A Six Day Tour: Day 12

A final run back home. They guys are out shopping. I volunteer to hang back and watch the weapons as some guys go to the gym or hit the shower. This is an opportunity to get my vehicle in order. After Tooth did his key breaking trick, and I was forced to take a quick look inside the ASV, I knew it needed it. Now I am not the neatest of people. I have been known to annoy more than one person with my ‘cluttered’ habits. SSG Lifeguard keeps a hand broom and dust pan in his truck (that is going just a little far).
The back of this truck was just beyond imagining. First there were PX bags. Those plastic bags that you get at the store, then use as trashcan liners? There were dozens of them, and they were everywhere. Empty bags? An opportunity. But these are not empty. They are filled with every imaginable kind of junk food. Bags of Whoppers, Mike and Ikes, candy bars, sodas, and energy drinks. It looked like a sugar junkies dream.
I will just take this empty ammo can and fill it with all the junk food. Bad Idea, the ammo can, correction ammo crate, designed to hold two hundred rounds of .50 cal, is full. Instant Gatorade, and muscle milk, supplements and bits of MRE’s than have been rat fucked (Ripped open to get a single piece out). It is packed like someone has been stomping on it.
I look around, and find a dumpster. A little muscle work and I push it within throwing range of the ASV. Right now, people who have shared a car, house, or part of my life are going to be laughing. I go into a cleaning frenzy, probably the first one of my life. Gatorade and MRE bits… Into the dumpster. Junk food… if it is opened, also gets tossed. It is like digging through a teenagers bedroom. There are LAYERS! Empty ammo cans are piled on top of full ones. In theory you want the bullets up top… where you can get at them.
Empty cans are piled by the truck, full ones stacked on the floor. If Lifeguard could only see me now. Mighty mouse would go into shock, he complains I have to much stuff on the truck as it is. Once all the loose crap is out I look at the floor. You should remember that the ASV (M1117 Armored Security Vehicle) has the interior space of a VW Bug, the old ones. There are candy rappers and empty soda cans, someone spilled a giant ziplock bag of jellybeans.
Two hours of cleaning later, it looks like soldiers might once operated this vehicle. Four days of getting into and out of the truck through the commanders hatch has taught me a valuable lesson. Kind of a growing experience.
The next step is organizing. I have a nifty new toy to make it easy. The Bungee net, that marvel of modern technology. It holds stuff in place, straps things to ceilings, walls or what ever. I had a couple of these shipped out. All the gear gets bungeed to the back wall, ammo is stacked. It looks like Spiderman had a seizure back there, but all the spaces we need to work in are clear.
About this time the first wave of guys gets back from shopping. It would seem that there is an active Hadji Mart here. Hookah pipes, and glassware in boxes. Big nasty and Dozer have gone a little crazy before remembering that they are in 5-ton trucks. Great for space, but not the smoothest of rides, about a 6.5 on the Richter scale. The MRAPS are a little better, like a 27ft sail boat going through white caps.
So as we roll back home I have the compulsive purchases of an entire squad, bungeed to the floor and walls of my cargo compartment. It was designed to be an ‘escape hatch’.
Rolling back through the gate at home, 13 days on the road (it is after midnight) the HET commander comes up on our radios. “MOTO, thanks for escort, it has been a great trip.” Hawaiian Punch comes up and says the same. A chorus of Hooahs from the gun trunks are returned. Soon we will be back to escorting people who don’t speak our language, or make twice what a Staff Sergeant does. That is tomorrow, after a round of ritual grab ass at the fuel yard, we go unload and conduct face plants in our racks.