Newer story
In response to the requests for some more recent stories, here’s one from my first deployment back in 2005. At the time I was with A Btry 1/11, and we were tasked as a provisional line company in far western Iraq. Around late Jan-early Feb (rainy season) my squad was on the QRF rotation, and got the call to pull the resident MTT team out of the mud. They were stuck pretty good, but our mechanic was better, and we had them out in no time. On our way back we got the call to turn around, they were stuck again. This repeated itself 6 times. It got so we would just tail them in our 7-ton and place bets on how soon the officers would get stuck again. It was great fun, especially since both myself and Cpl Carter “Super Mech” were country boys from Oregon. Our luck ran out though, because when the brass finally decided to give up trying to get to Saudi, they thought it would be a good idea to test out their fording kit. With a MAK-armored low-back through a lake (this is no-shit). Their excuse: “well Cpl there’s a road going into it so we’ll be fine.” Roger that sir. So when they drove off the road in the middle of the lake and had to swim out…we had to go get ’em. Problem was that meant WE had to drive into the lake, and sure enough we found a hole. It took all the chain in the FOB and a few hours to get that sucker out. My deserts are still stained from that water. Oorah.
