The thing about having a bomb go off next to your vehicle is that it makes it hard to ignore that someone’s trying really hard to kill you. Allow me to explain. I was in the Army, in Iraq, and my platoon had to run security for convoys that would run from our post to a resupply post about fifteen miles away. Now, I know fifteen miles doesn’t sound like a long way, but you have to consider that this particular road was either the second or third most dangerous road in the country, depending on what had blown up in Baghdad that day. Anyway, we’re tooling along one day, headed for the resupply post, when an IED, which means Improvised Explosive Device, goes off, honest to god, about seven feet from the truck. I’m driving a Humm-V, which has quite a bit of armor on it, thank god. If you ever have to run through an explosion, try to be in one of these babies. They are not fucking around when they throw this armor on there, really.
Anyway, bomb goes off, and I can’t see anything, as there’s dust everywhere, inside and outside. As I recall, my exact thought at that moment was a very cogent, “AHHHHHHHHH! Holy Shit! AHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m gonna DIE!” Not very constructive, perhaps, but I think it was a wholly reasonable response. Since I can’t see where I’m going, the Humm-V kinda drifts itself into the median of the road, and when I can see again, I stop the truck. I shouldn’t have, we should have gotten the fuck out of there, since the truck was fine to run, but again: just been blown up, not really thinking straight. The truck comes to a stop, and I’m just together enough to remember our lieutenant saying that if you stop, you have to get out and set up security. So I grab my M-4, my weapon, and jump out of the truck. And it is HOT. It’s February, but in Iraq, that just means at midday it only gets up to 105 degrees, instead of 120, and I’m wearing my helmet and my body armor, so I’m basically wearing a portable kiln. I jump out, and as soon as I get clear of the truck, the truck starts to roll away.
Y’see, in my haste to do exactly the wrong thing, I had forgotten to both put on the parking brake, and to take the truck out of gear. So I get out, ready to G.I. Joe it up, and the truck starts rolling. I hear Sgt. Simmons, who was in the passenger seat, yell, and “Get the god damn truck!”
So now, mere moments after being bombed, for Christ sake, wearing body armor and a helmet, and carrying my M-4, I am running down a street in Iraq, in 105 degree heat, trying to catch a runaway Humm-V. Apparently, it had decided, ‘Fuck this shit, I’m going to Syria.’ And I recall, very clearly, thinking, “This is not what I pictured happening, when I joined the Army.” I doubt it's what the army pictured, either. In my defense, I did manage to catch up and jump back in pretty quickly. We then left, with a quickness.
My truck had a medium machine gun on the roof, and when I talked to the gunner later, he said that when the truck stopped, and then just started rolling slowly, he thought, “Well, Lee’s dead.” Then he saw me running alongside the slow moving truck, and started to laugh his ass off.
I almost shit myself, when the bomb first went off. I have no problem admitting that, whatsoever. Luckily, I was apparently scared shitless. I think that if you have a bomb go off near you, and you aren’t scared, you got problems. You do not fully understand what has just occurred. I had a friend try to say that he wouldn’t have been freaked out, had he been in my shoes. And I asked him what, in his vast record store clerk experience, would have caused him to be so nonchalant. He said, “I just don’t get stressed, a'right?” And I was forced to respond, “You're full of crap. I know you. If a bomb went of right now, not only would you shit yourself, and not only would you shit a brick, you would, in fact, shoot out a fully formed, fifty pound, solid brass cinderblock, and you would eject it at a velocity that would allow it to kill a fully grown, charging wildebeest. That, you would do. No doubt at all.”
And he said, “Whatever.”
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