapnel as small as the tip of a finger and as large as a man’s forearm. The crater still smelled of burning metal.
It could have been much worse. Inside the trunk sat several cans of ammunition for Riley’s grenade launcher. Basically, we were a rolling bomb.
We were thankful the explosive wasn’t more powerful. Some are so massive that they obliterate armored Humvees. I have heard plenty of stories from soldiers who had to retrieve their comrades’ body parts.
My experiences with road- side bombs are nothing compared to what the soldiers endure. I volunteered to come to Iraq and could leave whenever I wanted. The soldiers must stay, sometimes for a year or more. And they must have the courage to go outside protected compounds again after surviving a roadside bombing. The nerve-racking anticipation of another bomb attack is almost worse than getting hit with one.
The bomb on Thanksgiving did not disable our vehicle. We were able to roll back to base. As we continued our journey, there were long moments of silence. The mood in the vehicle was reflective. At times, we would replay what had happened, discussing in detail each of our experiences. The bomb had drawn us closer. We had lived through it together.
We got back to base without further trouble. Winchester and Wilmont seemed OK. But Riley was complaining of persistent headaches and dizziness.
We had been up since 2 a.m. Physically, I was wiped out. My body had nothing left to give. But I couldn’t sleep that night. I was too alert. It was if my body and my mind were fighting for control. And my mind was winning, just racing and racing.
Comments
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By 48th Wife
December 5, 2005 08:40 PM | Link to this
Reading the reactions of our soldiers when things happen, makes me so grateful for the almost 6 months of training our guys had before they left and also makes me grateful to the ones who trained them. Our soldiers are awesome!!! Thank you so much for being there and reporting, and giving us a glimpse of what they do and how well they do it!