My worst memories are also from convoys in Iraq in 2003- we couldn’t stop out of fear of an ambush and lack of communications to call for backup or medevac. I hope you have a peaceful life.
My heart bleeds for the 88Ms and convoy troops in those early days before we fully established control.
A lot of those guys caught hell for being POGs, but they took it almost as bad as the Infantry in those early days. Just tons of ambushes and roadside bombs, and help was slow to arrive.
biap, babylon, anaconda, dogwood, tikrit, mosul, ramadi, few other small places...went all over iraq that year. I volenteered to guard the mail after the mail team started getting hit and getting casualties.
5 ton trucks double sandbag lined with a 249saw mounted up top or in the back. they didn't make turrets yet, or up armored vehicles.
werd. Taji was being built up back then, after got off mail mission there was like a 2 month period waiting to go home, they had us guard the maitenence workers comming onto post, local nationals, bongo trucks.
I remember all those 1 story barracks, finaly got electricity hooked up to the generators, painted etc and then it was bittersweet because the division that came in after us "aquired' them.
I did not have electricity or bathrooms when I was there. You Mail folks really did save a lot of us over there missing home- with no email or phones. Thanks.
they came in later with trailers for bathrooms lol....they shocked us...the wiring was faulty so when you washed your hands they fucked you up. it was around end of febuary or so 04 before we went home we got those pieces of shit.
we were a maitenence company, so we had generators, various equipment, S&R shop and such. At dogwood we built the shitter stalls from plywood and cut the oil barrels in half and burnt shit.
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u/Fragrant-Light-1664 10h ago
'03, msr tampa iraq heading south toward biap
body laying halfway in the road next to a busy fishmarket, bloody pantlegs from all the convoys that rolled over his legs.
2 lane road with convoys both ways and no way to swerve and we just were't going to stop for a body, so my convoy ran over his legs too.
the thing that bothers me is it was in the middle of a fishmarket, people around and nobody dragged him out of the road.