Stories need to be told. Sometimes simply for the sake of the teller. In this case, telling my story, clears my head of latent resentments, and generally makes me more sociable.
As this forum attracted me by its beautiful pictures of the Truck houses, I probably should start with the story of the truck house I built and lived in, while I was stationed in FOB Abu Ghraib. The trouble with that idea is that I'd have to back track too much to have it make sense. So, for the sake of clarity and continuity I'll just cut and paste the general story about it, that I wrote to a friend of mine, who is an old hippy living in WI. He sent me to a protest website from the sixites, and looking at that site resulted in my writing this:
I looked at your website and it spun me into a bittersweet place that I mostly keep to myself. My wife has seen this place manifest itself last summer when I broke my finger changing tires on the semi. Its a place where pain is recognized then disconnected and in its stead resilience and strength are drawn upon.
You asked how I got roped into going to Iraq. This is that story and its also the story of a place I found. A place with no borders or boundary in which the clean shining face of strength can be seen, touched, and drawn upon.
And I stood among the captives by the river Chebar...indeed it felt like Ezekiel. After the hasty departure, the tears, the pain of leaving, we traveled. Fifty seven men and one woman traveling 8000 miles away from all that we knew. Only one among us held against his will. One kept because of "critical need." I alone, who should have been long done with the Army, the National Guard, and serving my country, still kept a smile and an unwrinkled brow. For we'd mounted our vehicles and made our way four hundred miles north out of Kuwait into Iraq.
The journey north began with one of the most serious questions I ever asked a man. I went to Charles Huhta a man I respected but no longer worked with, a man who I watched cry when he left his family to board the plane out. I asked Chuck if he would mind taking a ride with me to Iraq. He was my superior in rank, he had a family, and he could fly safely to Iraq and he could have said no. I told him that I didn't trust anyone else with my back. I said I understood if he wanted to play it safe, no shame and all that. We were really past shame. I told him I could probably convince the Commander to let me go it alone. At that point no one wanted to make any hard decisions about other peoples lives. You see I had pull, I was a detainee, a draftee, disenfranchised by a man and a government that wanted my brain. The commander would do what I asked if Chuck didn't want to go.
So it was, in the dying light of the Kuwaiti sun, a Desert Storm Veteran, a former Gunnery Sergeant, a mensch turned and looked at me.
"I'll go with you Sarge, I'll get my Ruck" he said.
That simple statement saved my life and cemented a bond that can't be broken.
We traveled by night. I drove. I kept a 9mm. Chuck kept a SAW (squad automatic weapon). My SAW actually. That SAW is a fearsome weapon throwing its drum of 200 rounds down range in 3 or 4 seconds. Chuck kept that SAW polished, loaded, and finger on the safety. He couldn't understand why I never put the magazine in my pistol. It bothered him that it was empty so much, finally in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert he asked me why. I told him...
"Sarge there’s only one way out for me, DRIVE!" I barked.
"I can't screw around trying to shoot a motherfucker while you are toting the big gun." went my reasoning. And so I drove.
We went north with the Air force women, in the O'mara Guntruck, guarding us. They were Valkeries. They lit the night magnificently with their 50cal tracers. They were beautiful and when they dismounted to pee, we gallantly stared straight over their heads, protecting the protectors.
The thud, thud, thud, of the BOFORS lobbing grenades at some unseen target, made my lips curl in a vicious snarl. I was getting angry. Chuck fidgeted, chain smoking. I kept waiting for fear to overtake me but instead it was as if the more dangerous it got, the steadier I got.
The second night they blew up the trucks behind us. Coincidence really, it should have been us. Up until then, I could have conned myself into believing that it was just night target practice. Chuck and I looked at each other nodding, as if to say this is real. It was real.
We waited six terrifying hours on that road. Waiting for the Calvary to clear the road ahead. Chuck turned to me and said
"Sarge you lean over and sleep. I'll guard, you're no good driving if you are tired."
It was there that I learned what sacrifice is. He wanted nothing more in the world then to have me awake, keeping him company during that terrible wait in the Iraqi dark. Instead, I slumped over, immediately unconscious. I'll never know what my friend went through that night. A man away from his family, alone with his fears, doing what he believed to be his duty. Even from the distance that time affords it still seems one of the bravest things I have ever seen done.
I came awake with a start, and I swear to God there were five empty cigarette packs lying on the radio in the Humvee.
"We're moving" I heard Chuck's rough voice say.
It was a series of high speed blackout chases. Chuck and I keeping on station behind the O'mara Guntruck. Devil take the hindmost. Only the next night as we were nearing Bagdad, the Devil came and took the fuel tanker in front of us. There was a fire in the sky. There were tracers, there were the Cavalry Scouts in their Bradley’s making sparks on the highway. And there was Chuck smoking butts with that SAW at the ready. He was ready, I was just smoking his butts and wondering why I wasn't feeling anything.
It became a blur of catnaps, urine filled daycamps, peeloffs to refuel, and food that Chuck brought me because I refused to leave off guarding my ride. I didn't trust anyone but Chuck. I'd been to too many rock concert parking lots to let some dumb shit happen just because I was hungry. During the daycamps while Chuck slept I constantly checked the Humvee, or I would walk around and check the O'mara Guntruck. I checked bearings and tires, I looked under for leaks. I caught some stuff and fixed it there. I was driving a brand new tool shop that had more stuff on it then the poor convoy mechanics could ever dream of carrying. So I got into it and helped.
After eternity passed, we came to place where there was concertina wire along the walls as far as you could see in either direction. There were guard towers, armored patrols, and a big gate. We went through the gate and drove down a lovely looking typical army base type paved street. We turned into a parking lot by a PX and suddenly the ground in front of us erupted as a mortar round exploded. I cramped the wheel and floored the truck, leapt a curb and wedged the Humvee between two buildings. Chuck and I turned to each other and in chorus said "Welcome to Anaconda!"
Anaconda brought god's will to my attention. Perhaps it sounds as if I became religious. I am far from it. Regardless, I believe I have a higher power and at Anaconda he came whispering one night in a dream. He told me to remember the dream I had had twenty years before, during basic training. Then, he brought the knowledge necessary to teach my hands how to disassemble an M16A1 with my eyes closed. This, before we'd ever seen our weapons. So when we were first introduced to our weapons I won all the competitions at first, because I would just close my eyes and my hands would do all work. The reason I could do that was I had dreamt that I was an old Man with tall sons living in the Keweenaw and I was using my M16A2 to defend my family. During the dream the weapon jammed and I had to disassemble, clear, and reload the weapon. I was an expert. Somehow that knowledge got sent back to myself in a dream during basic training.
The remarkable thing about this was the gradual awareness of what this meant to me at Anaconda, and in Iraq in general. I truly believed the prayer, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil..." And I didn't.
Anaconda was a strange contrast that steadily dismayed me and tore away my faith in the United States. I began to be repulsed by eating in the mess hall. I spent my time fixing broken trucks. I began to really despise what we stand for. We had a crew of young guys from Bangladesh assigned to our porta potties and shower trailers. These guys cleaned the facilities night and day. It was the rainy season and these guys lived in a tent right next to the latrines. Their tent was knee deep in mud.
We were mortared daily. Sometimes it was close, sometimes far away. Every time, we were required to leave off what we were doing and go to these concrete bunkers. The bunker I was suppose to go to, was in sight of the wretched tent, the Bangladeshi guys lived in.
One night we were cowering in our bunkers and I saw a match flare over at the Bangladeshi tent. I snapped. I told my bunker mates I was going to have a smoke. I got up took off my armor and strolled over to the Bangli tent. I hunkered down on the pallet everyone was perched on and motioned the guys for a smoke. They were shocked, but quickly handed me a smoke. We watched the sky and smoked.
Soon their curiosity got the better of them. One guy asked me why wasn't I afraid and he motioned at a bunker. I asked him did he believe in god. He didn't get it 'til I said Allah. Then he nodded vigorously. I told him god told me it was OK. They thought I was nuts. His name was Islam Islam. Another guy's name was Mohammed Islam. We talked through sign language and an interpreter fellow. Turns out they thought the US was in Iraq to make it the 51st state. I laughed at that. Perhaps I tainted myself by going out to them. In everyone else's eyes they were pariah, untouchables. To me, they were symbols of the contradiction the US was fostering in Iraq.
The attack ended and I made my way back to the barracks only to be confronted by the first sergeant and our captain. They were amazed that I wandered out of the bunker and started in on me for endangering myself. I am known to be quiet at times but when things get to be too absurd for my sarcasm to mask, I tend to snap. This time I snapped. I started yelling about setting the example for these potential terrorists, while pointing over at the tent. I asked both of them if they'd ever read Edger Allen Poe's The Red Death? "No man is safe if one is left unprotected" I screamed.
"Look at them, are they protected?" I growled at the first sergeant.
"Is this what America is all about?" I pointed again at the muddy tent and its occupants. I was getting white hot. I remember the Captain put his hand on my shoulder. He could see I was really hurting inside.
"Bruce, you know that’s not who we are," he said "go get your shit and take a break."
The next day our company went out and built a deck and mounted the Bangli tent on it. We were an engineering company and we brought our loader and dump truck over and made gravel paths around the latrines. A colonel came to see the action and I'll be goddamned if my captain didn't go over and demand a bunker for the Banglis be put next to their tent. The colonel was shocked at the demand and the fact that these guys had been overlooked by their Halliburton (KBR)bosses. About an hour later a big civilian wretch came down the street carrying a brand new concrete bunker.
I realized I could make a difference here because this was chaos and no one really had a plan or a clue. They merely reacted when you pushed their buttons. Man, did I get on that!
It was coming on to the first week in April. We had been hood winked. They had pumped us up, telling us that our company was urgently needed in Iraq but when we got to Anaconda there was no mission and they didn't have anything for us to do. My moral plummeted. Two things happened to change that. I found the junk yard and we found our own mission.
I got busy in the junk yard and pulled out three M35A2 "deuce and a halfs." These were Vietnam era army trucks. Rudimentary but they are the toughest machines the army has besides the Browning 50cal. I put my crew on rebuilding these trucks. I realized early on that the name of the game was transportation. We had 58 people three humvees, three dump trucks, a cement truck, and a semi. We needed wheels.
Once again, I had to lose it in a staff meeting because the entrenched powers that be thought we didn't need this stuff on our books. These were full timer NGs (National Guard) who survive by being beauracrats. Perhaps I was simply the first to recognize the situation, namely that it was chaos, you could cook the books, and basically do anything you wanted as long as it wasn't criminal.
Again, my Captain came to my rescue and said, "Bruce put together trucks for whoever wants them, I'll sign for them if you need it,"
And away I went with something to do.
Word came back from an advance party sent out to reconnoiter a mission for us. We'd found a home. They'd just lost their Air force engineer company, and they'd survived an attack by 150 insurgents and a septic truck full of explosives. That home was Abu Ghraib.
Abu came just in time, I was getting ready to volunteer to run convoy duty. I found that I was an adrenaline junky. I felt alive on the road. I hated the prison that Anaconda had become. So we packed up our game and headed out west. This time we flew on the jolly green giant. Man, that thing is the Shovelhead of helicopters. Nobody got hurt on the flight from Anaconda to Abu, BUT the pilots launched flares and banked so steeply I thought I was going to fall out the ramp. The sixty gunner on the ramp opened up during the bank and lite someone up down on the ground. Of course we only flew at night so I couldn't what was happening.
We got out of the helicopter and made our way through the dust to our new home. Prison.
It was here that I finally came into my own. Abu after the torture scandal and the big attack was a place that no one wanted to go to. It was simply too dangerous. Abu had nothing. Nothing came into Abu unless it had an armor escort. Sometimes armor and Apaches. The bad guys mortared Abu about three times a day. Sometimes it was a big mess of rockets, other times they'd launch a bunch of RPGs.
I had nothing to work with besides my toolbox I had brought with me on the JGG. Our vehicles and crap had to wait for a armored convoy of HETTS to come this way. Those vehicles were too big to travel alone, they had to have Abrams escort. They also had to travel at night. It would be awhile.
That was how I came into the Toyota. I was walking along the wall one day, looking for junk. This particular wall was about a mile long and the junk was stored all along it. I came to a ditch and tried to walk around and there in the water I found the Toyota. It had points and a carburetor. It rolled over and I knew I could get it going. I bagged a battery and a gas can. I filed the points, dumped in some gas, hooked up the battery, and Bobs your uncle! I had found wheels in the middle of the most desolate hated place in Iraq. I was outta there. I traded some near beer to the KBR guys for a torch set, tanks, and a ladder rack. Now I had a real honest to god scrap buggy.
From there I went out and started cutting up old steel guard towers, also I snagged a Listeroid powered cement mixer. It was about that time that the FOB commander saw my little parade going by the HQ. The Toyota with no doors or hood, towing a huge cement mixer. It was too much. I was told to park the buggy.
Now this is where my power started manifesting itself. The perimeter of Abu Ghraib was being guarded by some incredibly brave Marine humvee patrols. These guys would charge out the gate during a mortar attack and using coordinates from the Marine counter battery radar, they would try and catch the bastards launching the mortars. These guys were scary but I liked their stones. One morning after the Imam was done with his prayers, things started heating up outside the wall. Then the Marines roared out. Then things got really loud. Then came a call for an ambulance. I was watching all this and I was watching the Ambulance. It was an armored Humvee. The Marines jumped in, and cranked it, and cranked it. It wouldn't start. I ran over and pulled the hood straps loose and jerked the hood open. I yelled at the driver to turn the power on and off. He did, and I heard the fuel shut off solenoid cycle. I had a hunch so I turned to the Marine standing next to me and yelled at him to get me a 5 gallon can of diesel from the fuel bowser, a few steps away. The marine disappeared, then reappeared, and I yelled at him to pour it in the tank. Then I poured some of the Toyota's gas into the ambulance's air cleaner. I gave the driver the nod and he cranked it. Vroooom! The gas made it roar! It ran long enough to purge the air out and after a tense little stumble, the engine idled smoothly. I slammed the hood back down and jumped aside as the ambulance roared out the gate.
It was later that day, I was standing around the Toyota, when a leather neck first sergeant came up to me.
"You!" he yelled at me. I tried my invisibility cloak (apparently it was jammed).
"Yes, first sergeant!" I yelled in my best Ft. Benning basic training voice.
It was then I realized this was the same guy I had yelled at to fetch me the diesel can. "Oh Shit" I thought.
The Marine pointed at me with his whole hand and said, "You saved a Marine today!"
I was stunned. I babbled something about it only being a bad fuel gauge sending unit.
"I could give a shit less, soldier! Without that ambulance one of MY marines would be dead!" he snapped at me. "Anything you need, anything at all..."
I'm not quick on my feet but for some reason I just said what was on my mind. "First Sergeant, I could really use permission to use this Toyota to tote my tools."
He looked skeptically at the Toyota and walked off without a word.
It was later in the evening at the staff roundup that the Captain told me I had an appointment with the CID commander, the next day. "Hmmmmmm" I thought. "Busted already, and I haven't even mailed home a jeep yet!"
The next day I reported to this guy's office. You gotta understand how casual I got around officious bureaucratic crap at that point. I mean what the FUCK were they gonna do? Draft me, separate me from my kids, destroy my business, put me in prison, and throw away the key? Oops already done that. I was polite but not impressed with army BS anymore, the only people who got my respect were the warriors. CID is Criminal Investigation Division. They are the undercover cops in the army. The guy comes out, shakes my hand, introduces himself as Major So and So, then he hands me a card. He says that the FOB commander has directed him to tell me that I am officially authorized to operate the Toyota on FOB Abu Ghraib as I see fit. If I have any trouble, at any time, night or day, I am to contact the person on this card. I thanked him and left. As I walked away I read the name on the card.
It was CID commander Major So and So.
Jesus! That Marine sure had pull to get a full bird colonel to let me play with my junk Toyota on his FOB.
That was the beginning of my rise in power. I gathered power because I could see clearly what was highest priority. I also shed all bullshit and got the job done. I gathered favor because I put aside petty rivalry and made sure the warriors got supported.
I gathered a following right out of Apocalypse Now. All the misfits, all the losers, and the ones who didn't listen. I wore a t-shirt, black shorts, and flip flops. I found an, out of the way, place by a wall and poured a slab, then started building a 50'by 50' shop. My people worked for me because they wanted to. When I had discipline problems, I would take the offender out for a walk behind the carpentry shop. The boys respected me, they were scared of going for a walk, and they were really worried about my mojo. I never hid in a bunker when the rockets and mortars came. But I always made them don their armor and hid in the bunker. Me, I made a wading pool out of a water tank and would usually go dive in the pool for a cool off till the fun was over. They thought I was fearless, I just realized that god may have told me I was going to be alright but it did not apply to the guy standing right next to me.
The Marines wanted more Armor for their Humvees, we built Armor. When I needed a bigger welder, one suddenly appeared in the parking lot. When I needed an office for my parts clerk, an army wretch came toting a twenty footer around the corner and set it down where she wanted it to be. When the FOB got locked down after the perimeter wall collapsed and the prisoners broke out, I went out towing the welder with the Toyota and welded the hinges back on the prison gate while the bullets bounced off the wall next to me. I think I got a medal for that but I honestly was much more scared of that rickety frickin ladder, god do I hate heights.
Then it got surreal, the Marines were getting pulped because all the armor on the Humvees was making them too slow to get out of harms way. So, I put together a brain trust of two young mechanics and with the help of a Canadian diesel engine specialist on the Infopop biodiesel list, we proceeded to order crate engines, hop them up, and install them in the Marine's Humvees. The Leather Neck first sergeant authorized the destruction of these engines. We built them up with little propane bottles and jacked up IPs, They'd last a month or so. It didn't matter because if the guys riding in the things survived the day we were good. When I tested the first one for the first sergeant and I smoked all four tires on my concrete pad, he just chuckled and mumbled "anything at all..."
That was how I got my D-7 Caterpillar. Up until then I just wasn't comfortable not having a tracked vehicle, I mean after all the whole place was a mud hole. So I mentioned that if the perimeter wall ever fell down again, we'd need to plug the hole fast. We all remembered the suicide septic truck back in April. I said,
“Give me a D-7 and I'll show you how to plug a hole.â€
The Story....
Moderator: TMAX
But dualfuel, did you ever get the M35A2s rebuilt and running? Since I have a deuce, I get curious when I hear a story like that- especially when you are working on them under those conditions.Four Deuces...
This story has waited until now to be told. Mostly because it never seemed
like a story until now.
Deuce and a halves have been in my life for more then 20 years. They are
the back bone of the United States Army. Its irrelevant whether you agree
with what is going on in our country today, its inconsequential what your
feelings are for our military, all you need to know is that with out this
truck in all its various forms, the US Army would not be the force it is
today. The irony is that while in Iraq, I watched our army decommission these
2 and a half ton trucks the M44 series, and specifically the M35A2 Cargo
truck, then fix them up, and finally turn them over to the Iraqi Army. Now,
I realize not everybody will agree with my thoughts about this, but to me,
its as if we loaded our pistols and rifles and then handed them to the
enemy. If we ever have to fight in that desert again, against the Iraqi
Army, they are gonna kick our butts because they'll have those trucks and
we'll have....? We could give them tons of weapons, and all the high tech
gadgets we could produce, but instead we choose to give them the one thing
that is so rock simple that it works in that dusty heat.
I've driven M35s in Germany for 4 years. Raced them up and down the
autobahn. Tweaker trucks with their injector pumps jacked, billowing soot,
and going much faster then the 58 miles per hour they are rated at. I've
painted those trucks, I've changed those LDS 465 engines. I've changed
trunion bearings and seals. I've taken deuces down range with .50 caliber
Browning Machine guns firing from their bezel rings. I've driven on no sleep
for weeks in a deuce. We've spent time together, and I've gotten to know
them.
I say all this, because I am old school. When I got to Iraq, I was 39. I
was fat, and not the 18 year old infantryman I started out as. Perhaps its
like an aging hippy going to a Rainbow Gathering. I saw all the young people
running around, things were familiar, but I had changed. Cynical, and
irreverent. One thing was for certain, I wasn't into communal living
anymore. By the time we had arrived in Anaconda, I'd spent 3 months living
in one room barracks or tents with 56 other guys and occasionally one woman.
I'd had it with "cheek and jowl".
I was one of the few people in our unit to have their very own vehicle. I
was issued a brand new M998 Humvee, with a tool body on it. It was a two
seater, so I never got shanghaied to drive people around. I was also in
charge of myself so to speak, as I was the only guy there with a vehicle
maintenance MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), specifically heavy
construction equipment.
What I did see was that, our people did not have wheels. Infantry has
Bradleys or M113A3s personnel carriers, Armor has Armor, the Abrahams tank.
Transportation corps has trucks. Our unit, the engineers, had nothing but
tool boxes. Plumbers and carpenters don't get vehicles in the army. Hmmmmm
So I drove around Anaconda getting my bearings, doing what I do, which is
mostly standing around talking. One guy told my to go to the DRMO lot if I
need parts. DRMO is the Army acronym for junkyard. (Sorry to the reader, but
everything in the army has acronyms and sometimes acronyms on acronyms. Like
High Mobility Multi-Purpose Vehicle became Humvee, then the Hummer.) So I
drove over to the junk yard.
Now the DRMO in Anaconda had everything that Haliburton didn't want and
that the army didn't want. Everything you could think of, AND, all you
needed to do was get a signature card from your unit and you could sign it
out. The stuff didn't go on the supply books, so you didn't have the
responsibility for it that comes with most army equipment. So I walked
around the yard looking things over. They guy with me wanted to cart off
small stuff like chairs and souveniour type trinkets. There were a lot of
shot up vehicles there too. I started thinking bigger. When I was a ground
pounder, our unit had deuce and a halves to move the company when we weren't
in the back of a Bradley. So my eye went towards those familiar shapes
backed into the back fence row.
The first truck that caught my eye was an M109 which is a tool shop van
body on a deuce running gear. The truck had took a hit from the front and
the front clip was crinkled as far back as the fire wall. Ouch! The van body
was immaculate except it was missing a back door. Hmmmm, I back burnered
that for a while.
Further strolling along the fence brought me to a very sharp M35A2 with an
LDS 465T with 3000 miles on it. It had no box. Yes! I was rolling now. Me
and the help checked the oil, coolant, and fuel tank. Then we went around to
all the vehicles, testing batteries. We took every single decent battery in
that DRMO lot. It just about killed my Humvee hauling them. We put two in
the M35's battery box, hooked up the cables, and flipped the switch. The
truck started immediately! We were rocking!
So I went to the guy running the big loader in the lot, and had him lift
the vanbody off the wrecked truck, and place it on the M35A2. We snugged
down the mounting bolts and TA DA! We had an M109 tool shop.
Now it was still a bit rough with the missing door and all, but that was
about it for gigs. I knew there would be absolute hell to pay when I came
back with my own truck. I had to make it look good. So we power washed all
the Iraqi patina coating it, then wiped it all down with diesel to make the
flat green camoflage paint shine. Thats an old trick that headquarter's
driver's do to make the Commander's vehicles standout. I had to use shock
and awe against the more bureaucratic minded folks in my unit.
We rolled in to our compound with the new deuce just as the evening staff
round up convened. All the players walked past me as I parked the new
vehicle in the lot. We made a big deal out of parking, by having a guy
carefully line me up with the rest of our vehicles. All two of them.
During the staff meeting the supply sergeant went ballistic and really had
me hating him. Blah, blah, blah, he went on and on about hand receipts and
property books...
"How the hell do you think a new deuce ended up in the junkyard Sarge?" I
asked.
"The previous owner drove it down there, declared it junk, signed it over
to the DRMO, then hopped on a plane out of here!" I drawled.
The supply sergeant didn't get it. Everyone else there did though. The CO
asked if there were more vehicles down there. The rest of the players
already had gleaming eyes too.
So at the after staff meeting, the offers started pouring in. We want
trucks! Cool! Give me an excuse to hang out at the junkyard...no problem.
So I was given one more guy, to work for me. Which made three. We took the
tooltruck and the shopvan to the DRMO and started piecing together M35s.
After a month we had four altogether, three cargo trucks and the shopvan.
Now the favor granting started. Our unit consisted of Carpenters, Plumbers,
and Electricians, with another section of heavy equipment operators. It was
only logical for me to dole out the deuces to the plumbers, carpenters, and
electricians.
In return for a truck, they helped put together the shopvan interior. The
carpenters built my shelving, a desk, and a back door. The electricians came
and rewired the lights inside. The plumbers didn't have a lot to offer but
their chance would come later.
By the end of our stay in Anaconda, I was able to get set up in my van. I
moved all my tools in, spare parts, and personal effects. There was a
duality going on. The humvee tool truck had all the Army stuff that was on
the property books, and the shopvan had all the stuff that wasn't signed
for....
Here I need to skip forward a few weeks to the arrival of the shopvan and
the rest of our trucks at Abu Ghraib.
I originally was set up in a bakery. That was to be me shop. Then the
sergeant first class in charge of the carpenters, kicked my low ranking butt
out of the bakery. I ended up in a parking lot behind the bakery. This was
April, and noonday temps were over 100F. I listened as a KBR old timer said
that last summer here temps reached 140F. Ooof! No shade.....I gotta get the
ball rolling here.
I found a one bag mixer with a Lister engine, and with some help from some
hardy souls poured a slab big enough for a vehicle to be worked on. Then I
brought the shop van over to it and parked that beside it. Then I went
inside the bakery, upstairs and grabbed a huge 230volt 100000btu
airconditioner. I mounted that airconditioner, above the cab in a hole in
the vanbody. Oops! No power!
Now the experience I had in alternative energy came into play. I started
killing generators! I would drag them from Abu Ghraib's version of a
junkyard. (which is still visible on Google Maps 33.290414,44.063335) I'd
get them running and then plug them into the airconditioner. It never seemed
as if I was plugging in the airconditioner to the generator, it was always
the other way around. The generator's I tried included...Changfa, Lister
clone, Lambordini, Briggs and Stratton, Onan, and you name it. Some died
gracefully. Others like the Lister Clone exploded in a shower of cast iron
pieces.
The two commercial units that lasted were the Kubota and the Mitsubishi
powered units with LeRoy Sommer gen heads. Those two kept the AC unit
running 24 hours a day until I got "grid" power from a giant Cummins V-16
powered unit, that got set up eventually.
With a powerful AC unit in an insulated vanbody, I'd use a water spray
bottle and make it snow inside while it was 120F outside. This worked. I had
a livable habitat away from the rest of my company, where if I took out my
little boy's pictures, nobody had to see me crying. Or if I took out my
little boy's pictures, nobody had to see me smashing things with a hammer
and screaming. Some things need to be done privately.
It was at about this time that me and the company parted ways. They did
physically demanding jobs. The daytime temperature was reaching for 130F and
at night since May temps never went lower then 100F. They started working at
night. Me, well, I never could do third shift work. I get stupid with
fatigue, and slow down to nothing. The other big secret is that I don't have
good night vision, and simply cannot see anything in the dark. So I kept
working through the day. It made sense because all the construction
equipment was available for maintenance during the day.
The problem was that the barracks isn't quiet during the night with those
guys up all night, and if they knew where I slept, they'd come have me
changing taillights and other dumb shit while I am supposed to be racked
out. Sooooo, I moved into the vanbody.
Once I moved in, I sort of fell back into my lifestyle I had in the early
eighties when I ran away from home and lived in a hippy bus in California.
So the vanbody was always known by everyone (except the supply sergeant) as
"The Bus."
The rest of Abu Ghraib was known as the "FOB." I set up The Bus in a remote
un assessable part of the FOB. I had 40ft shipping containers set down around
it to make a court yard with huge steel tower over the court yard for shade.
I had a 1500 gallon water tank set down in front of the bus. I had another
water tank that was cut in half, and I put it under the steel tower in the
court yard. I filled it with water, added bleach, used a sump pump and a
truck air filter as a pool filter and made the FOB's only swimming pool.
There was a 20ft main wall on one side of the court yard and the back wall
of the bakery on the other. We used this space to pour concrete and raise a
steel roof for a 50ft by 50ft shop. The whole enclosure was "L" shaped and
open at the shop end.
This became my world for 10 months. I became a "FOBbit" I never left the
enclosure unless it was on business. I ate MRE's or had food brought to me.
In fact, after the 2003 messhall mortar attack. I thought it foolish to eat
in one. So at the FOB, I never once in 10 months ate inside that messhall.
To this day I have no idea what it looked like inside.
I became a skinflint too. I never once set foot inside the PX either. I was
deployed for 14months and spent a total of $200 on myself. I'd go to the pay
call and get $200 in cash every two weeks. At night, I'd take out the boy's
pictures and then lay out those $100 bills next to those pictures. Silas
fucking Marner. I must have been walking around with six or seven thousand
dollars in my pocket at the end of summer. It was plan B.
I figured I could jump in the old white Toyota pickup I had been using and
drive it out of there if it ever got to be too much. The money could have
gotten me a long way towards those boys if I'd had to bolt. People do crazy
things in that prison, me no exception.
By June with the shop built and Bus in place, I began doing some work in
the Bus. I installed all the batteries from Anaconda in a 24volt
configuration. I ordered a second 10000watt 3phase inverter. I wired the
bus for 120/240volt and began running the Airconditioner on the inverter.
I'd have to recharge the batteries daily. I snagged the Humvee Ambulance's
Alternators, 500amp@24vdc. I mounted this instead of the deuce's 100amp
unit.
Then the wetstacking began. I'd idle that deuce all night running the AC.
It was comforting to sleep on a foam pad on the floor. The AC would drop
tiny pieces of ice (I called it snow) on my face, and the floor would
vibrate from the engine. Normally, and now, that would drive me crazy. But
there, with all the Apaches, Jolly Green Giants, Hueys, machine guns,
rockets, and other racket going on. The noise from the idling LDS and the AC
fan motor, were something stable to cling to while I slept. I idled that
engine from June 'til December when I first shut off the AC for a night.
Now here is the kicker. The whole time the truck ran on filtered used motor
oil. I could have gotten fuel from the bowser. The used motor oil was
delivered from other motor pools around the FOB. I set up my own filtration station right next to the fuel tank. I was drafted, or stoplossed. I wasn't supposed to be there. I simply wanted to protest in my own little way, that
we did not, have to depend on, or fight for that fuel bowser. That kind of
became an obsession later.
like a story until now.
Deuce and a halves have been in my life for more then 20 years. They are
the back bone of the United States Army. Its irrelevant whether you agree
with what is going on in our country today, its inconsequential what your
feelings are for our military, all you need to know is that with out this
truck in all its various forms, the US Army would not be the force it is
today. The irony is that while in Iraq, I watched our army decommission these
2 and a half ton trucks the M44 series, and specifically the M35A2 Cargo
truck, then fix them up, and finally turn them over to the Iraqi Army. Now,
I realize not everybody will agree with my thoughts about this, but to me,
its as if we loaded our pistols and rifles and then handed them to the
enemy. If we ever have to fight in that desert again, against the Iraqi
Army, they are gonna kick our butts because they'll have those trucks and
we'll have....? We could give them tons of weapons, and all the high tech
gadgets we could produce, but instead we choose to give them the one thing
that is so rock simple that it works in that dusty heat.
I've driven M35s in Germany for 4 years. Raced them up and down the
autobahn. Tweaker trucks with their injector pumps jacked, billowing soot,
and going much faster then the 58 miles per hour they are rated at. I've
painted those trucks, I've changed those LDS 465 engines. I've changed
trunion bearings and seals. I've taken deuces down range with .50 caliber
Browning Machine guns firing from their bezel rings. I've driven on no sleep
for weeks in a deuce. We've spent time together, and I've gotten to know
them.
I say all this, because I am old school. When I got to Iraq, I was 39. I
was fat, and not the 18 year old infantryman I started out as. Perhaps its
like an aging hippy going to a Rainbow Gathering. I saw all the young people
running around, things were familiar, but I had changed. Cynical, and
irreverent. One thing was for certain, I wasn't into communal living
anymore. By the time we had arrived in Anaconda, I'd spent 3 months living
in one room barracks or tents with 56 other guys and occasionally one woman.
I'd had it with "cheek and jowl".
I was one of the few people in our unit to have their very own vehicle. I
was issued a brand new M998 Humvee, with a tool body on it. It was a two
seater, so I never got shanghaied to drive people around. I was also in
charge of myself so to speak, as I was the only guy there with a vehicle
maintenance MOS (Military Occupational Specialty), specifically heavy
construction equipment.
What I did see was that, our people did not have wheels. Infantry has
Bradleys or M113A3s personnel carriers, Armor has Armor, the Abrahams tank.
Transportation corps has trucks. Our unit, the engineers, had nothing but
tool boxes. Plumbers and carpenters don't get vehicles in the army. Hmmmmm
So I drove around Anaconda getting my bearings, doing what I do, which is
mostly standing around talking. One guy told my to go to the DRMO lot if I
need parts. DRMO is the Army acronym for junkyard. (Sorry to the reader, but
everything in the army has acronyms and sometimes acronyms on acronyms. Like
High Mobility Multi-Purpose Vehicle became Humvee, then the Hummer.) So I
drove over to the junk yard.
Now the DRMO in Anaconda had everything that Haliburton didn't want and
that the army didn't want. Everything you could think of, AND, all you
needed to do was get a signature card from your unit and you could sign it
out. The stuff didn't go on the supply books, so you didn't have the
responsibility for it that comes with most army equipment. So I walked
around the yard looking things over. They guy with me wanted to cart off
small stuff like chairs and souveniour type trinkets. There were a lot of
shot up vehicles there too. I started thinking bigger. When I was a ground
pounder, our unit had deuce and a halves to move the company when we weren't
in the back of a Bradley. So my eye went towards those familiar shapes
backed into the back fence row.
The first truck that caught my eye was an M109 which is a tool shop van
body on a deuce running gear. The truck had took a hit from the front and
the front clip was crinkled as far back as the fire wall. Ouch! The van body
was immaculate except it was missing a back door. Hmmmm, I back burnered
that for a while.
Further strolling along the fence brought me to a very sharp M35A2 with an
LDS 465T with 3000 miles on it. It had no box. Yes! I was rolling now. Me
and the help checked the oil, coolant, and fuel tank. Then we went around to
all the vehicles, testing batteries. We took every single decent battery in
that DRMO lot. It just about killed my Humvee hauling them. We put two in
the M35's battery box, hooked up the cables, and flipped the switch. The
truck started immediately! We were rocking!
So I went to the guy running the big loader in the lot, and had him lift
the vanbody off the wrecked truck, and place it on the M35A2. We snugged
down the mounting bolts and TA DA! We had an M109 tool shop.
Now it was still a bit rough with the missing door and all, but that was
about it for gigs. I knew there would be absolute hell to pay when I came
back with my own truck. I had to make it look good. So we power washed all
the Iraqi patina coating it, then wiped it all down with diesel to make the
flat green camoflage paint shine. Thats an old trick that headquarter's
driver's do to make the Commander's vehicles standout. I had to use shock
and awe against the more bureaucratic minded folks in my unit.
We rolled in to our compound with the new deuce just as the evening staff
round up convened. All the players walked past me as I parked the new
vehicle in the lot. We made a big deal out of parking, by having a guy
carefully line me up with the rest of our vehicles. All two of them.
During the staff meeting the supply sergeant went ballistic and really had
me hating him. Blah, blah, blah, he went on and on about hand receipts and
property books...
"How the hell do you think a new deuce ended up in the junkyard Sarge?" I
asked.
"The previous owner drove it down there, declared it junk, signed it over
to the DRMO, then hopped on a plane out of here!" I drawled.
The supply sergeant didn't get it. Everyone else there did though. The CO
asked if there were more vehicles down there. The rest of the players
already had gleaming eyes too.
So at the after staff meeting, the offers started pouring in. We want
trucks! Cool! Give me an excuse to hang out at the junkyard...no problem.
So I was given one more guy, to work for me. Which made three. We took the
tooltruck and the shopvan to the DRMO and started piecing together M35s.
After a month we had four altogether, three cargo trucks and the shopvan.
Now the favor granting started. Our unit consisted of Carpenters, Plumbers,
and Electricians, with another section of heavy equipment operators. It was
only logical for me to dole out the deuces to the plumbers, carpenters, and
electricians.
In return for a truck, they helped put together the shopvan interior. The
carpenters built my shelving, a desk, and a back door. The electricians came
and rewired the lights inside. The plumbers didn't have a lot to offer but
their chance would come later.
By the end of our stay in Anaconda, I was able to get set up in my van. I
moved all my tools in, spare parts, and personal effects. There was a
duality going on. The humvee tool truck had all the Army stuff that was on
the property books, and the shopvan had all the stuff that wasn't signed
for....
Here I need to skip forward a few weeks to the arrival of the shopvan and
the rest of our trucks at Abu Ghraib.
I originally was set up in a bakery. That was to be me shop. Then the
sergeant first class in charge of the carpenters, kicked my low ranking butt
out of the bakery. I ended up in a parking lot behind the bakery. This was
April, and noonday temps were over 100F. I listened as a KBR old timer said
that last summer here temps reached 140F. Ooof! No shade.....I gotta get the
ball rolling here.
I found a one bag mixer with a Lister engine, and with some help from some
hardy souls poured a slab big enough for a vehicle to be worked on. Then I
brought the shop van over to it and parked that beside it. Then I went
inside the bakery, upstairs and grabbed a huge 230volt 100000btu
airconditioner. I mounted that airconditioner, above the cab in a hole in
the vanbody. Oops! No power!
Now the experience I had in alternative energy came into play. I started
killing generators! I would drag them from Abu Ghraib's version of a
junkyard. (which is still visible on Google Maps 33.290414,44.063335) I'd
get them running and then plug them into the airconditioner. It never seemed
as if I was plugging in the airconditioner to the generator, it was always
the other way around. The generator's I tried included...Changfa, Lister
clone, Lambordini, Briggs and Stratton, Onan, and you name it. Some died
gracefully. Others like the Lister Clone exploded in a shower of cast iron
pieces.
The two commercial units that lasted were the Kubota and the Mitsubishi
powered units with LeRoy Sommer gen heads. Those two kept the AC unit
running 24 hours a day until I got "grid" power from a giant Cummins V-16
powered unit, that got set up eventually.
With a powerful AC unit in an insulated vanbody, I'd use a water spray
bottle and make it snow inside while it was 120F outside. This worked. I had
a livable habitat away from the rest of my company, where if I took out my
little boy's pictures, nobody had to see me crying. Or if I took out my
little boy's pictures, nobody had to see me smashing things with a hammer
and screaming. Some things need to be done privately.
It was at about this time that me and the company parted ways. They did
physically demanding jobs. The daytime temperature was reaching for 130F and
at night since May temps never went lower then 100F. They started working at
night. Me, well, I never could do third shift work. I get stupid with
fatigue, and slow down to nothing. The other big secret is that I don't have
good night vision, and simply cannot see anything in the dark. So I kept
working through the day. It made sense because all the construction
equipment was available for maintenance during the day.
The problem was that the barracks isn't quiet during the night with those
guys up all night, and if they knew where I slept, they'd come have me
changing taillights and other dumb shit while I am supposed to be racked
out. Sooooo, I moved into the vanbody.
Once I moved in, I sort of fell back into my lifestyle I had in the early
eighties when I ran away from home and lived in a hippy bus in California.
So the vanbody was always known by everyone (except the supply sergeant) as
"The Bus."
The rest of Abu Ghraib was known as the "FOB." I set up The Bus in a remote
un assessable part of the FOB. I had 40ft shipping containers set down around
it to make a court yard with huge steel tower over the court yard for shade.
I had a 1500 gallon water tank set down in front of the bus. I had another
water tank that was cut in half, and I put it under the steel tower in the
court yard. I filled it with water, added bleach, used a sump pump and a
truck air filter as a pool filter and made the FOB's only swimming pool.
There was a 20ft main wall on one side of the court yard and the back wall
of the bakery on the other. We used this space to pour concrete and raise a
steel roof for a 50ft by 50ft shop. The whole enclosure was "L" shaped and
open at the shop end.
This became my world for 10 months. I became a "FOBbit" I never left the
enclosure unless it was on business. I ate MRE's or had food brought to me.
In fact, after the 2003 messhall mortar attack. I thought it foolish to eat
in one. So at the FOB, I never once in 10 months ate inside that messhall.
To this day I have no idea what it looked like inside.
I became a skinflint too. I never once set foot inside the PX either. I was
deployed for 14months and spent a total of $200 on myself. I'd go to the pay
call and get $200 in cash every two weeks. At night, I'd take out the boy's
pictures and then lay out those $100 bills next to those pictures. Silas
fucking Marner. I must have been walking around with six or seven thousand
dollars in my pocket at the end of summer. It was plan B.
I figured I could jump in the old white Toyota pickup I had been using and
drive it out of there if it ever got to be too much. The money could have
gotten me a long way towards those boys if I'd had to bolt. People do crazy
things in that prison, me no exception.
By June with the shop built and Bus in place, I began doing some work in
the Bus. I installed all the batteries from Anaconda in a 24volt
configuration. I ordered a second 10000watt 3phase inverter. I wired the
bus for 120/240volt and began running the Airconditioner on the inverter.
I'd have to recharge the batteries daily. I snagged the Humvee Ambulance's
Alternators, 500amp@24vdc. I mounted this instead of the deuce's 100amp
unit.
Then the wetstacking began. I'd idle that deuce all night running the AC.
It was comforting to sleep on a foam pad on the floor. The AC would drop
tiny pieces of ice (I called it snow) on my face, and the floor would
vibrate from the engine. Normally, and now, that would drive me crazy. But
there, with all the Apaches, Jolly Green Giants, Hueys, machine guns,
rockets, and other racket going on. The noise from the idling LDS and the AC
fan motor, were something stable to cling to while I slept. I idled that
engine from June 'til December when I first shut off the AC for a night.
Now here is the kicker. The whole time the truck ran on filtered used motor
oil. I could have gotten fuel from the bowser. The used motor oil was
delivered from other motor pools around the FOB. I set up my own filtration station right next to the fuel tank. I was drafted, or stoplossed. I wasn't supposed to be there. I simply wanted to protest in my own little way, that
we did not, have to depend on, or fight for that fuel bowser. That kind of
became an obsession later.
After hearing stories like this, it makes a person wonder how the military ever gets anything done if the brass have anything to do with it! If it was not for the "little guy" it appears that things would come to a halt rather quickly. It just shows how common sense, a little savy, and some gonads to try something "out of the box" can overcome even the most rock headed brass and dunderheads that somehow rose to the top rank despite thier obvious shortcomings. The Peter princple at it's best, each man rises to his own highest level of incompentancy. But the little guy still prevails! 
A friend snapped this of me on my way to pull him and his shiny new Caterpillar loader out of a muck hole.
Last edited by Dualfuel on Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This was the carpenter's deuce. It looks tatty, but it had been carrying forms for poured walls for 6 months and had an excuse. The view is from peeking around a serpetine labyrinth we made with a wretch and some concrete bunkers. The truck is parked in front of the bakery.
Last edited by Dualfuel on Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:09 pm, edited 4 times in total.
DualFuel, I'm gobsmacked!
I guess you were doing lots of "work therapy" over there but it looks like a few other people benefited along the way. Hope some of them learned something. Great to hear how down home sense and skill can make a difference. My dad was a Marine in the Pacific; he never talked about it at all. I never got into the service and I don't know if I'd have survived to get out honorably - I got a big mouth and a dumb attitude about stupid superiors.
I'm betting you're still pretty busy. Looks like you might have bit of a "work habit". <g>
Rufus
I guess you were doing lots of "work therapy" over there but it looks like a few other people benefited along the way. Hope some of them learned something. Great to hear how down home sense and skill can make a difference. My dad was a Marine in the Pacific; he never talked about it at all. I never got into the service and I don't know if I'd have survived to get out honorably - I got a big mouth and a dumb attitude about stupid superiors.
I'm betting you're still pretty busy. Looks like you might have bit of a "work habit". <g>
Rufus
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