CONVOY SECURITY

You may wonder what convoys do about security...this article gives a fair rundown.

The convoy included an M978 fuel tanker, a flat-rack pulling a trailer with another flat-rack of water containers, and three Strykers providing security.

Convoys must have at least three vehicles during the day and four at night, Nickens said.

“If the Strykers were not with us, we’d have to have at least two gun trucks with .50-cals on them,” he said.

Everyone in the convoy, including the drivers, had an M-16 rifle or an M249 machine gun.

If they are attacked, convoys return fire and keep moving, Nickens said.

“We only stop if we have a disabled vehicle. The infantry engage, somebody pulls security, and they extract the personnel. If somebody is injured they call medevac,” he said.

In just over three months riding convoys in Iraq, Nickens has yet to be attacked, but he knows of at least one bomb attack in Mosul that has killed a soldier riding in a convoy.

The convoy headed out of Mosul, taking a rural back road instead of the main highway to Firebase Aggie. Soon, the vehicles were lost in a sea of green fields broken by the occasional small village of mud huts where wandering donkeys and geese gambled with death beneath the wheels of the Strykers.

The road was bumpy and Sgt. Baleenda Ward had to keep one hand on the wheel of her M978 fuel tanker and another on her M-16 balanced on the dashboard.

“They train us to drive and shoot at the same time,” she said.

Ward’s first and only attempt at shooting and driving was while training in Kuwait. She hasn’t been attacked in Iraq yet and doesn’t spend much time worrying about it.