“Before I left for this deployment, I swore up and down to my wife, Meredith, that I was going to ride in a helicopter one time from Baghdad to Taji; stay there the entire six months and take a helicopter ride back to the airport; and finally, fly home. By no means was I ever, ever, ever going to ride in a convoy. We had an understanding,” Major Brad Head emailed to his friends, noting things didn’t exactly work out as planned.
Gen. Allardice invited Major Head to take a new position at headquarters and then move to Bagdad. This assignment involved traveling regularly from his office at Phoenix Base in the International Zone to the Victory Base Complex across town. Unable to catch a helicopter one day, Head had to ride in a Rhino, part of a convoy or “carpool” as he told his wife.
For those who’ve never heard of a Rhino, it’s a heavily armored bus that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. Several times a day a Rhino and several armored Humvees make the twelve mile trip from the safety and security of the IZ through the appropriately named ‘Red Zone’ then through the heart of downtown Baghdad and over to Victory.
It was very hot that day 116 degrees. “While the air conditioner was making noise, I think that was about all it was doing. The ‘sweatbox’ (as Rhinos are affectionately called) was living up to its name. Did I mention that when you ride you have to wear your body armor, helmet, and Nomex gloves (just in case it catches on fire)? Miserably hot as we were, we were at least making progress, that is, until just after we entered the IZ.”
Suddenly the Rhino died. All efforts to restart the vehicle failed. A lieutenant colonel’s loud coaching did more to frustrate the poor driver and flood the Rhino than to get it started again. The second lieutenant in charge of the convoy tried to jumpstart it by pushing it with his Humvee. Failure. Next option? Towing.
“Now these are up-armored Humvees that already have an extra two thousand pounds of armor plating on the doors. A Rhino weighs about thirteen tons. I’m not sure what towing capacity a Humvee has, but I’m pretty sure we were way over it. Did I mention it was hot? When the Rhino died so did the barely functioning air conditioner. My body began to sweat in places I’d never felt sweat before. (Did you ever feel sweat dripping off your shins?)” Head retorted sarcastically.
The crew eventually hooked the Rhino up to a Humvee for an inch-by-inch towing through the IZ. When the ordeal was finally over, Head noted that even the outside’s oven-warm breeze actually felt refreshing. He returned to his room, stripped off his drenched fatigues, and sat in his boxers to enjoy an ice-cold Dr. Pepper that never tasted so good.
But good humored Major Head made the most of the ordeal. He told his wife he loved her “more than all the sweat on all the soldiers in Iraq.”
Thank you God for humor, a gift to wipe away sweat and unpleasantness in life.
“True intelligence is a spring of fresh water, while fools sweat it out the hard way.” (Proverbs 16:22; THE MESSAGE)