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By Sgt. Lorie Jewell
Soldiers Magazine
July 2005
From the turret of his up-armored Humvee, SSG John Crawford keeps an eye out for possible attacks during the convoy-security mission.
It's his first turn behind the wheel of an up-armored Humvee with the “Rough Riders” convoy-security team, and Marine Cpl. James Schiele has both fists locked firmly on the steering wheel.
From the passenger seat the assistant convoy commander, Army SSG Scotty Anderson, senses Schiele's apprehension.
“You ever driven a Humvee before?” Anderson quips, as the vehicle starts to roll. “You're looking a little tense over there.”
Schiele nods yes to driving experience, but doesn't try to bluff about the butterflies.
“I'm a little nervous, sergeant,” he admits. “I don't want to get anybody killed. I like you guys too much.”
In the roughly four months that the current crop of Rough Riders has been on the job, there have been no casualties in the unit -- but there have been too many close calls to count. An asset of the Multi-National Security Transition Command -- Iraq, they conduct several hundred missions a month, escorting personnel, equipment and assessment teams to and from locations within a 160-kilometers radius of their headquarters in Baghdad's International Zone.
The 32-man unit is equally divided into two platoons and represents a trio of service branches and a mix of active and reserve-component units. Most are infantry, but there are also combat engineers, medics and a motor-transport Soldier.
Marine 1st Lt. Nathan McFadden commanded a machine-gun platoon for two years before taking over as the team's officer in charge.
“I've never seen a unit more proficient in running convoy security than this one,” McFadden said “It's a composite group of volunteers joined together to make it happen, which makes it even more impressive.”
Army LTC Reedy Hopkins, a liaison officer between MNSTC-I and the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, has been escorted numerous times by the Rough Riders. He agrees with McFadden.
“They are the consummate professionals,” Hopkins said. “I'd trust my life to them any time.”
Danger is inherent in each mission, whether it's a 15-minute trip to Baghdad International Airport or two hours to a remote base. Gun fire and improvised explosive devices are common.
The men of the second platoon can rattle off the dates and details of the bigger ambushes like sports statistics. There was the IED that hit SSG John Crawford's truck on Nov. 10, the Nov. 22 firefight at an Iraqi village and another one four days later in Baghdad.
Near the entrance to the International Zone is a patch of black asphalt as big as a Humvee, a stark contrast to the pale gray highway pavement surrounding it. It's a daily reminder of the vehicle-borne IED that hit the platoon's convoy Nov. 28.
But their worst experience to date is still a raw recollection. The second platoon was escorting a convoy of 21 heavy-equipment trucks and one wrecker with the Mannheim, Germany-based 377th Transportation Company to Taji, Feb. 18, when an IED exploded from a highway median.
The third truck took a direct hit and careened off the roadway, lumbering over a series of berms before coming to rest.
At the rear, two kilometers back, convoy commander SFC Mick Dustin heard the urgent radio call: “IED. HET down!” He immediately radioed back, checking the status of his men, as his driver pulled around the vehicles in front of them to speed to the scene.
Hopping out of the Humvee, Dustin grabbed a combat-lifesaver pack and ran to the crippled 18-wheeler, its cab engulfed in flames. Crawford and SFC Eric Winfield were giving first aid to two badly injured Soldiers.
Anderson, a Reserve Soldier with the 100th Army Reserve Command and a police officer from Berea, Ky., set up a security perimeter and assisted Winfield, who was working to stop the blood gushing from two gashes in the leg of one of the injured Soldiers.
Winfield pulled off the two T-shirts he was wearing under his desert camouflage uniform jacket to use as pressure dressings until a combat-lifesaver pack arrived.
The Soldier started talking about “Gill” and how he didn't think he made it. Winfield asked him who Gill was. He was driving the HET, the Soldier told him. Dustin grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran to the cab. Through thick, blinding smoke and lapping flames, Dustin reached inside and pulled out SGT Carlos Gill.
“When we hit the ground, I knew from his injuries that he was dead,” Dustin said. “After that, I just tried to keep the other guys calm. Gill was their buddy.”
Dustin, Winfield, Hopkins and SSG Thomas Borders carried Gill away from the truck and laid him on the hood of a Humvee, where Hopkins covered his body with a tarp. As the fire started “cooking” ammunition inside the truck, the men hurriedly moved everyone as far away as possible. Then the rounds started popping.
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Gill was on his third tour in Iraq. Married and the father of a 4-year-old daughter, he was a popular jokester, who had volunteered to drive that day.
As the Humvee carrying Gill slowly rolled past the convoy, delivering him to another vehicle that would take him back to the unit's forward operating base, one Soldier after another stopped to salute, tears trickling down dirt and smoke-covered cheeks.
“That's when I lost it,” said Crawford, a Reservist from Indiana, who has a wife and year-old daughter. He lost it again, he said, when he thought about how it would be if someone had to make that call to his wife.
Crawford, who was pulled out of drill sergeant school for this tour, mans a 50-caliber machine gun from the turret of a Humvee. He spent most of his time that day giving first aid to the second injured Soldier, who suffered serious burns and a damaged neck artery. It took three field dressings before the wound started to clot enough to stem the blood flow.
“He kept begging me, ‘Please don't let me die here,'” Crawford recounted. “I kept telling him he wasn't going to die, he was going to be fine.”
Crawford went to the hospital inside the International Zone the next day, where the Soldiers were taken, to make sure he hadn't lied when he told the Soldier he would be okay. Doctors assured him all were going to make it. Once stable, the Soldiers were evacuated to Germany for more treatment.
The men shrug off any mention of the extraordinary lengths they went to that day to save Soldiers they didn't know. They wore the same uniform; that made them brothers.
“We just did our jobs,” said Winfield, a Reservist from La Place, La.
Dustin is from Mustang, Okla. A member of the 95th Army Reserve Command, he came to Iraq intent on not having any regrets when it's time to head back home.
“When Gill was in that truck, we didn't know if he was dead or alive,” Dustin says. “That's why I went in to get him. We just didn't know, and I had to know, for my own conscience. I couldn't just stand there.”
Dealing with the stress of what they see and experience is something each Rough Rider handles in his own way. Some suck it up and carry on; others find release in talking with others on the team.
“That incident will haunt me forever,” Crawford admitted. “When a guy is screaming in pain, begging for his life, and there's nothing you can do . . . you get this sick feeling. I can't talk about that with anyone but these guys. They're the only ones who really understand what that's like.”
© 2005 Soldiers Magazine. All rights reserved. |
