My Last Entry

March 16

    We all made it out of Hit, went back to Al Asad and saw Tobias and Sam. Tobias will go home with all of us after the Colonel got involved with his flight arrangements. All the doctors say he needs to go home. Sam White's name was not entered, neither was anyone else on the advanced party list for flights out, so it was nice to see them all again. I was in Al Asad for four days, and then we drove up back to KV where we plan to leave all of our vehicles with 2^nd LAR. We went out to Ah Rutba on the 11^th for two days. Everything was quiet. We were again back in probably the safest place in Iraq.

Photo taken of us being blown up from front of convoy

    Then on the 13^th at about 1500 when we were returning to base my vehicle got hit with an IED just as we began to cross a bridge. We were the 5^th vehicle in the convoy and boom. Nobody saw it coming, not us, not the 4 vehicles in front of us, nobody. The blast forced me into the vehicle, all twisted and turned around. The vehicle was still moving with 6 flat tires. I was buried by my day pack and the Capt.'s helmet, which all fell from the bustle rack into my hole. I turned around to see who was hurt. Boldin's hand was bleeding. Skrabas face swelling up. I stood up and gave the Captain a thumb up, not that we were okay but that we were all alive. The vehicle rolled to a stop about 500m past the blast sight. The Capt. Jumped down and looked at the vehicle, then ran looking for his helmet that I had on the floor. Doc Palten, who was sitting next to me yelled, "Get out, get out!" I crawled out the top and dove onto the road. Doc, taking the same route, was right behind me. He was on fire.

I didn't have a scratch on me. This blast more severe than the first had injured everybody besides me and the driver. That didn't matter we still were alive. The explosion tore through the armored vehicle putting holes the size of basket balls in the hull and dozens of smaller ones every inch of the side exposed to the blast. Doc's pants had caught fire after the laptop in front of him had spit out one of its batteries as shrapnel ripped the computer apart. That Dell saved his life, but not his pants.
We were scheduled to leave country on April 1st but everybody thought it was the cruelest April fools joke ever.  Two weeks until we were home and we almost didn't make it. The Chaos of the Med evac quickly snapped me out of the slow motion fog of being blown up, we were thrown into the "Log", (our LAV ambulance) and a section broke off the main party to escort us back to base at high speed while the rest of the Company went looking for the men who tried to kill me.
When we got to the front gate of KV the lead vehicles stopped to let us drive directly to the Battalion Aid Station. I saw that Barker had been on point and the look on his face of concern was relieved with a thumbs up I gave him as we drove passed.