Leisurely Stroll

We made a turn on the road just before the one we were about to walk on. A bright spot light from a tank signaled the lead vehicle to stop. The unit in front of us was "interrogating" a possible IED. Communication between our convoy and theirs told us it would a moment until the EOD team planted a charge on the possible IED and detonated it in place. 30 minutes went by and we got the 5 minute warning. Some of us broke out our cameras and begin to video hoping to catch the explosion. I held mine up to my night vision believing I would film the bright flash. I stopped taping for a minute to conserve memory space on my camera and wouldn't you know it they blew that fucker. It was a pretty lack luster explosion and we weren't able to see a damn thing.

The IED defeated we pressed on and faced down one of the deadliest routes in all of Iraq. We were given the word to dismount. D-Roll and myself left the comfort of the humvee (if you can call it that) and moved up to the rest of the dismounted element. The road was deserted since it was sometime after curfew. The air was cool and crisp with a hint of burning in the air, a combination of many things burning, trash, tires and whatever burns in the wee hours of an Iraqi morning. We posted up to the sides of the road in some meager hope that we would be able to spot an IED before it detonated on our exposed bodies or vehicles. For some strange reason I feel safe outside of the truck than I do in it. Technically we (the Company) have never actually seen an IED before it has detonated, during my last trip here I never saw an IED unless it exploded. Where we get the idea that we are going to see them, I have no fucking clue. I have seen the devastation an IED can create, I've seen it a couple of times. I've felt the heat and the power from 155mm artillery rounds, and various sized EFP's. I try to keep my mind from drifting into the realms of what one might do detonated on a lonely exposed soldier. I focus on the ground around me and the surrounding rooftops. I forgot to mention that this stretch of road is known for its RPG's and precision small arms fire.
I try my best to put in perspective and make sense of what we are doing, but it doesn't. I try to come to some common ground and recall the old addage- "Is it worth the loss?" No matter how I try to trick myself into agreeing with the logic behind this mission I can't. It doesn't matter though, we've been walking for about thirty minutes now. The silence is broken by packs of dogs barking at us, and that spreads down to the full length of our convoy. We only cover a couple of klicks and cross over. We dip into the familiar muhallahs of our sector and cruise back to the COP still weary of the possible EFP threat. We know that no route is safe as we've been hit in residential neighborhoods before. Its always the same, we get back into the vehicle and bitch about the mission we just performed but as we get closer to the COP the chatter becomes silent as our senses become accute to every abnormality in the road around and area around us, until we are safely behind the closed gate of the COP.
Another day down, another day like so many other days when we've done the same or similar thing in a few days we will forget about which time it was that we walked down some stretch of road devining for bombs. It will all become a tangled memory of our trip to Iraq. If everyday is groundhogs day then we only one more day to go. One day at a time hoping and praying for nothing to happen between now and the one day that won't be groundhogs day that will find us on a bird in Kuwait.
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!