The Iraq war has changed many things about the army especially equipment. The Improvised explosive device or IED has been the #1 killer of Americans since the war began. To combat this threat the Army has tried fielding numerous modifications to existing vehicles and new vehicles period to protect its expensive night vision goggles, weapons, radios, oh yeah, and soldiers if possible. Soldiers are cheap, but those Infrared laser sights? Outrageously expensive. So one vehicle expressly designed to protect the army’s sensitive items and it’s crew is the MAXX PRO Mine resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) truck. The MAXX-PRO is basically a dump truck chassis with like 30,000 lbs of extra armor strapped onto it. Being 13 feet tall, and 13 feet wide, with a majority of it’s weight being in the top 2/3rds of the vehicle. This idiotic distribution of weight caused for a very unstable vehicle, especially if it’s not on an American quality highway. Iraq tends to lack those, especially after we blew the bejeezus out of this country. The MAXX-PRO has an alarming tendency to rollover, generally killing it’s crew. In fact, there’s been months in Iraq more guys have died in MRAP accidents than actual combat. To try to nullify rollover casualties the army began a series of training on how to react to vehicle rollover, even using an MRAP mock up that uses hydraulics, sort of like a carnival ride (of doom) to physically rollover and force the crew to react.
So there I was balls deep in a mission, driving on COB Adder to the gate to leave for a road trip full of oppressing the locals, energy drink consumption, and iPod jam sessions. The main road was under construction so the convoy was forced to drive on a temporary dirt road beside the pavement. Now there was a rather soft shoulder and deep ditch to my right. The classic MRAP rollover scenario was about to unfold, almost. So we’re driving about 3 mph (the army isn’t big on getting places in a timely manner, hence why we’ve been at war for 9 years.) Suddenly the truck began to list to the right side and I could tell something was afoot. Before I realized that the shoulder of the road was crumbling under the 52,000 pounds of truck sitting on it, we were at at least a 30 degree angle (30 degrees is the threshold for rollover in these trucks.) After tilting to the right we slid into the ditch. We stopped moving at teetered at that angle for a few seconds, I looked at Sgt H, my truck commander who calmly said “take it slow” I heard my gunner Matt who said “Uh…I’m gonna get down from the turret” to which I replied “yeah…you should probably do that” he calmly got down and laid in the floor holding onto whatever he could, including our company 1st Sergeant who sat there in stone cold silence. We were all remarkably calm, then our Convoy Commander started flipping out over the Radio net, yelling “ALL STOP ALL STOP TRUCK 2 YOU’RE ABOUT TO ROLL!!!! (insert string of expletives here)” I inched the wheel to the right, and let the truck slide into the ditch, righting itself to a normal position. We all looked at each other and started laughing hysterically, realizing we should probably all be dead. A few words of thanks were exchanged between us and God, the only thing that probably kept us alive, we backed out of the ditch and drove on.
When we stopped at a FOB for dinner like all soldiers do, stories were exchanged over the table. Apparently we were the calmest people in the whole convoy during the incident. Most of the guys thought we were totally going to buy the farm, Luckily thanks to a higher power, our truck crew and our fearless First Sergeant lived to “fight” another day.
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