Finally, on the evening of March 18th(I believe), we listened to the general in charge of the Cav tell us we were at war. We abandoned our comfy positions and lined up to "cross the berm". We waited for two hours, during which time something(SCUD? Big mortar? Accidental discharge?) sounded off nearby and nearly made me wet my pants. I had hoped to use my ACE to actually help breach the berm, but it turned out they imported some damn British engineers to do it and about 0200 we set off.

Here we are lining up for convoying across the berm.
The roads were sometimes desolate

Sometimes chaotic.
They had split us up into a platoon-sized element and we drove around aimlessly(it seemed to me) at night until we crossed the berm at the right place. Turned out there were several berms, and large dumps of destroyed cars and tanks from the first Gulf War, and mysteriously parked US and British vehicles, and even a few minefields, one of which one of my squad-members blundered into when his radio went on the fritz. We found out that ACEs are immune to AP(anti-personnel) mines. Right before we were so educated, our idiot Platoon Sgt ordered the lost ACE's squad leader to go into the minefield and retrieve his wayward soldier. He refused. The mine went off. We all stopped. The lost ACE turned around and came back. Nothing was ever said about it again.

We crossed the berm. Then again. Then we went back. Apparently we were lost. Finally the company commander got on the radio and explained to Sergeant Levalley how to read the map and set his GPS and we set off again. The next picture is key, as it demonstrates exactly what I saw for the next three days.
That's right; the ass-end of an AVLB. I figured(correctly, it turned out), that shadowing this huge, hulking monstrosity, the Hadjis(Iraqis) would shoot at the bulletproof "Armored Vehicle, Laying Bridge" first, rather than my tiny tin-can of an ACE. We drove Northish into Iraq & then took a North-East route directly across the desert, to a tiny town called

in the middle of Anwar province. Apparently the plan was to send the mean Marines up the middle through Basra to Baghdad, while the faster Army Cav swept around the South-East to cut off any re-enforcements coming South from where they were stationed by the Turkish border. It was a good plan, and it worked well, but for us, it was less than ideal. We were attached to The Cav, specifically 3/7 Cav(Gerry Owen, Custer's regiment. Isn't that reassuring), but because their M1s and Bradleys were so much faster, we in our old 113s, ACEs, AVLBs and wobbly C-trucks were left far behind. The different vehicles all charged through the difficult sand at different speeds, so we ended up stretched out miles apart. My ACE had a throttle-lock, and I had rigged a steering lock too, so I would actually get out of the hatch to stretch and do maintenance while bouncing along at 30mph! Not for too long, or it would veer to one side. I wonder what would have become of me if I had bounced off. I fabricated the rope-tie for the wheel after the first day, when I realized that you really can do everything "behind the wheel". I mean, I knew you could eat, radio, pick your nose and shoot, but when you really have to go... I set the throttle, steered with my toe, and stuck my ass over the side of the ACE. Considering that it was my happy home, I stuck it as far as possible over the side. About a minute later I saw a flash and jumped back in and yanked out my 9mm. Turned out SPC Holloway(or Hollow-Head, as we called him) had thought it would be funny to snap a picture of SPC Larson's bare bum. (Don't worry, the picture will not be shown here) It was not my last time to "do the Duece" under fire.

I don't care what Lawrence thought; the desert is a boring, lonely, unpleasant place. Don't tell my Kuwaiti friends, but if God ever decides to give the world an enema, the Middle Eastern desert is where he'll stick the tube. We drove for three days straight, only stopping for diesel and maintenance every six or so hours. My ACE was the fastest of them all, but plenty of times the AVLBs in front would pull away and I would be alone in the vastness, except for the far-off smoke trails. After 60 hours of wide-awake, bone-jarring fun I caught myself asleep and veering off course several times. I started to hallucinate, and distinctly remembering talking to God and trying to explain to him why I didn't believe in him, then hearing him tell me that I better change my mind mighty quick. Before we left I had passed out a bottle of No-doze to each of my squad members. I had had to smuggle them in country, along with my cell-phone. Everyone used up their entire bottle by the end of the three days. I washed mine down with 10 Mountain Dews. The last 10 hours(?) of that drive I spent standing up, hitting myself in the CVC helmet with the butt-end of my pistol to keep awake.

We passed through several Iraqi villages, appearing completely deserted to our bleary eyes. I remember a huge, ancient fort up on a mountain, and Iraqi kids in filthy rags waving and chasing us as we rolled by.

Finally, mercifully, we caught up with an element of Cav tankers that seemed stationary enough to guard us while we got some shuteye. One guy had to be awakened to turn his track off. I was dragged out of my tiny hatch the next morning by my squad leader, as he needed help waking everyone up. Everyone had slept "buttoned up" and we had to bang on the hulls with our weapons to get them awake. I learned AVLBs act like huge gongs when struck with the end of a 40lb tankers bar. Meanwhile, the Cav group was gone, and we were supposed to follow them. We headed due North, to a town called As Samawah on the Euphrates river. I had printed out some maps of my own previously and so was interested to see "the Fertile Crescent". Discouraging, however, was the realization that the magazine in my M9 Beretta was so rusty & full of sand that I could only count on one shot. I fixed the other and put it in a ziplock bag.

Halfway awake now, I could actually pay attention to the surroundings.


Saw a CNN reporter

Finally saw the mighty Euphrates.

Up till now we hadn't seen a single adult Iraqi. We had no news beyond what I picked up from the BBC on my shortwave but everything seemed to be going according to plan. The convoy slowed down in some little town and finally stopped. We could hear fighting a few blocks up ahead and waited patiently for the Cav to take care of business. Unfortunately we were completely exposed during that time. I spent two hours peering out of my cracked open hatch, holding my trusty one-shot Beretta at the ready. The lights in the town stayed on but nothing moved. We eventually heard auto rifle fire just a block or so back, and some mortars landed in the houses on either side. I heard later that the Hadjis opened up on the AVLBs with AKs and shot mortar rounds into their own neighbors' houses. Some of the AVLB guys claimed to have gotten a few with their M16s but I doubt it. In any case, we lurched forward finally and I could breath again. We sped thru town and came out on an open road. The change in scenery was remarkable. Just a few miles away, on the other side of the river, it was dusty desert, but here was all greenery, palms, ferns, etc. We drove and stopped, drove and stopped. Finally, right before dark again, we stopped in the beginning of a massive clearing. a mile or so away along the tree-line I could see burning houses. The Cav's Bradleys and M1s were spread out in the fields, advancing on the Iraqi positions. They moved steadily in, while the Iraqis ineffectually fired AKs and the occasional RPG. Each RPG was answered with several M1 HE rounds, so they didn't do that much. It got dark, so I taped my NVG(Night Vision Goggles) to my binos and watched the little stick figures dart out from behind a burning house to fire a few AK rounds, only to be literally cut in half by the Bradleys' 25mm cannon. It was hard to see, but looked like 25mm just made the stick figures disappear. Then I guess the Cav got impatient, so they called in CAS(Close Air Support) and the flyboys dropped what must have been a shit-load of napalm for 300meters very close to us along the other side of the clearing. It lit the world up like daytime. Here is part of it a buddy caught on film.
We heard rounds cooking off and were happy. It was while this was going on that I had to "drop the duece" again under combat conditions. It was a complicated mission, one fraught with great risk, but completed successfully.

Right after the CAS, I heard small arms fire from immediately in front of me. I buttoned up completely, then opened back up and watched in amazement as PFC Judalena in front of me stood up in the hatch of his ACE and burned off an entire magazine of 9mm rounds at the enemy, at least a klick away. He later told us that he was testing his weapon, and then had the balls to ask if anyone could spare any 9mm ammo. We all had a good laugh out of that.

A half-hour after the CAS went off the forest was still burning and we lurched forward yet again. Peering through my NVGs, I spotted a Humvee on the side of the road that looked familiar. I swerved in front of it and jumped out. To wake up my LT and his driver I had to hit them on their helmets with my pistol.

We crossed back South over the river again and met up with the rest of the company in a muddy re-supply point. Apparently it had been decided that it was safer to lager in the desert, South of the Euphrates, then in the jungle. We all swapped stories & news, pulled maintenance & got some quick food & shuteye. I found out that Private Floyd had lost his ACE to a blown hydraulic line and had to jump into an AVLB. More precisely, they had let him and his gear ride on TOP of their tank, not IN it, since they had no room and he & his stuff were completely covered in 15-40.

The next day, our LT told us that we were going to travel into As Samawah and it was considered to be "hot", so we could go to "Red Status" on our weapons(This means to put one into the chamber). We all informed him that we had been on "Red Status" for the last two days.

I took a bunch of empty 5-gal oil cans and tied them loosely on my ACE's back deck to make it more difficult to jump up there and re-arranged the explosives so that a grenade would shred my clothes and not the box and away we went across the river again.
The towns we passed through looked the same--eerily empty. As twilight gathered we found ourselves on an elevated road between towns, passing through other massed Army units, headed God-knows where. Everyone had their regular lights on and all was well when I heard a loud BANG!, then another & another. The radio reported contact, and I heard machinegun and rifle fire up ahead, as well as behind. Looking up my "clam-shelled" hatch(they hinged at the back, and clam-shelled meant open 6 inches at the front), I could see the mortar rounds airbursting several dozen yards on either side of the convoy immediately behind me. I couldn't button-up completely because it is impossible to drive at night through view-slits, even with NVGs on. After a few minutes it became obvious that the Hadjiis weren't really going to hit anything anyway.

Every vehicle on the road immediately switched from regular lights to "Black-Out Drive" lights, (many just turned them off completely) and sped up to top speed. I had my NVGs ready and followed the guy in front. Unfortunately, apparently Private Judalena had not had his NVGs set up and so he drove his ACE off the road and over the embankment. I heard that we actually lost two other vehicles this way that night. As far as I know, the Hadjiis hit no-one with their air-burst mortars, and most of the shooting was actually being done by our guys. There was one spot that I passed where a medium machine gun raked every armored vehicle that went by. Nobody hit anyone in the soft-skinned vehicles in our convoy, however, which is amazing. Only a few bullets passed through two Humvees and a C-truck. The 8 or so shells that hit my ACE just dented the aluminum a bit.

I heard Judalena come over the radio saying he couldn't get back up onto the road. I saw his ACE down in the field on the side of the road. I parked & watched him try to claw his way back up the embankment, but he couldn't. The mortars were still going off, but further back. Another member of ACE squad pulled up and waited with me. After trying to get back onto the road for 10 minutes, Judalena zeroed out his radio, grabbed his ruck and traded out with the other squadmember, SGT Hutchinson. He then put Hutch's ACE in high gear out of there, although he was supposed to wait for us. Hutch drove Judalena's ACE alongside the road, looking for a way up, and I shadowed him from the road. We were suddenly absolutely alone on the highway, without even any mortars or small-arms fire to keep us company. We tried to winch his ACE up, but my winch wasn't strong enough and my treads just slipped on the road. He kept driving alongside the embankment and I saw him drive right by a gravel ramp up, and tried to signal him with my lights. Since Judalena had zeroed his radio we couldn't communicate. I eventually had to drive down the ramp and park nearby to actually physically climb up on the other ACE and scream in Hutch's ear that I had found a way out. He followed me up the ramp and we followed the rest of the convoy. We passed through several small towns as top speed. We came across what looked like a US M113 on fire in an alley but didn't stop. I took a corner a little too hard and demolished a telephone pole, oops. Hutch apparently picked up a few shots but if I did I didn't notice; we were too busy trying to find our Cav protectors. We came to a T-intersection and started to get worried when I realized that I could see which way the other vehicles went by following the pools of spilled oil. We finally spotted a Bradley and managed to convince them to guard us until we met up with the rest of our convoy. Strangely, the rest of our unit didn't seem overjoyed to see us, only surprised.

The next day, we started to get an idea that things weren't going too well for the Iraqis. We started seeing a lot of this.
And even some of these.
We lagered that night in a huge rice-patty-looking plantation.
We set up a rotating guard, but it was only approx 1 guy for every 30. I remember wandering around thru the waist-high plants thinking that a thousand Republican Guard soldiers could be stealthily crawling up to slit all of our throats and we would never know.

We started to see some live Iraqis walking around, tending their sheep and such. Most of the "towns" we passed by weren't worthy of the name. No electrical wire or probably running water, just rude concrete buildings clustered in the sane, the only sign of habitation clothes drying on a line and the goat in the yard.

We passed a lot of blackened Iraqi vehicles, usually killed from the air. We spotted a few US-made M113s still in use by the Iraqi Army that had been shot up.
Saw a lot of slit trenches dug alongside the road at intersections, sometimes with a corpse or two alongside. Around this time, I heard later, 1st Platoon had been stopping & picking up every Iraqi weapon they had seen. A little later, when they were almost completely out of 5.56, the platoon had armed itself almost completely with AKs for almost a week.
1st Platoon rocked.

Had a good laugh when saw a flat-bedded M88(Tank recovery vehicle) with the boom left up grab this Iraqi road sign.
The driver & TC scratched their heads for a while, then drove off, taking the sign with them. I wonder if it ever turned up on ebay.

Mar 25
The next day, the wind started to pick up and one side of the sky turned orange. I had seen sandstorms before, but never that turned everything orange. We were headed North again, and I got called over the radio to tow "Rock 8", which was the company TOC--The Tactical Operations Center in an M577, which is basically a taller M113 that you can stand up inside. I hooked up and started to tow but then had to slow down because I couldn't see a damn thing in front of me. It was only 1300 but the sandstorm made everything look reddish-orange as Mars and dark as twilight. Looking behind me, I could make out the 577 with Sergeant Showers pulling security on the top of it with a shirt wrapped around his face and goggles on but I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. I had worn my prescription-strength sunglasses every day for the last three months and couldn't find my regular glasses anywhere at that exact moment(they later turned up). I suddenly had a revelation and put on my gas mask, as it had prescription inserts inside. Despite the heat, it was actually much better from the sandstorm with the mask on. I turned around and gave Sgt Showers the thumbs up. A minute later, we hit a big bump and I turned around to see how they were doing. Showers and his driver, Acker, had thrown their weapons in their hatches and were frantically pulling on their chem suits with their masks on. Turns out they had lost comms along with their motor. It took a few minutes for me to visually interrupt and re-assure them that they weren't going to die. They later thought it was funny. Much later.

Here is our M577/TOC parked next to some CAV TOCs.
We could always tell our vehicles apart, since they were painted damn green, while everyone else had theirs tan. Also, ours always had more shit stacked on the tops, went slower, and leaked 15-40.

We parked on a road. I don't know more, since I never saw any more than just the road. The wind wasn't bad--I later learned that Iraq has these weird high-altitude dust storms that block the light without much wind every 50 years. We were just really lucky, I guess. That night I had two hours of guard, and it was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. There was no wind or noise at all, but no way to see anything. I literally pressed my hand to the end of my NVGs and couldn't see anything. When I turned on a small red light inside of my track with the hatch open it looked like thick snow falling. To guard we had to walk down the line of vehicles, touching each one to keep from getting lost. Flailing around in empty air after the last vehicle was a terrifying experience. Three guys stepped too far away from their tracks and spend the night in the ditch.

I picked up an AK right about this time.
It was funny to see what happened to ordinary people under the strain of combat. PFC Judalena freaked out and abandoned his ACE & equipment. Another soldier who we all thought was pretty hard-boiled abandoned his Humvee and jumped into the back of a 5-ton, where he cowered while the lead flew. My normally-competent squad leader, Sgt Hutch, turned into a blind idiot. My LT fell asleep. I always had to take a dump. Such is life in a war zone.

Aaaaaaand, that's it! At least, that's it for Specialist Carl's Combat Experience. We wasted a lot more taxpayers dollars, but that's all of the War that I saw. Click here to see what else we did.