Dust

Ok, so I guess its time to stop the freakish ramblings and give up some more “Tales of Hell.”  If you read my little post from the other day, then you’ll realize that not much has been going on that hasn’t been going on here for months.  There just seems to be more of it lately, so I just picked a patrol hoping that something worth reading will pop out.

It all started one dark and gloomy night.  No, really it was a dark, cool, and generally pleasant real early morning.  We were going out on some raids with the local IA unit.  These things more often then not turn out to be wild goose chases, or more aptly, wild dog chases.  We did all our pre-combat checks, mounted our nods, and took off for the IA FOB.  The IA FOB is a part of our FOB so we never left the gate.  They met us outside their gate and we escorted them out of the wire.  Once outside the wire we moved tactically, under white lights with 8 humvees, up the MSR to our destination.  Did I mention that I was sitting in the backseat during this operation?  Well it comes into play a little later on, at this point in our story my biggest task was not passing out into a deep coma-like sleep.

At our assembly area we picked up 8 more humvees!  We now have a massive joint patrol heading off into the desert.  Their patrol would split one way, ours another.  That way we could encircle the whole target area and leave enough IA to conduct the actual raids.  It is at this point, while moving through the desert, that I discovered a major design flaw in up-armored humvees.  All the dirt that is kicked up pours in through the turret and lands…wait for it… in my seat!  Yes, your intrepid author became one big pile of dirt.  I don’t mean just dusty, or brown, but actually a pile of dirt!  I could literally pour the dirt off my helmet, it was inside my body armor and T-shirt, and my ballistic lenses were so coated (even after anti-static treatments) that it was useless to look out of them. So I gave up trying to see where we were going through the dust and dark, sat back, and listened to the truck chatter.

Eventually we came to a stop on the outskirts of a village.  I have to note here that the IA cordon (us included) was pretty tight.  If I looked left or right I could see humvees and armored Discoveries encircling the town.  There wasn’t going to be anything going in or out of here!  Then the IA began their search in earnest.  I still believe there is something awry with the way they choose targets, but they seemed to get the job done.  It wasn’t long until I saw some figures in the dark.  I recognized IA coming towards the perimeter and let my Gunner know they were friendlies.  They had a few people detained and were leading them off to their vehicles.  After a while, things had calmed down and I wondered what we were still doing just sitting there.  I figured the IA were just being their normal slow selves, but it turns out they were accomplishing another “deny the enemy safe haven” mission.  I was hoping for RPGs again since the house was only about 250 meters away, but instead I saw a flash and then flames as the house caught on fire.  It radiated an eery orange glow as we drove off. 

The dust storm settled again after about another 30 minutes as all the coalition leaders and IA counterparts met for what can only be called an After Action Review.  During this meeting, one of the IA got a “tip” about a weapons cache nearby.  So off go the IA and our sister patrol.  Our patrol leader decided to cut and run as we had other obligations.  Turns out there was a mighty big cache there after all.  So we missed out on all the fun!  It really didn’t matter to us.  By that time, some 14 hours later, we were all racked out and trying to get a few hours rest for the repeat performance the following night.

A note about the dust.  Its referred to as “Moon Dust” and its not like dirt or dust in the U.S.  This stuff is so fine it feels like baby powder and you can actually sink into it!  Nothing keeps it out!  It just filters through whatever is in the way and kills your A/C, jams your weapons, plasters into a hard cake on your brakes, and generally makes life that much harder.  I choked down so much over those 3 days that I coughed brown gunk up for two days afterward. I swear I am gonna catch the Iraqi version of Black Lung before I leave here.