So there I was at camp Taji, Iraq getting the truck ready for the return trip, escorting a bunch of trucks back to our FOB. Missions have become routine, and we’re all getting a little tired of this job (myself included) so I took it upon myself to mix it up and make our lives a little more interesting. I dug through my rucksack to find an article of clothing that I had been saving for this very occasion. An olive green, cotton canvas kilt, it even had cargo pockets. Changing into a kilt in a combat loaded MRAP is quite a challenge, but after a minute I finally had it on. Cameras came out, laughs were had and someone actually had the nerve to ask if I was wearing it on the way back. Who brings a kilt to war and doesn’t wear it? Not this guy. We load up, and move out. I was suddenly really scared after realizing I going into combat with a kilt on, how embarrassing would it be to get wounded or killed in a kilt?
After leaving the gate and getting the mission jitters out of the way I was suddenly on cloud nine. This was probably the most comfortable I’ve been the entire deployment, like seriously guys I would highly, HIGHLY recommend it next time you’re on a 9 hour road trip. www.utilikilts.com check it out. Seriously. So we drove all night till our MRAP is low on fuel, and we needed to “Splash” which means we take our 5 gallon fuel cans lashed to the MRAP and pour them into the tank while we’re pulled on the side of the road, in Indian country. This was usually my favorite part of these missions, for 15 minutes I got to feel like I’m actually an infantryman rather than a truck driver. I got to walk around, outside, pull security with my rifle, it’s really pretty cool. SO the truck rolls to a stop, I opened my door and leaped on onto the road with my kilt on, this scene needed one thing to go from epic, to legendary status and that was 9.5 inches of cold American steel affixed onto my rifle’s muzzle. To complete the ensemble I drew and fixed my bayonet, and menacingly stared at the passing Iraqi drivers, who had absolutely no idea what was going on, and why an American kid was wearing a skirt, and pointing a rifle with a knife on it at them. After the truck was re-fueled, some facebook pictures were taken, and enough Iraqis were oppressed with a Gaelic vengance, we loaded up and drove on.
That alone made it the best mission ever but it actually got better. “how is this possible?” you may ask, I myself wondered the same thing until the dance party unfolded.
On the horizon we saw this huge black cloud of smoke. We had no idea what it’s deal was, but as we got closer we could see flames, like A LOT of flames. It turned out a fuel tanker had wrecked and caught on fire in the middle of the road and now we had to go around it. My gunner could feel the heat from it even though we were pretty far away. On the other side of the wreck traffic was stacked up for quite some time. It was 8 am, we hadn’t slept in a long time, we were bored, and then our favorite pop artist, Ke$ha, came on the iPod. We looked to truck one and saw their gunner, Juan Diaz (see “the cosmic power of rain turtles” post) breaking it down in the turret like he was at Radford University on a Saturday night. There was only one thing we could do, and that’s dance our faces off. We made total fools out of ourselves as we were passing the Iraqi traffic. We danced like there was no tomorrow, for a brief moment we were at a Frat party in Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, or Charlottesville, not covered in Kevlar in a desert. As my gunner was doing "the reject" in the turret, we started to notice something we never saw coming. The people in their cars were dancing too, every car we passed; the passengers started dancing in their cars as they were stuck in traffic. The rest of the convoy said that when they passed the cars, even after we were a half mile ahead they were still dancing, which then made our crews dance, until there was one big mile long dance party on the Iraqi highway. Ke$ha, if you’re somehow reading this, know that for a brief moment, your music stopped a war, and started a party.
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