...Gloria was my First...

…I have spent almost a month in Kuwait on the verge of tearing my hair out as members of Bravo Company started going on missions. All I could do was wave goodbye. Well thanks to an MRAP named Gloria, I finally entered Iraq on a mission headed for Balad. My experience was a whole new form of boredom and adrenaline combined. I’ll do my best to make five days as short as possible, this was my first time so it may run on. The past year of training for potential IEDs gets thrown out the window the moment you enter Iraq. You just can’t stop for every odd looking piece of trash or lump of dirt. So you drive fast and pray you don’t get blown up.

Day 1: Driving…lots of driving, followed by endless amounts of rubble and trash that look like alleged IEDs or EFPs. Then more driving and boredom only to lead up to a (pardon the language), “Oh SHIT!!! Where the fuck did that car from!? Get the fuck back! Get back!”, which led to a car full or Iraqis almost being ‘lit up’ for trying to creep past our halted convoy. We arrive at Scania. Sleep.

Day 2: We leave Scania at around 11pm and continue to drive north to JBB, Joint Base Balad. Lots of boredom, a sore arse, then, a gate blocking the road and halting our convoy. What happened next was Shinault telling his gunner Reynolds, “I swear to God Reynolds if I get shot…I swear to God Reynolds…I swear to God…….”. Shinault jumped out as an IA (Iraqi Army) helped him move the gate as by passers watched. We drove on to JBB and watched every piece of trash waiting for an explosion that would never occur. Sleep.

Day 3: As Giunta put it, unless you’ve had to run for your life, you haven’t been mortared. I slept through my first mortar ‘attack’ and laughed when I heard a few people say we were mortared. The rounds where barely audible due to the distance they were from us. Therefore, I have yet to experience the running for my life. I have yet to be mortared. Sleep.

Day 4: JBB falls behind us around 12:30am and we find out the routes have high EFP and IED threats, just like every other night. We get lost and go on some other route that makes us all clinch our buttocks tight until we find our way back to our original route. We reach Scania and sleep.

Day 5: Leave Scania at around 1am, try to stay awake from the boredom of the ride back to Buehring. A few minutes out from Scania we catch up to an EOD team who are finishing up their blast analysis on a recent IED and drive on thinking, “that’s not a good start”. We arrive, home sweet home.

To sum this all up, I will probably spend the whole year here and not get mortared or receive small arms fire or see an IED or EFP go off. That being said, it is still nerve wracking each time you see some odd looking piece of trash or built up dirt on the side of the road…or when a car tries to ‘ninja’ past you with their lights off. It’s an odd feeling being in the front gun truck attempting to clear the road so the convoy can drive safely on.

Oh and camels make for some nasty road kill.

Photos will be posted soon…….hopefully.

- The Exodus