Christiansen 1

The Trip North

I woke up to the hard landing of the airplane realizing we were finally there. I

reach for my weapon under my seat and stand up to grab my bag in the overhead

compartment. We start to unload and I get ready to head towards the door with the

others. I remember talking to the person behind me when I started walking down the

aisle of the airplane. I focused back on the door and watched a friend of mine look

outside the door his hand immediately coming in front of his eyes and seriousness

came across his face. I finally reach the door myself and immediately put my hand up to

shield my eyes as well. I stepped outside the airplanes door and into Kuwait City airport

as a U.S. Army private on my way to Iraq. From that moment forward my life would

change forever.

As I got off the airplane I was told to get onto buses that were waiting for us. I headed

for the second bus in the line of nine and sat all the way in the back. Jerry a buddy of

mine came and sat next to me we both had no idea what lied ahead of us. Everyone

finally got loaded onto the buses, by that time it was well after midnight and we started

driving into the desert. It was very dark and felt very disorientating being in a foreign

country in pitch black with no idea about your surroundings. Jerry finally spots a bright

light on the horizon and as we get closer I realize that it’s a military base in the middle of

the desert. As the bus pulls up to the front gate I see gate towers and armed U.S.

civilian contractors stopping the bus. The guard climbs into the bus and asks everyone

to show their military I.D. and he walks down the aisle looking at each. Once he had

checked each bus we were let onto the base and driven to flimsy looking white circus

tents. Everyone got off the buses and started taking their bags into the tents and picking
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an area to setup a cot. I picked an area towards the front door flap and made it as

homely as I could before going to sleep.

My team leader woke me up early the next day and told all of us to get ready for a run in

fifteen minutes. I threw on my work out cloths and go outside the tent to get my first look

at the base during the day. My team leader gets us all into a formation and we start

running on the perimeter road right inside the walls. Within the base it was just white

tents with the white shower conexs. Army trucks and tanks parked in the motor pool

areas with the mechanics working hard to get them ready for the trip north. The sand

berms around the base were about thirteen feet tall and had constantia wire in rows of

three on top. There were guard towers every hundred feet along the sand berms with

guards looking out into the empty desert. We run for about thirty minutes and come

back to our tent to shower and change into our combat fatigues before breakfast chow.

Once I had showered and changed, my whole team which was around four members

headed to the chow hall together. The wind had really picked up while I had been

changing. A nasty sand storm had rolled in while we were waiting to get inside and eat.

The heat plus the sand blowing into your face felt like a hair dryer turned on at full blast

with sand paper being rubbed across your face. It really opened my eyes to what lay

ahead in the next twelve months.

The next few weeks everyone started training and prepping their vehicles for the trip

into Iraq. Most of the training involved weapons drills and vehicle bail out practice. We

had to start training early in the morning before it got above 115F°. Once it got too hot

outside my team leader would take us in the tent and we would go over the maps of Iraq

and practice first aid and CPR. I remember our commander called everyone into a circle
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in the tent one day. I knew we were heading north to Iraq soon but like everyone else

didn’t know any details or exactly when it would happen. The commander told us that

we needed to start prepping the trucks for a trip north. He also said we would be leaving

at midnight in three days. So many emotions came over me at that moment; I felt

excited to finally get to do my job but also scared of the unknown. The commander

released everyone but told a few people including myself to stay. He told me and the

others that we were the convoy group and would be driving all the way up to our base in

northern Iraq. The rest of the company would be flying into Iraq and would be at the

base waiting for us to get there.

I was put in charge of a humvee truck and told to armor and prep it for the trip north. It

was not designed to be in direct combat so we had to add homemade armor onto the

truck. We built hollow plywood boxes and put them standing in the bed of the humvee.

Once they had been bolted into place we filled them with sand bags and Kevlar blankets

for added protection. I then built another box to go on top of the roof for a machine gun

position to help cover the convoy during our trip. At the time this made me feel safe but I

truly had no idea what IED’s and rifle rounds were capable of at the time. To be honest I

probably would not have gone on that convoy had I know how much danger I was in.

The night that we were supposed to leave came quickly. I spent the last few hours

preparing my gear for the trip. I cleaned and checked my weapon over and over to

make sure it was good. Then I focused on my ammo and made sure that I had enough

and that it was all in magazines. I looked over each of my M203 grenades and made

sure there were no dented or bad rounds. I added fresh batteries to my night vision

goggles and checked them in a dark corner of the tent. Prepping my assault pack I
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made sure I had plenty of water, smoke grenades and extra ammo that I may need.

Then I walked out to the truck and checked the oil and fluids one last time. The radios in

the truck had to be setup and encrypted to the right channels so I did that as well.

Earlier that day I had loaded 2000 rounds of Machine gun ammo into the truck so I

double checked that while I was at the trucks. I finished getting everything ready so I

went back to the tent and took a nap until it was time to leave.

Yelling in the tent woke me up, it was still 20 min till we had to go out and get on the

trucks. I knew I needed the extra 20 minutes of sleep but it was just too loud in the tent.

I grabbed all of my things and my weapon and headed to the truck early. I went over

everything one last time to make sure things were good. I packed all my things neatly in

the back of the truck so that if we got in a fight nothing would get in the way. Everyone

else came out shortly and we all gathered around the front truck for a brief and look at

the route we would be taking to the north. The convoy commander was a short stocky

man and very well spoken. He told us it would take about two days to get up to the base

in Iraq and showed up on the map were it was. The Chaplin came out and gave the

whole convoy a blessing and said a prayer. We headed back to the trucks and loaded

up I took my spot in the bed of the truck with the machine gunner. The time had finally

come to do my job and I felt that I was ready for whatever Iraq could throw at me. In

reality I had no idea what I was getting into or how I would react in a firefight.

The drive across Kuwait and to the first Iraqi checkpoint was very uneventful. Once we

passed the first check point the sun was coming up and I could see Iraq for the first

time. It was not as I had pictured with the rolling sand dunes and the empty landscape.

There were palms trees everywhere and houses spaced out along the road each about
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ten feet apart. All the houses were made out of mud and straw but I noticed they still had

a satellite TV dish on top their house. The drainage ditches that ran along the road were

full of waste and smelled horrible. The Iraqi’s were just waking up while we drove by

and I noticed they were all sleeping on the roof of their houses. The kids all ran up to

the trucks asking for anything that we were willing to part with. We continued on north

towards Bagdad and arrived right after dark. I put my night vision goggles on and

scanned the windows and alleys as we drove by. I could hear fighting in the distance

and explosions that were closer than I would have liked. I silently hoped no one I knew

was in any of those fights and that it didn’t head our direction.

We quickly passed through Bagdad and drove over the Tigris River onto the lush green

areas of the small jungles. The radio squealed and the convoy commander said we

were making better time than he had planned. He said that we were to meet another

army unit about thirty miles ahead and they would escort us to our base. It was starting

to get light out again by the time we met up with the escort unit. I was happy that we

were almost there as I had not slept in over thirty hours. As we pulled up to our base I

saw M1 tanks guarding the front gate which had to move in order to let us on. The base

was very small with less than 150 people on it. We parked the vehicles in the motor pool

and I unloaded my gear. I was directed to an old tank hanger were cots had been setup

and I picked one and dropped my stuff. As I lay down I looked up at the roof and saw

mortar and bullet holes all over the place. I couldn’t help but think what had I gotten

myself into and that I still had eleven more months in this place.