Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox

Chapter 32: Heaven's Driver

IEDs were becoming a more common occurrence as the months wore on. Each day a patrol went out, they either found an IED or one blew up. Fortunately, most of the IEDs that did blow never really did much harm. But when they did find their mark, it never ended well.

IEDs came in all shapes and sizes. Most of the ones we encountered were typically 155 mm artillery shells that were wired up to some sort of device, whether it was a remote detonator or a wired one. For the most part, the IEDs were buried in the ground or hidden within objects, like the one I encountered during the first half of the deployment. However, there were times that the IED was vehicle-borne, like the one that killed Wilfong and Vincent. The vehicle-borne IEDs were less frequent, but they were just as nerve-racking.

A few days after our battle on the east side of Fallujah, Blue Platoon was sent out on another patrol to sweep the main roads for IEDs. About halfway through their patrol, they began patrolling the alternate service routes (ASRs) that were parallel to the road. Soon thereafter, they noticed a suspicious-looking vehicle parked underneath an overpass. The vehicle appeared to be abandoned, and there was no one in the vicinity. When Second Lieutenant Rowell was informed of the situation, he sent over his scout team to check it out. Sergeant Leuba, the scout leader for the Blue Platoon, cautiously led his team in the direction of the vehicle. About halfway there, they came across a fairly deep creek that they had to cross in order to reach the vehicle. Rowell, deciding that the scouts may be too exposed crossing the creek, decided to call them back so they could regroup and figure out a different way to get to the car. As soon as they turned around and headed back toward Rowell’s position, the car exploded, with debris flying everywhere. Rowell and his scouts thanked their lucky stars that they had made that decision. Many fine Marines would have been killed that day if they had continued on. Unfortunately, Blue Platoon wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

On July 1, Blue Platoon headed out on another counter-IED sweep. My platoon was acting as the REACT force. We always ended up being the REACT force for Blue Platoon. As part of the REACT force, we had to ensure that our gear and vehicles were ready to go in a moments notice. Once everything was prepped, we sat around in the hooches and either cleaned our weapons or played cards to kill time.

With Sergeant Callendar and Sergeant Hendrickson both wounded and no longer acting as vehicle commanders, Blue Platoon had a few replacements take over on their vehicles. On this particular day, Sergeant Jake Rhinehart and Sergeant Simms took over as vehicle commander and gunner, respectively, for Blue 3. As the platoon headed out for patrol, I gave a quick nod to a couple of the guys and quietly wished for their safety. After having encountered so many IEDs in the last few months, it became a new habit to quietly hope for everyone’s safe return back from patrol. It wasn’t much, just a few hushed words to myself, but it helped relax my nerves. I headed back to the hooch wondering what I was going to do to kill time.

Blue Platoon was dying to get their patrol done that day. They were scheduled for a little R&R over at Camp Fallujah that afternoon, and everyone was excited to be able to take a dip in the pool they had on the base. The last thing they wanted was for anything to happen that would delay their plans.

Their patrol route was situated about six miles west of Abu Ghraib. They had patrolled up and down the main road for quite a while, so they decided to set up in a screen line position to observe the route and its surroundings, looking for any suspicious activity that may be occurring. After an hour of seeing nothing but sand, they resumed their patrol of the main road.

Right around 11:30 a.m., they began to head back toward Camp Fallujah to wrap up their patrol for the day and get some much-needed R&R. Rowell had the vehicles cross over the intersection and begin heading back. As the platoon began to turn around, Sergeant Rhinehart called over to company headquarters to inform them of their position. In the meantime, Sergeant Simms was bullshitting with Lance Corporal Timothy Creager, the driver, over the internal speaker system about being back home. Creager, a tall, lanky country boy from Tennessee, was telling Simms how he was going to take his city butt out for some bull riding. And that was when it hit.