Camp Cedar II, Iraq  
1 DEC 07

It was a night like any other night: escort a barrage of cargo trucks into southern Iraq, pickup another like it, then return back to the safety of Kuwait.  For the men of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st of the 160th Infantry Battalion and I, it was nothing more than yet another monotonous and less sexy mission than the ones that took us to Baghdad, Takrit, Balad, and surrounding areas.  As the CC (convoy-commander), I found myself appreciating the fact that it had been a rather uneventful night thus far and that once my last gun truck had made the turn off of the main supply route, it would be smooth sailing the rest of the way to the border.
On this particular mission, I had volunteered my gun truck to run as the scout or “rabbit” vehicle; and for a little added flavor, I decided to let my gunner take the truck commander’s position while I sat in for him up in the turret.  Not only is it a breath of fresh air (literally) to jump up on the gun from time to time, Ive learned it’s important to show the men that there is no task a leader will ask of them unless it is one they are willing to do themselves.  A few minutes had passed since my truck had made the turn on to the narrow and winding desert road back to Kuwait and I was admiring how the trail of headlights behind us was following “ducks in a row,” just as they were suppose to. It’s nights like these I relish the opportunity to simply sit back and watch; a break from responsibility here is like a young parent’s first day away from their newborn child. 
The cool desert wind coursed through the small space between my head and Kevlar helmet as we continued to guide our convoy in to the endless darkness ahead.  A few minutes pass and soon a trail of lights appear in the distance, a fellow 160th Infantry convoy was passing us heading north.  Unfortunately since the war kicked off in 2003, the powers that be have yet to widen the one road that leads from Kuwait to Iraq.  As a result, our massive - not to mention extra wide - convoys are forced to share the same winding, two-lane road and when combined with the infinite darkness of the desert, well, disaster is more of an inevitability than a hypothetical.  We do, however, have SOPs (standard operating procedures) in place for making a pass like this requiring both north and southbound convoys to slow down, dim lights, and shift to their right.  Not wanting to jeopardize the safety or integrity of our problem-free convoy, I called out over the radio that we would be passing a northbound convoy and to adjust the convoy accordingly.  We make passes like this at least twice every single mission and as soon as I got a “roger” from my gun truck

commanders, I ceases to give it a second thought. Within a few minutes my truck had cleared all northbound traffic and for the time being, I was again allowed to fall into my state of peacefulness.   “Halt the convoy! Halt the convoy!” a voice sputtered over the radio.  “You got to be shitting me!” I thought to myself, “this had better be something small or else I may as well kiss my good night goodbye.”  “Hollywood, this is Pitbull, we just had an accident back here,” my middle gun truck reported, “this shit looks all fucked up!”  Pitbull may not be one the most eloquent guy you’ve ever met but this never seems to prevent him from getting his point across.  “This is Hollywood, roger, we’re comin’ back to the scene. Secure the area and we’ll be there shortly.”  As Im finishing my orders over the net my driver had already begun whipping our bulky up-armored gun truck around and heading towards the middle of the convoy.  Sirens blaring and lights flashing frantically, we raced back north on the shoulder of the road doing our best to swerve out of the way of the two passing convoys.  By this point the accident has sent a major brake checks in both directions and not too different than a stone dropped into a pond, the ripples are getting bigger the further they travel.  Fortunately this is not my driver’s first experience with a situation like this, he swerves around the disarray of tanker trucks with ease.  Within a few minutes we pass the ant trail of accumulating vehicles and begin to close the gap between the last rig and the crash site.  In the distance I can see the illumination of other gun trucks surrounding the area and flooding the damaged vehicles with bright white lights.  My driver stomps on the accelerators as the severity of the situation quickly becomes apparent to us.  Arriving shortly thereafter we stop just short of the crash site and point our guns into the surrounding darkness.  “Yang…” I yell
to my gunner, “cover the entire west side of this road and see who you can raise on the radio.  Tell the rest of our guys to secure front and rear of both halves of our convoys and to standby for further instructions.”  I jerk back on the battle lock to my door, grab my M-4, and hop out into the cold sand.  Looking around the immediate area I notice a few gun trucks from Bravo Company
as well as one of my own, it’s Staff Sergeant Campbell’s ASV (Armored Security Vehicle) and crew. He shouts for me to come near, they have been on scene for a few minutes now and most likely have the most intel on what has just happened.  “Ite Hollywood, here’s where we are at,” Campbell explains while popping his head out of the hatch, “apparently one of the tankers we were escorting fell asleep while making that last turn and crossed over into on-coming traffic.  I guess he clipped one of Bravo’s ASVs and then hit the reefer semi head on directly behind them.”  “You gotta be shittin’ me, what’s the status of the personnel?” I ask.  “I haven’t heard a MEDEVAC called up for any of our guys yet but from the looks of it, those TCN (third country national) drivers are in a bad way.”  With the exception of large U.S. mail trucks, TCN’s are hired form all over the world to drive these over-sized loads into Iraq – apparently nobody else is volunteering for the job.  “OK, roger, start working up a 9-line MEDEVAC request on the BFT (Blue-Force-Tracker, our on-board computer comms system), I’m going over to check out the crash site.”  But I can already see it out of the corner of my eye before I even take the first step in that direction.  It doesn’t look good.  The first thing that hit me as I approached the worst of the two entangled vehicles was the smell, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  At first it was difficult to make out just exactly what had happened but I was quickly brought up to speed by Bravo Company’s Convoy Commander, Sergeant First Class Black.  “Are you the Charlie Convoy Commander?” he asked.  “Roger, Staff Sergeant Hausmann. 
 What we got?”  SFC Black proceeded to fill me in on what he had deducted thus far, yet in the time it had taken to make our introductions it had already become unpleasantly clear to me. After the 30-ton trucks collided head on – both traveling roughly 45 mph – thedriver of my convoy’s fuel tanker had been thrown through the windshield upon impact.  However, and fatally unfortunate for him, it looked as though the flat-faced nature of his rig caused the driver’s compartment to collapse before he was tossed from his seat. And as a result, he was left hanging out of the windshield, both legs pinched beneath the now tinfoil like metal.  SFC Black and I both quickly close in on the driver and begin to look for signs of life.  Further investigation revealed that there was no way we were going to be able to remove this man’s body from the grill of his vehicle without either completely severing his legs or else with the assistance of a Jaws-of-Life.  Just then the dangling torso lurches upward and the man begins to vomit a mixture of blood and what looked/smelled like intestinal fluid.  “That’s not good,” we agree, “looks like we may kill him just trying to pull him outta there.”  By now we can also see that both of his legs are broken in half just below the waist, and that his back is distorted in such a way that now there is no question that this man is literally being held together by the crushed vehicle that will probably kill him.  A few more involuntary purges of fluid fall to the ground only this time, it seems as though the man is

attempting to prop himself up.  “MEDIC!!” We echo the order to one of Bravo’s medics just arriving on scene.  Un-intimidated by the grotesqueness of the carnage, the medic runs up and immediately begins checking for vitals.  “He’s got a real weak pulse and it seems to be coming in and out.  Keep and eye on him until the chopper arrives but at this point, I’d say that this guy is done.”  And without hesitation, the medic runs off and begins to treat the other injured TCN.  Unsympathetic as it may sound, our medics are trained/forced to prioritize casualties in a matter of seconds, and without the luxury of a fully-loaded ambulance, rule of thumb dictates to only save the lives that can be saved.  Granted, all of our vehicles are stocked with emergency life-saving kits (not to mentions the small First Aid pouches attached to our body armor), but for a situation such as this, there is very little we can do with trauma bandages, tourniquets,
and IV fluids. “How are your boys from that ASV that got clipped doin’?” I asked SFC Black.  “Oh, they’re good.  Shaken up a bit but they’re good. That ASV took the impact like a champ, didn’t dent the hull or anything.”  At this point Im doing my best to maintain my composure considering the fact that we are watching a man slowly dying in front of us.  “God, this is pissing me off, there has to be something we can do.”  But I know there is nothing, nothing we can do but stand along side this stranger in his last moments on this earth.  We both kneel down next to the man’s upside down torso and try to get a look at his face; maybe he’ll be able to see that we are at least trying to do something.  But little resembling a human face remains, just the rather disturbing reminiscence of what used to be a nose and mouth.  I never imagined myself ever thinking such a thing, but at this point, I was actually hoping this man would pass as soon as possible. And just then, he did.  What little movement

he didretain after the crash had now turned to lifelessness, and his waning pulse had finally run cold.  For a moment everyone in the surrounding area froze in place and seemed to experience a brief moment of helplessness, maybe even guilt.  Nevertheless and however tragic it may be, standing on the side of the road in Iraq is no place for mourning.  Similar to the medics, although SFC Black and I had been drawn in for the time being, the passing of this unfortunate TCN meant it was time for us to move on to getting control of the rest of the situation.  “Have you guys already called in a MEDEVAC for the TCN who is still alive?” I asked SFC Black as we begin moving back to our trucks.  “Roger, my ASV radio can reach the nearest comms outpost, but we are having trouble double-tapping it on BFT.”  Like most Convoy Commanders, previous experiences have taught us that MEDEVAC
needs to be called for over as many mediums as possible - you never know which one will make it through first, or at all for that matter.  “No worries, my guys have already begun working one up and I’m sure it’s already been emailed up by now.”  I noticed that some of Bravo soldiers had already begun setting up a landing zone for the inbound MEDEVAC Blackhawks.  “Sarnt Black, if you guys wanna take care of the LZ, I can have my guys set up the cordon and worry about front and rear security.”  He agreed and we split paths to begin disseminating the orders.  Upon returning to my gun truck, I can already hear SSG Campbell on radio taking care of positioning our vehicles so that no traffic will come in or out of the immediate area.  A nice amenity, I’ve noticed, having two Staff Sergeants within the same convoy being able to anticipate the other’s orders and act upon them accordingly. 
As to be expected, the humvees and ASVs not cordoning off the crash site quickly moved into security positions throughout the two convoys like clockwork.  Now it was just a matter of time before the birds showed up.  Realizing that our combined forces gave us more than enough gun trucks to secure the area, I called for our own medic to come on scene to see what he may be able to help with.  One thing, I’ve noticed, is that all medical-type people pack their aid bags each with different supplies from the next.  In most cases, I find that a combination of equipment as well as medical knowledge always ends up benefiting the casualty in the end.  Despite their grizzled looks, grubby hands, and bulky body armor, the medics working on these TCNs were undoubtedly the best men for the job.  With my tasks completed and MEDEVAC emailed via BFT, I once again dismount to return to the crash scene.  SFC Black was arriving about the same time and we began
to discuss what needed to happen next.  “I don’t know about you,” I remarked, “but that large puddle of diesel fuel leaking from the tanker is kinda beginning to worry me.”  “Yeah, ya, that definitely could make this night more interesting,” SFC Black agreed, “unfortunately I don’t think there is a whole lot we can do about it.”  Since the fuel truck had come to its final resting place amongst the wreckage, a steady stream of gasoline had been seeping from the cracks and holes of the destroyed container.  Also, amidst this fireball waiting to happen remained the TCN driver, still hanging from the windshield, his blood and fluids now mixing together with the oozing diesel fuel.  Taking a few additional safety steps away from the trucks, we both noted the increasingly violent stench.  It is one I will never forget for as long as I live.  At first all the blood and exposed flesh and bone reminded me of how a classroom laboratory used to smell on dissection day.  This smell was quickly forgotten, however, as soon as the truck’s bleeding began to mix with that of the man’s.  Trying to assess the situation, I remembered aloud something similar from my older Army days back at Fort Polk, “Ya know, I remember this one time one of our tank’s fuel tanks cracked open and dumped all of its fuel in the middle of the woods.  While we were spending all night trying to dig the contaminated soil out of the ground, an old crusty First Sergeant flicked his cigarette into a huge puddle of diesel fuel.  Before any of us cold jump out of the hole, the butt had gone out and the First Sergeant was laughing hysterically.”  SFC Black nodded as he listened to my story, “You’re right, diesel fuel has a hell of a high flash-point.  There’s no way anything we’re doin’ here is going to ignite it.”  I agreed and we began to pick through the wreckage. 
No sooner than we were standing in two inched of diesel fuel than did the first Blackhawk drop down from the clouds and begin hovering over our LZ.  As cool of a sight it is to see a military helicopter touch down in the middle of the night, I couldn’t help but be a bit wary of the bright neon orange circle the rotors were making as a result of the massive amount of static.  SFC Black and I hurriedly jumped to the safety of dry sand and covered our eyes as the rotor wash kicked up a thick cloud of sand and debris.  Haphazardly, we followed the dim glow of chem-lights (aka glow sticks) and made our way to the CCP (casualty collection point)
where the medics had prepared the surviving TCN for transport. A few beats pass and soon a dark figure emerged from the cloud of dust.  “OK, where is the alive one?”  Apparently one of our guys calling in the MEDEVAC had done a good job of explaining the situation to the on-board Blackhawk medics.  The medics motion to stretcher in the middle of our security circle, the TCN laid across it is wrapped up in blankets like a burrito.  “Roger, I’ll need four litter-bearers to follow me back to the aircraft.  Stay right behind me, keep your heads DOWN, and look out for the tail rotor.  Got it!?”  We all nod in unison.  SFC Black and I grab the front two carrying handles of the combat stretcher while the medics pick up the rear two.  The dash to into the chaos of sand is a treacherous one and this is not at all helped by the fact that the Blackhawk’s rotors are still whipping around at full speed.  Despite the tightly fitting goggles I had adorned just a few moments ago, somehow bullet-like particles of sand are still stinging my eyes as I struggle to follow the crew chief.  After a few near drops of the stretcher over the many uneven piles of sand, we make it to the
bird and prepare to load the patient atop the racks.  By now the wining of the aircraft has completely dominated any form of verbal communication and hand and arm signals are quickly required from there on out.  Luckily for us, the TCN was a relatively small Pilipino man and hoisting his now limp body above our heads was easier than I had anticipated.  Once loaded, the crew chief give us one final thumbs up from inside the helicopter and signaled for us to move out.  For whatever reason, standing in the eye of the machine-made sandstorm made our CCP more visible than the large aircraft was just a few moments ago while standing on the outside.  One after the other, our small litter team made its way back to the main road just as the bird was dusting off for the nearest medical facility.  Most likely they will take this guy to Talil Air Base, a U.S. Air Force stronghold located roughly a 20-minute trip away as the bird flies, literally. Now that all urgent casualties had been taken care of from our “boots on the ground” stand point, it was now time for SFC Black and I to
devise a plan of attack for clearing up the wreckage and continuing on with our respective missions.  This, however, was a feat easier said than done.  Aside from the fact that massive amounts of toxic fuel had already leaked on to the road and surrounding desert, we were now faced with the daunting task of pulling apart two distorted pieces of machinery that more resembled a scrap metal yard than 18-wheeler tractor trailers.  There was also the issue of prying the lifeless body from the jaws of the wreckage, something that I was not in the slightest looking forward to.  “Did your guys request extraction equipment when they called in the MEDEVAC?” I asked SFC Black.  “Roger, I’m pretty once we realized we weren’t going to be able to pull him outta there that they sent up a modified request.  Supposedly a secondary bird is being spun up to bring in the Jaws-of-Life.”  All things considered, I was glad we had that kind of equipment at our disposal; removing the body from its pinched position using our hands alone would make for a much messier end result than being able to simply cut a hole around it.  So once again, we were for the moment reduced to standing around in the cold and dark desert, waiting for the second helicopter to arrive.
An ill at ease twenty minutes pass before one of our perimeter security guys spots the second bird approaching in the horizon.  Without a single streetlight for 300 miles, the only way to make out the descending Blackhawk is through the lens of our night-vision-goggles.  Again the on-board crew chief directs his pilot to land as close to the crash site as possible - this time the radiating static from the rotor blades comes even more dangerously close to the puddle of diesel than the one before it.  But soon we would understand why this Blackhawk crew chose such a tight parking space to our fuel-soaked crash site - the Jaws-of-Life extraction equipment weighed well over 400 lbs.  With all the machinery loaded onto a stretcher, a total of eight men from both crews rushed to the bird and struggled to lug the bulky equipment through the sandy dunes and to the nearby crash site.  Once on scene, SFC Black and I explained the situation as best we could to the Blackhawk extraction team and proceeded to take a back seat as the professionals did what they did best.  With a complete lack of regard for the hideousness of the situation, the Blackhawk crew began to poke and prod at the limp corpse as if it were nothing more than a piece of fabric caught in a zipper.  Within in a few
seconds, the tallest member of the team, sporting a one-piece aviator suit and high-tech looking helmet, cranks on a small gasoline powered generator like a lawnmower and jumpstarts the extraction equipment to life.  Engines blaring, a shorter, stockier crew chief chainsaw-grips the Jaws-of-Life and stammers towards the driver’s door of the wreckage.  A few small showers of sparks land on the diesel-soaked pavement and the body of the deceased driver falls away from the broken windshield with ease.  As we had suspected, the crumpled cabin of the rig really was the only thing holding this man’s torso to his legs, however only now could we truly appreciate the severity of his injuries.  “Looks like we’re gonna have to pull the one leg out from the other side,” the extraction equipment operator observed, “this guy didn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell, did he?”  Not particularly interested on commenting any further, a few soldiers
and I moved to the side of the vehicle and proceeded to help the crew ‘pick up the rest of the parts’.  Once a second stretcher was brought on scene, the body was pieced together – so to speak – if for no other reason than to provide some kind of solace for those of us still taken aback by the sight of it all.  I remember thinking for some stupid reason that this was an important step in case the family wanted to have an open-casket funeral for their loved one.  Next a body bag was brought out and without any instruction from the Blackhawk crew, it was understood that the remains would need to be “bagged and tagged”.  Although some of the extraction crew wore no gloves at all, one of them suggested, “unless you want guts on your hands you best put some kind of gloves on.”  Mine were already uncomfortably tainted with a foul smelling mixture of blood, bile, and diesel fuel.  Suddenly it dawned on me that I had this man’s passport and personal documents folded up in my cargo pocket from earlier (when calling in a MEDEVAC for a KIA it is imperative to include as much pertinent information as possible).  “Wait, wait, wait.  You want me to leave his papers in the body bag with him?”  “Give em’ to me, I’ll make sure they get to the right people” the head Blackhawk crew chief responded as he took them from my hand and tucked them away into his shirt.  I didn’t tell him that they were soaked in blood and vomit, but then again I doubt that it would have made any difference to him.  Soon the Jaws-of-Life gear was loaded back onto the stretcher, the body bag was secured onto another, and a gang of men was assembled to carry them back to the bird.  Having learned my lesson from the treacherous trip carrying the extraction machinery the first time, I was the first to pick up a handle on the stretcher containing the body.  Again a brief “keep you eff-ing heads down” warning was issued by the crew chief and off to the idling helicopter we went.  The sand didn’t sting my eyes as bad this time but the scraping of the weighted down stretcher against my knee certainly didn’t help - this TCN was much heavier than the other.  Without so much as a goodbye, the Blackhawk crew dusted off as soon as they were loaded and began making their climb into the endless desert night.  “That’s one hell of a job to have,” I thought to myself, I can see how dealing with these kinds of situations everyday would start to wear on a person after a while.My uniform now drenched with sweat beneath my bulky body armor, I met SFC Black yet again to plan out the rest of our night.  “How long did KBR Recovery say they were going to be before they can get to us?” SFC Black asked.  The infamous Kellog-Brown-and Root company owns the contract to recovering all mechanical break downs throughout Iraq and
unfortunately for us, there are only so many of them to go around on any given night.  “My guys are saying that they had to recover some vehicles that got hit by an IED up north and that it’s going to be at least six hours before they even start thinking about us.”  It pains me to even say it, especially because I know from previous experiences that six hours really means it will be more like eight to ten.  “Holy fuck, you gotta be kidding me!?!  I don’t know about you but I ain’t trying to wait out here until tomorrow” SFC Black retorts.  At this point in the night – approximately 3AM – we had already been stuck in place for over two hours.  “Ya know…I betcha my ASV could pull some of this wreckage off the road enough for the other convoys to pass.”  Being a humvee/gun truck guy myself, I had never before seen the hauling potential of the relatively new ASVs.  And SFC Black was right, by this time a small Army of other convoys was stacking up on both sides of our little disaster and were unable to find a bypass in soft sand surrounding the area.  “What’s the tensile strength of that winch you got on the front there?” I asked while doing my best to remember the loadmaster phase of Air Assault School.  “She’ll pull 15,000 by herself and 30,000 with the snatch block.  I’d say it’s worth a try, what do you think?”  Although I had no idea exactly what a ‘snatch block’ was, I assumed it was some sort of pulley modification that doubled the ASV’s ability to tow heavy loads.  “Fuck it, we got all night to try, right?”  Little did I know what I was getting myself into for what happened next felt like something out of a monster car destruction derby.  To make a long story short, SFC Black, myself, and a few other members of his crew spent the next four or so hours pulling apart mangled pieces of the intertwined vehicles as if they were layers of an onion.  My job was to route a 40 lb hook on the end of a spool of industrial-strength wire from the ASV’s winch through the small crevices of the wreckage
and hope that it was strong enough to take a big chunk with it when pulled.  By this time we had become so accustomed to the large puddles of diesel fuel surrounding the area that not even the sparks from the grinding metal pieces prevented us accomplishing our mission.  That said, I did take a few additional steps back into the desert every time the coarse pavement caused the dragging metal to spark higher than a few inches. At one point we even became so ambitious that a Frankenstein-looking
assortment of snatch blocks, chains, and hooks allowed us to jerk the entire 18-wheeler cargo truck and its load off the road enough to clear a narrow path.  With a space between the mangled trucks just wide enough for other convoys to pass, we quickly gathered up some men and began picking up as much of the debris from the road as we could fit in our pockets.  I found a can of tuna and a crumpled license plate that both must have come from the deceased TCN’s truck, they were over 30ft away from the accident. Hour six of the fiasco rolled by and finally we were ready to starting letting other traffic pass through us one way at a time.  This process could have been completed in a rather timely manner had it not been for the fact that even in Iraq our fellow soldiers slow-rolled by our position as they gawked at the shear madness of rubble.  Now closer to 10AM the following day and the “Z-Monster” (aka sleepiness) was starting to set in for me, SFC Black, and our crews.  Finally the KBR recovery team rolled up to our location and began to size it up much like the Blackhawk crew did just a few hours ago.  In the first instance of good fortune for SFC Black and I in the past 8 hours, the leader of the KBR team informed us that they “…got it from here.”  “You mean to tell me that you guys will take care of the rest of this damage and that we can charlie mike (continue mission)?” I asked skeptically.  “Yup, as long as ya’ll got all the bodies and personal belongings outta there we can police up the rest of it.”  SFC Black and I looked at one another as if to think at the same time, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”  Quickly we said our thanks to one another’s crew and readied our men for the long awaited departure.  Sleepily I crawled back into my truck and gave the much-awaited order to move out.  It had been a night like any other night: and regardless of the fatal, adrenaline-filled accident that had just transpired over the past eight hours, for the men of SFC Black’s crew and my own, it was exactly that.