Truckin' along an Iraqi highway
Articles From War
By LTC Melanie Meier
As all the good trucking songs like "keep 'em moving on down the line" buzzed in my head, I traveled just south of Baghdad from Convoy Support Center Scania in Central Iraq, where I visited the soldiers operating the "biggest little city in Iraq." Palm trees surrounded this big truck stop created for the convoys that constantly move north and south through Iraq.
For the approximately 600,000 vehicles traversing here yearly, CSC Scania provides fuel, maintenance, lodging and food service to thousands of US military personnel and contractors who move all the "stuff" through the country. Although I left Scania in a wheeled vehicle, I had arrived by Blackhawk helicopter in strong winds that pinned me to my seat as we flew north from COB Adder over the changing landscape toward Scania. From the air, I noticed for the first time what I thought were fields lining the Euphrates River. Small canals branched out from the river to carry water to each one. Small stucco compounds dotted the landscape along the way.
As we headed away from the river and turned north toward the desert, I noticed how the landscape was dressed in white with large wind-blown sand dunes that reminded me of scenes from movies like Lawrence of Arabia or The Mummy. No life could be seen for miles.
As we neared CSC Scania, a large, empty concrete canal came into view, but it seemed to go nowhere. At the time I wondered if this could be the "Mother of all Battles River" that Sadaam constructed to drain the marshes of the south. After referring to my map, I discovered it was probably the remains of the "Loyalty to the Leader River" which runs farther north. Don't Iraqi man-made rivers have great names?
Once Scania came into view, the concrete canals actually contained water and I was so excited to see green vegetation. Inside the compound, the tops of date palm trees peaked above the concrete t-walls that surrounded us. I climbed several of the guard towers to look out and actually saw a few homes and watched Iraqi people walking around. Children waved and practiced their English by yelling "Hello, how are you?"
People in passing vehicles on the highway, or what we call the Main Supply Route (MSR), would honk and wave. Cows grazed and dogs laid in the shade. This was very different from COB Adder, my home base in southern Iraq, where I look at a flat empty landscape through barbed wire.
As happens more often than not, my flight back to COB Adder was canceled. But since CSC Scania is a hub of convoys moving north and south, I headed to the movement control center to ask if anyone was headed my way. I ended up hitching a ride with a Convoy Security Escort Team who was escorting a line of fuel trucks south.
The soldiers from the Oregon National Guard cheerfully directed me to strap myself into a spare seat on their Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. As they offered me a cold Gatorade for the road, they thought I would like to know that I was on the scout vehicle.
Seeing out of a MRAP when you are in the back is never easy. Because I was wearing full battle rattle and strapped down, I craned my neck to get a glimpse of Iraq. For the next four hours, I saw several herds of livestock. I saw sheep, goats, camels and cattle. Iraqi Police check points were scattered along the way, as was an occasional home.
I also noticed people walking near the road, mostly men and boys, and once in a while, a woman in all-black flowing garments covering her from head to toe caught my attention. The men and boys dressed in western-style clothing, except for the lone men who were tending flocks of sheep or herding their camels. As they walked through the desert, parallel to the highway, I wondered where they were headed dressed in their long white shirts and head coverings.
At one point a large back up of vehicles blocked the highway, but the MRAP simply went around most of the hold up. The highway contained no painted lines so traffic moved in single lanes going in each direction. But when vehicle drivers became impatient, single lanes became four lanes going in one direction with one lane trying to squeeze by in the other direction. This phenomenon worried me a bit as the sun went down and I could see countless headlights seemingly headed straight at us.
In several areas, traffic actually came to a standstill and at this point cars emptied and men stood around on the road. I was reminded of traveling on the MSR in Korea, except in Korea stand-still traffic is so common that vendors walk up and down between the vehicles selling food and drink. Of course, our MRAP never stood still for long because we simply cleared the way for the convoy.
Once the Security Escort saw the convoy safely to its destination, I was taken back to my home away from home at COB Adder. We were all hungry and the gunner, who stood in the gunners' hatch for the entire ride, complained of sore feet. Still, everyone was in good spirits because another successful mission was completed.
