On Patrol with the M1114
Chief (CW2) Ed Figueroa, from the motor pool, comes up and introduces himself. He invites me into the digs he shares with CW3 Curt Roy, who is in charge of the motor pool. Roy does an amazing job keeping a fleet of 58 Humvees in running order 98 percent of the time. "That's an average of less than one vehicle down per month," he proudly notes.
Wanted by Insurgents: Curt Roy, Jerry Garrett, and Edwin Figueroa.
The downside of that is no goldbricking. Everyone knows his ride will be ready for patrol. The Left-Handed Lemon Law here is that if your ride won't work, you don't go on patrol. Eyebrows are raised when someone does something like slam a shift lever into Reverse at 40 mph, knowing that awaiting a replacement transmission will keep a vehicle (and therefore its crew) out of commission for days.
After a meeting and orientation with the commanding officer, Lt. Col. D. A. Pinnell, it is decided I can go out on patrol after lunch, on the infamous "Prison Run." Today's run will not be as long as it usually is, because there is no need to go all the way to Abu Ghraib, a good 45 miles out of town. Instead, we occupy most of our time escorting VIPs to and from various destinations. We are told these are high-value targets that the coalition forces and the Iraqi government are committed to protecting and keeping alive. Hence our escort services.
Each Humvee in the unit is the M1114 model that comes from AM General and O'Gara, Hess & Eisenhardt fully armored. These 9,800-pound war wagons-12,000 pounds with people and ammo-are powered by 6.5L GM turbodiesels and 4L80E automatic transmissions. They have two-speed four-wheel drive with a locking diff. Though the Humvees run more freely in 2-Hi, most drivers keep them in 4-Hi. The M1114 is now in ample supply-until a soldier confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a December 2004 news conference about the lack of armored Humvees in Iraq, there were only 300 here. Six months later, there are 9,000.
Each vehicle has at least three occupants: A driver, a co-driver who is called the "TC," or tank commander (this is an artillery unit, so this is considered a "tank"), and a gunner. There are also two back seats for passengers. Each occupant carries an M16 rifle, with multiple clips of ammunition. Most guys also like to wear 9mm sidearms. The gunner also mans a machine gun of some caliber or other. The Humvees can mount up to 50-caliber guns, but 7.62mms are most common. Our Humvee also carries an AT4 anti-tank gun; others carry four-pack grenade launchers. All this firepower, plus a full tank of fuel, make this package of rolling thunder a potential fireball.
Lt. Andrew Betson (blond guy, center) briefs his platoon before the convoy's mission.
And that reminds us that we have a 25-gallon fuel tank. The Humvee is rated for about 11 mpg. But instead of a 275-mile range, it really gets no more than about 180 per tankful. Roy says he'd be surprised if they get better than 8 mpg. But the great thing about them, regardless of what their fuel economy is, is that they seldom break down. And in a combat situation, he says, that's the most important thing-indeed, the only thing, that really matters. Though M1114s can be destroyed by so-called "shaped charges," they can drive right through most improvised explosive devices (IEDs), usually with nothing worse than a flat tire.
Humvee tires are huge targets: 37 inches high, 12 inches thick, with 10-inch sidewalls.
The military has developed a tactic, thanks to the Humvee's bulletproof (literally) reliability, that allows us to drive everywhere at top speed on our missions. "We are in and out before the insurgents even know we were there," said Capt. Ted Putnam, whose idea it was to invite me to embed with this unit. Many vehicles run 24 hours a day, and are handed off from one patrol to the next, Pony Express-style.
Today, our runs take less than two hours. No incidents. This, even though the streets are teeming with people shopping, sitting in traffic, standing along the roadsides gawking at us, and just going about their daily business. They are used to us.
There are about 22 million people in Iraq. It seems about 99.99 percent of them want peace and to go about their daily lives. It's that .01 percent who cause all the trouble.
I notice a car body on top of a two-story building. "Why is that up there?" I ask our vehicle's TC. "It was a car bomb," he tells me. "When it blew, it landed up there."
After dinner, I hear the Muslim call to evening prayers, broadcast from loudspeakers on each mosque's tower. It's an eerie sunset. Unsettling. Bomb concussions and machine gun fire echo into the night.
Sometime after midnight, one of those sandstorms of biblical proportions slams into Baghdad. When I go out just before dawn, everything's covered with a fine, talcum-like powder. The sky has a multi-colored glow as various lights reflect off the dust.