North Bound on Tampa

Route Tampa is a four lane highway that runs from way south of Baghdad to somewhere way north of Baghdad. It’s kinda like the I-35 (For those of you that know what Interstate 35 is.) of Iraq. There is no paved shoulder just a smooth gravel area about the width of a traffic lane on both sides. The median is also unpaved and covered in gravel as well, with some random shrubberies thrown in there to liven the place up. Tampa truly is “The Highway to Hell”, it accounts for more IED’s that any other route in all of Iraq and the hottest stretch of highway just so happens to be in my area of operations.

Yesterday afternoon my platoon was relived out at the patrol base by our 1st platoon. We had just done our 48 hours there and now it was their turn. They had just came down Tampa in the south bound lane and notified us of a suspicious bag on the side of the north bound lane. They said they checked it with binoculars and the sights from the main gun on the tank but determined that it was just a trash bag and called it “clear”, but to take caution. Hours later I find this out.

For the time being I am the truck commander (TC) of my truck. The name of the truck is eloquently, “The Slutty Pumpkin”, it’s a long story and you have to watch the show “How I met Your Mother” on CBS to really understand. Usually I am the gunner, but my actual TC is on leave so I have taken over. For the past month while I have been a TC I have been the TC of the rear truck in the convoy. But today on the way back north, back to the FOB, I was lead truck. The lead trucks job is pretty “simple”. It’s to stop all traffic coming in the opposite lane, to push traffic back away from roadways feeding to the highway, look for any sort of possible attack on the convoy, dodge potholes and previous blast holes in the road that can hide landmines waiting to be driven over, and most of all search for IED’s. Most IED’s are placed along the side of the road and remote detonated. There are some that have a invisible Infa-Red beam that shoots across the road and when you cross it the IED detonates. Some have a command wire that runs back to where the “trigger man” is hiding, then some have tiny copper wires that are laid across the road and when you run them over they connect and detonate the IED. It may not sound like much but when you also got your lieutenant in the next vehicle back calling up the most obvious things on the radio non-stop the whole way, (“Be advised the sky is blue” kinda stuff…) and yapping all sorts of other useless’ crap out to you it take some concentration and patience to get from point A to point B.

So there we are headed north, creeping along at a blistering 20 mph due to the fact that we are having to tow a tank back that broke down the night prior while we were conducting some raids in the area. The shoulders of the roadways are littered with all sorts of junk, tire shreds metal scraps, trash bags and everything else that can blow out the back up a truck. No, they don’t have the “Adopt A Highway” program over here, yet. I notice a plastic bag laying inches of the road which is a little odd for it to be so close to the edge but it’s blowing the in wind and appears to have nothing in it. Right as we are directly next to it fate just so happened to blow some wind directly in the bag blowing it open and letting me look directly in it. “OH SHIT IED! IED! IED! GO! GO! GO!” I screamed to my crew. My gunner hits the grounds screaming “OH SHIT". Thats all could manage to say, thanks for that update there pal! I grab the “hand mic” to the radio and call over the net “IED IED, STOP! STOP! STOP!”.

The whole time in my head I am thinking; “Oh my God this is going to blow up right here on me. I am only like 4 feet from this thing; this is going to really suck.” My driver has since stomped on the gas a pushed up out of the way, all the other vehicles were able to stop just before getting to it. We got lucky they didn’t get the chance to detonate it on us. There is no doubt that they would have blown up one of the trucks. But the bag just happened to be blown open so I could see it looking right back at me. Kinda like looking down a loaded gun during a bank robbery. It was crazy to see a bomb just sitting there. Back in January when I get blown up I never saw it coming, nor did any one on the crew that day. This one was a 155mm artillery round with a long range cordless phone base wired to it and some red duct tape holding it all together. I probably could have read the serial number off the round I was so close. As usual Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) came out and used their high-speed little robot and some C4 explosives to “dispose” of it. Once again making the roads safe for Americans and Iraqis alike.

We got lucky again, for the month of February we have found two IED’s and have yet to be hit and that alone is extraordinary. If the platoon gets hit by 2 IED’s a month it’s considered a good month. So far for the month we have yet to get hit. But the month isn’t quite over yet. Just add that to the list of crazy moments here in Americas fifty first state, Iraq.

And now for your viewing pleasure, a little video my gunner filmed that day. Enjoy.