Four One's Devilish Ride To An Unexistent Glory; Or How Our Truck Got Stuck and We Missed Chow

This was just another normal day here in Iraq. We had an evening mission that was supposed to be a quick five hours, and there was nothing abnormal about the plan that we were to execute on this day. I ride in the second truck in our three truck convoy. Our trucks are big, they aren't humvees. They are semis trucks with armor, and machine guns.

Our first truck on this day, had our platoon "Maverick" Joey Pena driving it. A little about Joey before I move on. He's has a five o'clock shadow immediately after he shaves. He's addicted to coffee. He plays the guitar, and is not bad at it. He is probably on one of many anabolic steroids, and is very loud. Just kidding, well not about the loud part. He's very confident and might even rub off as cocky to most people.

As we approached a turn that our mission plan had laid out for us, Pena in his renegade truck four one, blew by the right hand turn and into the traffic circle just past the intersection. This is a large traffic circle with two bridges that run overpasses running over the top of it. Our truck was a little behind, and got to the beginning of the traffic circle and right hand turn that had been previously missed by our lead vehicle. We slowed as we thought we saw Ricky Bobbi coming around the traffic circle, careening at us. It was just four one though, doing an Earnhardt impression. The National Police checkpoint there, had stopped traffic for us, and four one pulled up behind a car that was blocking his path. Instead of patiently waiting the 4 seconds required for the car to move, a decision that would effect our mission, and our tummys not getting chow was made.

He popped the curb, and I could see the situation perfectly from where I was sitting. His front tire dug deep, and then popped up quickly. Then his rear tire found the hole the first had dug and did it's best job to get deeper. The vehicle stopped at a tilt, as the drivers side tires sat there with mud to the half way point of them. The passengers side still up on the curb.

It had been such a beautiful day too.

At first it didn't seem like a big deal. We've had vehicles stuck before. We quickly pulled to the back of the truck and hooked up our recovery straps to it and started pulling. No dice. We moved to the front of the vehicle and tried the winch cable. Despite knowing that the winch would not recover this 43,000 lbs vehicle we tried it anyways. Things were made only the worst when we strayed away from, as the south would say, "pullin' someone out 101," we attempted a running start when the gradual method did not work. Suffice to say, winch cable snapped.
We had not only not been successful, we had made the situation worse. We called for a recovery asset to come and pull us out at this point. With our 70,000 lbs vehicle and this recovery vehicle, we can surely pull it out. We attempted to pull it straight forward, straight back, left, right, up down, anyway and every way, and in the end we just ended up making it even worse. The truck now sat deeper in mud on the drivers side, with the passenger side wheels no longer in contact with the ground, and the axle of the vehicle buried in cement and teetering the vehicle. All that saved it from falling over at this point was the chain that was hooked to their vehicle and taught with ours.

This was still early on in the process. I took the pic through my night vision goggles.

Eventually another RG33 like the one I ride in, (70,000 lbs.) hooked up to the stuck MRAP (mine resistant ambush protected) truck and gave it a ride for its life. We missed chow and didn't get back till late. It sucked. Very little was wrong with the truck, and all that was really broken, other than our pride, was the cement of the sidewalk that had been gauged by the axle.