Convoy today was the typical "routine" convoy of many miles down "the most dangerous road in Iraq" though I think they say that about 3 or 4 highways at least. Leave the gate, start driving, avoid crazy Iraqi traffic--running down the highway at 60 mph, up ahead what is that--looks like a traffic jam or checkpoint-yep, tell the driver to switch lanes into the oncoming lane-as we're passing the traffic jam, some few Iraqi cars are starting to cross over the median, the gunner in the turret is trying to wave them off, I see one particular blue minivan ignoring the wave off, all I can think as he crosses the median about 20 feet in front of me is "oh shit, if this is a suicide VBIED, this is going to hurt...", gunner in the turret hits the flare (part of the escalation in force is to use a flare) it hits the driver's window dead on, starts spitting out green smoke, three or four iraqi cars and the van hop up back on the median to avoid lethal rounds from the .50 caliber machine gun we are carrying, luckily it's not a VBIED, it's just an impatient Iraqi, we make it past the checkpoint, it starts moving becuase the USMC is actually running a mine sweep down the highway, the antsy USMC lance corporal who is driving for me starts to cross the median way too soon, we have to yell at him to keep driving straight, continue straight towards oncoming traffic, finally get to cross the median, follow the USMC mine sweep for a few miles, they pull around and start going the other way, we continue on at 60 mph, take small arms fire from a bridge, I'm past the bridge and when the other vehicle radios up we get fire (shit, I'm not turning around to try to engage that insurgent-I'm on a damn logpac convoy with a navy corpsman as a key player, for pete's sake, and the major is driving one of the damned vehicles becuase these privates don't have licenses or experience driving hummvees--I guess the BN CDR will just have to chastise me in the next operations brief I am in for not assaulting through the objective to kill an inusrgent), radio up the smalls arms fire to the battalion operations center, while turning against oncoming traffic again, finally end up at our destination on the coaltion force camp to refuel, draw rations, get medical supplies, get commo supplies, get interpreter pay, eat a decent meal.

And that's just one way-we still have to go back!

Start heading back after a few hours on the coalition post--not a single vehicle in sight on the road-this is really weird--ghost town out there--3 or 4 Iraqi cars fly by on the other side of the road--flashing their lights, blinkers on, waving us to turn around-tension level goes up in the hummvee, I'm trying to keep the folks calm, one of the boxes we picked up had some kind of damn fly home in it, so everytime the hummvee hits a bump, about 100 flies start flying around inside the hummveew from out of the box, dust and sand is coming in the turret from outside, it's bright out and really damn hot, and we're barreling at 60 mph trying to feel where that IED is buried-see another checkpoint ahead--yell out to the gunner if that is a coaltion checkpoint-it is-USMC checkpoint-fl;y over to the over side of traffic again--pull up next to the USMC checkpoint-my gunner asks the other gunner what's going on, make sure this isn't a cordon for an IED--we're cleared to go (my NCO's hate when I do this, actually, becuase they don't want to get stuck in someone else's IED cordon) it's not an IED, regular TCP, we keep flying down the wrong lane of traffic until we're past, then back on the right side of the road down to the camp where we live, cross traffic again to enter the military access road. Enter the camp gate-unload the automatic machine guns, tension level drops dramatically, another successful cannonball run down an Iraqi highway.

I do runs like this at night, wearing night vision devices, very interesting. Or I hitch a ride with a combat patrol from around the area-even more interesting!!