Humvee Gunner

Everything in Iraq moves by convoys. Fuel, food, soldiers and yes, sailors too.


Of course, there are different kinds of convoys. Some are active patrols sent “outside the wire” to go find and engage the enemy. Others escort humanitarian supplies or Iraqi leaders threatened by the insurgency.

There are no mere passengers in a U.S. military convoy. Every person traveling in one is an active participant of a complex machine designed to evade terrorist threats, defend itself in case of attack, and fulfill a mission.


To that end, every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who steps on ground in country needs to know the basics of convoy operations, how to defend and recover a damaged vehicle, and how to get out of a “kill zone” alive. This past week, our unit got the crash course. And I do mean “crash.” One of our Humvees came back with a little side panel damage, but no one was injured.
It started, as all such courses do, in the classroom. In this case, it was a return trip to our home away from home, FOB Freedom, for a lovely day-long class in a double-wide trailer. With our guns stowed below our chairs and our body armor in cubbies in the back room, we sat down for our lesson.

Once again, we watched a lot of videos. The video camera in Iraq, 2007, has become what the scalping knife was during the French and Indian War. Our enemy likes to film every attack on Americans, because that’s the proof that they use to show their paymasters that they did their job. No video, no money. Consequently, there are very few video tourists in Iraq. Anyone pulling out a video camera near American troops stands a very good chance of winding up on the wrong end of a U.S. Army sniper team.

I won’t go into our tactics, of course. Even though they’re not really secret, the less they are broadcast, the better. Either way, we’re constantly evolving to meet the greatest threats.
Among those threats are IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), which can range from homemade bombs to highly-sophisticated devices which may or may not have lots of parts manufactured in a certain country to the East of Iraq.


These are often triggered by an old-fashioned wire system, or by a passive infra-red system that detects movement (like the doors at the supermarket that open for you automatically), or through short-distance radio signals (garage door openers) and cell phones. IEDs can be hidden in roadside trash – all of Iraq is basically one big trash dump – in junk cars, in moving cars, on people and dead animals.

The most common one is a 155 mm artillery shell – a relatively common thing in a country smaller than Texas which 18 years ago boasted the Fourth largest army in the world after the U.S., Soviet Union and China.

Another threat – and a growing one – is Explosively-Formed Projectiles, or EFPs. These are very sophisticated devices, which uses an explosion behind a mass (usually copper), which is then instantaneously melted, shot through the air in a semi-liquid state, and hardens as it impacts the vehicle. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not a few illiterate Iraqi deadbeats – which most of the insurgents are – can build these in their garage entirely by themselves, or if they may also be looking east for assistance.

Depending on how big these devices are, how they’re placed, etc. they can blow up our biggest tanks or a group of Humvees can shoot right past them, blowing them off right and left without slowing down. When the big ones are spotted, we have remote-controlled robots we can send up to defuse them, but any time you’re stopped out on the road, you have to watch for an ambush.

After the day of classroom training was over, we moved out to the motor pool and checked out our Humvees. Our little group of sailors only warranted four of the vehicles, which made us one of the smallest convoys in the history of Fort McCoy. It reminded me of the Far Side cartoon called, “A Young Ghengis Khan and his Mongol Hordette” (with a photo of five or six Mongols on tiny ponies).

Of course, we could have hooked up with the Air Force engineering group, which has shadowed our movements from day One. But the Air Force didn’t want us, and frankly, we didn’t want them either. Having two separate command structures for one convoy would make coordination impossible. So they went out in their convoy of seven, and we went out in our convoy of three, one after another, on the same route.

As we reached our vehicles and climbed around, we began to assign people to vehicles. The drivers were pretty much set. Only five of our sailors had been through the required Army Humvee drivers’ course (which they took while I took the Combat Life Saver course and others took classes like advanced hand-to-hand combat).

Again, I took the opportunity to assign jobs to my subordinates to get them to practice their leadership abilities. With the input of our Chiefs, I chose Petty Officer Rogers – who is from my same reserve unit back in San Antonio – to be the Convoy Commander. We chose other Petty Officers to serve as Truck Commanders for the various trucks.

Climbing up into the turret of one of the Humvees, I made some comments about how fun it would be to be a turret gunner, and though I was only making that comment in passing, being the superior officer, it was interpreted as a command, and henceforth, I was to be a Humvee gunner. Only after I climbed out of the vehicle, which was already lined up in the formation, did I realize I was also on the lead truck.


(Photo: Me atop my Humvee)

The lead truck in any convoy is the most exposed vehicle, because it usually trips all the automatic IEDs. And the gunner, sticking out on top in a protected, but open (on the top) turret is the most exposed person in that vehicle.

In the entire U.S. military vocabulary, the most courageous statement a man can make is “I’ve got point” – the lead, most exposed position. That’s what the lead Humvee Gunner essentially is.
Of course, this was just an exercise, and the only real danger – until the live fire exercise – was a rollover, since the gunner has no seatbelt. In that case, he has to fall back into the vehicle and try to grab something before the vehicle – which is very top-heavy – goes over. In all the drills, I never once found a position in which I felt I would be able to survive a roll-over. The best I figured was to jam my feet below the radio, grab the back-seat passenger’s seat belt with my hands and pray.

Fortunately, it never came to that. I was blessed to have the best driver in our convoy, Petty Officer Killian, who is also from my reserve unit, and in his regular job works for the Austin Police Department. Unlike two of our drivers, who had a minor fender-bender, he executed all of his movements flawlessly.

Also in my vehicle were both of our females, Petty Officer Moore (our Truck Commander) and Petty Officer McGuire. Although Humvee gunners usually have crew-served weapons – 50 caliber machine guns or 240 Bravos, our unit doesn’t have any, so we just went with our M-16s. For training purposes, it worked.

Lined up behind our vehicle on a rainy morning the next day, our mini-convoy moved out. Following an Instructor’s Humvee, we drove out to the course. As we had been told, this was a “Crawl, Walk Run” exercise, and Day Two was crawl.


The course was a short one: a straight run through a movie-set-like village. As lead gunner, I was the one person in our convoy who would see the most action.

In reality, the scenarios weren’t much of a surprise, because we were behind the Air Force, and as we sat there waiting our turn, we could hear some of what went on ahead, and see a little as well.

The first run was simple. We drove right through with no incident. The people waved at us with friendly waves, and despite one or two folks walking around with weapons – common in Iraq – none raised them at us, and none of our guys fired.

The next run, we got a different reception. Although most of the “villagers” were friendly, a man jumped out from behind our village and pointed his rifle directly at me.

Now, I’ve been firing guns since I was six or seven years old. I’ve shot thousands of rounds of ammunition, and seen others shoot as well. But never in my life had I had the experience of someone aiming a weapon directly at me and pulling the trigger. The muzzle flash of a rifle – which I’d seen so many times before – suddenly looks different from head-on.

Of course, the impromptu insurgent was firing blanks, and at almost the identical moment, I was lined up on him, firing a burst of blank rounds from my M-16. Despite the novelty, nothing about it really felt all that weird. I aimed my weapon at another human being and pulled the trigger. As we passed by, I thought about that, and how incredibly easy it was to do. Blanks are blanks, but I had gone against lessons my daddy had taught me since I could crawl, and I expected a bit more hesitation. The ease of it left me slightly uncomfortable, but I would soon get used to it.

The next time, we came into the same little village and this time there were dozens of “protesters” formed up in a line across the road, with tires and tree branches spread out in front of our path. I followed our escalation of force guidelines, also known as the Five S’s:

Shout (Tell them to move away: “Imshee. Imshee”)

Show (Show your weapon, look mean and let them know you’re ready. At the same time, the driver guns the engine.


Shove (This works better on the ground, but the driver can move forward slightly and have the same effect.)

Shoot to warn (A shot into the air)

Shoot to kill

Fortunately, in this situation, I reached Step 4 and as soon as I fired my shot, the protesters dispersed.

The next scenario of note involved an IED strike on one of our vehicles. We had to form into a position that screened the injured vehicle from attack, have one person jump out (behind the protection of the screening vehicle) and attach a tow rope to the damaged vehicle. We then got out of there as fast as we could.

It’s a complex operation, and it took a long time the first go-round. But as the next couple of days went by, we got increasingly faster.


Day Three (the second day of actual exercises) was the “walk” phase of our convoy operations training. This time, we went out on a very long course, ranging over several miles, with various scenarios and two villages (which we went through twice each).


We started out with an escort mission. Our VIP was an Iraqi politician (one of our many great, awesome and friendly Iraqi Americans who do this stuff full-time). With his van in the middle of our convoy, we proceeded down the route.

Entering the outskirts of one village that our intelligence report said was mostly friendly, I spied something in the middle of the road. Instantly, I called down to the driver “Possible IED, 12:00.”
Killian stopped quickly, and I turned my turret off-center to provide protection against any blast. We were a good distance away – 200 meters – though we needed a little more space, and I guided Killian in backing up, which we could only do after vehicles Four, Three, Iraqi and Two had done so.

Our truck commander verified the IED – an artillery shell – and we called in the Explosive Ordnance Detail to defuse it.

Our instructors then told us that defusing the device would take a while and routed us off the main road through the village.

We entered cautiously, though as expected, the village was very friendly. But there were rumors that the insurgents were trying to pry the village from its friendly atmosphere by attacking Americans and trying to trap us into using excessive force.

Sure enough, after we had passed through the “buildings” (mostly stacked freight cars), we got attacked on the outside of the village.

I shot a lot of rounds, but probably shouldn’t have, since I couldn’t actually make out the targets. Fortunately, there were no civilians in the area to hit.

A few seconds later, our truck was hit by an IED (an instructor threw a flash-bang grenade by our tire and then, after we stopped, threw out a smoke grenade). There were no casualties, but I had to keep covering my sector of fire as the other vehicles came up and pulled us out.

After a few more scenarios, we arrived at the destination, dropped off our Iraqi and ate MREs for lunch while the instructors went over what we did right and wrong.

We did more of the same the rest of the day. The highlight for me was when our truck was again struck by an IED (the instructors always had to blow “invisible” IEDs, because myself and our truck commander saw every single planted one in the scenario).

After our truck stopped, an instructor came out, and handed me up a laminated card showing my “injury” – an amputated right hand.

I fell down into the vehicle and then proceeded to put my own tourniquet on with my left hand – just like I learned in my Combat Life Saver class.

After towing our truck out of the “kill zone” to a safe area, I was pulled from the vehicle and placed on the ground. I screamed a little to make it more fun, but after one of my buddies pulled out the needle for a field IV, I decided I would rather have my fellow sailors calm and relaxed for a few minutes.

The first stick didn’t work, so he switched arms. I decided that for the sake of this exercise, I’d only have my hand amputated, and slid down my tourniquet to give him more room. This time he stuck me well, and though it left a bruise that’s still there four days later, it worked.
After I had been treated, the “helicopter” arrived. We had called it from the command truck, and the instructors reported departure, 20 minutes out and 5 minutes out. As the instructor who simulated the helicopter walked up, one of our sailors waved him in using the signals we had pre-arranged, along with a canister of purple smoke, which gave him the site – and the wind direction.

We use smoke a lot, but the colors vary. We never tell the helicopter what the color will be, because the insurgents listen to the radio too, could have captured smoke, and they’d love to get their hands on an American helicopter through deception. So the smoke – and other things – are designed to vector the helicopter to one and only one spot.

So I was hauled out to the invisible helicopter on a stretcher, and then released by the instructors. After dusting myself off, resetting my body armor and retrieving my gun, I was back in business.

On our way back through the village we’d been through before, we were supposed to have a meeting with the local Iraqi Police Chief. So we parked, let some of our guys out, and for 20-30 minutes, we were left idling in the middle of the village.

Our back-seaters got out and provided additional security, keeping the villagers away from our vehicles while we gunners continuously rotated our turrets and scanned for possible insurgents. There were curious women walking back and forth, some offering us food – which we couldn’t take – and some sketchy-looking men in long “man-dresses” as we call them, who could easily be hiding a bomb, a weapon, or nothing at all.

We got out of there without any incident, although some of our guys fired warning shots. At the edge of the village, we did get a sniper, but we shot back right at him without “hitting” anything else.

Day Four was the real thing – with real live ammunition.
This, as a leader of a unit, was the most stressful thing of our training. We would have people exiting our vehicle and on the ground during a live-fire exercise. It turned out well, because we were never “attacked” until our people were in safe positions behind the truck, but it still scared me.

In one exercise, we were attacked by insurgents (pop-up dummies) while we stood there waiting for an IED to be defused. I shot them down by the dozens from the turret, while my crewmembers shot across the hood or from behind the vehicle.

When the bomb was gone, the “attacks” died down and our instructors gave us the go-ahead to move out. We mounted back up and drove through another movie-set village, this one with cardboard cutouts, not real actors. The insurgents were either placed up beside them, wearing plywood rifles or popping up as targets, holding Kalishnikovs and RPGs. I shot as best I could, but found it difficult to hit a target while the driver accelerated, slammed on the breaks, or took a turn.

As chaotic as it sounds, it was all very safe. I was restricted most times to only a 30 degree angle to the sides, and all of the targets were on one side of what was effectively a massive, 150-200 acre shooting range.

On our very last run, we got a “casualty” and as we headed back to FOB Freedom, we did something that impressed our instructors. In Vehicle 2 behind me, one of our team’s Combat Life Savers performed a live IV stick while moving – across railroad tracks.
Finally, we returned back to the FOB, and pulled in back safe behind the berm and razor-wire defenses.

Ultimately, our guys may rarely use these skills. Most likely, we’ll be back-seat passengers with limited duties, while the real experts do the bulk of the work. I damn sure hope I’m never a gunner – certainly I never will by design, but I hope not by circumstance either. And I really hope I’m never the lead gunner. IEDs are the number one cause of American deaths in Iraq, and the lead vehicle is hit in the majority of cases.

But there’s always the possibility, as the case of Jessica Lynch and her transportation unit – hardly a combat unit – clearly shows. Although none of our sailors feels like an expert on convoy operations, we all have a clear idea of the tasks assigned, and if called upon, I think we will acquit ourselves well. We’re all a bunch of sailors going to Iraq to help out the army with our special skills, not fight their fight for them.

But you never know what will happen in a country where every road is a battlefield and every village can either be a haven of pro-American Iraqis, a death trap – or even both at the same time. So we prepare for everything, because in Iraq, anything can happen.

James

P.S. By the way, the Fort McCoy newspaper did a story on our unit. Here is the link:

http://www.mccoy.army.mil/ReadingRoom/Triad/current/Navy_Learns_Army_Ways.htm