Wild Turkey's you Get One of These Today?

Here is a picture of me setting up my Tracking system in my vehicle prior to a mission. This was last winter when we used to make 15+ hour fuel runs from my base in TQ (Al Taquddum) headed south. For those who think Iraq is allways hot and you won't spend a winter there, you are highly mistaken. It would get as low as 15-17 degrees. Heck one mission we saw flurries coming down. I thought i was seeing things, but nope it snowed in Iraq. HELL DONE FROZE OVER! hehe.. In the early phases of our mission we would could run missions at different times of the day. By this stage we were running strickly at nite. We would run into less traffic and there fore prevent the more than often warning shots on vehicles on our routes.

Here i am all bundled up. Like my goggles? On this particluar mission ( *TAMPA MARATHON , **RANGER CURSE and ***BAHGDAD 500 ) i was the convoys acting Assistant convoy commander. It was a first platoon mission, but the majority of the personell were from my platoon 2nd Platoon. The actual ACC wasn't in a command type vehicle; since i had mine i took on the responsibility plus to make sure my troops were taken care of. Also this was my second mission after coming back off leave. We took a very long route up thru central Iraq bringing us south of Bahgdad, and then heading out west to Falluja and then our base TQ. Welp we didnt have permission to travel in 1IDs area and we would've been detained. This was also a week or two after we pounded the heck out of Falluja taking it back. This made the trip longer as we had to stop at check points every 1-2 miles. Way more than usual. It also for the first time allowed me to see the northeast outskirts of Falluja during the day. We traveled that way a few times before but it was allways at nite and you couldnt see to much off the highway. That was very close IMO. Prior to my unit going over to Iraq civilian contractors ran fuel on this route suffering heavy casualties which led them to stop doing this mission. So my unit was activated to run the fuel in this area. Luckily tho, before heading up to this area my platoon was down in An Najaf. We found another route way safer, then this to travel and my LT got approval to run the other route than having to go this way. Whew! thanks LT. Even tho marines controlled this area and supposedly had it locked down, units would take RPG or small arms fire, plus the ever so dangerous threat of IEDs ( improvised explosive devices ) that occured daily on these routes.

* TAMPA MARATHON was 15+ hour run one way trip back to our base. Along with that was the **RANGER CURSE cause our convoy commander was this ex Ranger and when ever we ran with his gun crew something out of the ordinary would happen and a qucik trip would last a lifetime. ARRRGH! Lastly was the ***BAHGDAD 500 were we took the wrong turn coming up from the south and landed in southern part of Bahgdad doing laps on a highway looking for the on ramp to go back on our route. We had traffic backed up for miles as it was in thier early morn rush hour. You know what.... i wish it ended there. I have to get picks, but one of my high speed troops upon arriving to our bag farm, dropped his tanker. DAYUM!!! 2 more hours of work for me and endless MTS messages from my LT of what the fuck is going on. thanks Mr Bean, aka Tinker Bell.. lmao.. GOOD TIMES!!!