Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Roger Dat- No Radio, No Lights, No Convoy-Night time desert jaunt a stressful experience

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 04:08:41 -0400

Posted on Tue, Apr. 08, 2003

Night time desert jaunt a stressful experience Humvee gets lost from
convoy several times
MARK JOHNSON
Staff Writer

SAMAWAH, Iraq - I took a ride in a Humvee the other night, and what an
unsettling experience it turned out to be.

Let's call the main characters in our story Sgt. Maj. Barney and Sgt.
Gomer. They were helping organize a convoy of a
half-dozen trucks and Humvees from the headquarters at the 1st
battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, to their
brigade headquarters and back. The convoy was running late. By the time
it started on the return trip, night had
settled in.

Photographer Jim Barcus of The Kansas City Star and I were in Barney and
Gomer's Humvee. Their radio was not
properly reset. As the last vehicle in the convoy, they could not
communicate with the first. They received a
walkie-talkie instead. Within seconds, we lost the rest of the convoy.

Barney's and Gomer's "blackout lights," low intensity headlights and
tail lights, didn't work, and Gomer never has
gotten the hang of night vision goggles.

"That's a tent," Barney said to Gomer as they tried to find the trucks
in the dusty dark.

"Roger that, sergeant major, I see the tent," said Gomer, who had
mistaken it for a truck.

The same scenario played out several times during what should have been
a brief trip but actually took an hour and
15 minutes.

The following day we waited for a ride back in a truck. We figured we
were safe in an abandoned cement plant the
1st Battalion had taken over.

Suddenly, an Iraqi mortar round exploded behind the building. I was
convinced I was going to die. But it only bounced
me out of bed.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/5582773.htm

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