A VERY CLOSE CALL

On Saturday a convoy out of CPT Patti's company was attacked by a roadside bomb.

No one was hurt...no one was killed. Praise God.

I've replaced the names of those involved with keyboard symbols, otherwise, these are the words CPT Patti used to retell the story to me in an email on Sunday.

The convoy was 3 vehicles and 8 personnel. SGT @ was the Convoy Commander. He was in the lead vehicle, which was the Armored HMMWV.

The IED exploded on the driver's side about 10 meters in front of the lead vehicle just after they had passed under a bridge. They executed instinctive reactions by driving faster to get out of the kill zone and swerving to avoid the debris from the blast.

The gunner in the lead vehicle was SPC # and he ducked down into the HMMWV when the blast happened. Luckily, he had spun his gun around to check the bridge as the they passed under it so his back was to the blast. Otherwise, he would have been hit by debris in the face.

The second vehicle was the truck and trailer with the "burrito" or SMFT (a 3000 gallon "bag" of water mounted on a semi-trailer) on the trailer. The driver was SGT $ and he had debris hit his windows and he swerved to the left and drove through the black cloud.

The third vehicle (HMMWV) was the rear security and SPC % was driving it. He was yelling "people on the bridge, people on the bridge." SPC ^ (the vehicle commander) and SPC & (the gunner) had seen the people too.

As they passed under the bridge, they could see the people still standing on the bridge while everyone else had run away. Therefore, they opened up fire on them since they supposed (correctly in my mind and others here) that they were the bad guys that set off the IED in the first place.

They all drove away fast then regrouped further down the road. They attempted to call in the attack on FM radio but they were too far away. In my Command Post, I heard them call but it was full of static and barely understandable. So, all I knew was I heard IED and are you okay, yes or no. I knew SGT @
was talking to the others in the convoy. I couldn't raise them on the radio as much as I tried.

Then I decided to send out a convoy to find them. While we were gathering up the people and vehicles (HMMWV and Wrecker), it was about 10 minutes later and SGT @ called me on the DNVT (land) phone line. He was at Bandit Island safe and sound and gave me the whole report over the phone.

I called off the convoy that was ready to go out and find them.

Later that night, the Battalion Commander and Battalion CSM came to our Saturday night formation. LTC Anderson recognized SGT @ for his role as the Convoy Commander and gave him a battalion coin. The BC said a lot of good things about my soldiers and the company. It was great to have him at the formation and very good to have him recognize SGT @.

That is the closest our folks have come to this point. Imagine, please, being one of those soldiers. Or being CPT Patti with the radio not working well and knowing only that her folks have come under attack.

Please...please, keep praying.