Sgt. Jo was supposed to be awake. That he wasn’t is understandable, though. It was one in the morning, and the section of the road between Baghdad and TQ that we and the rest of the convoy were on had been clear of violence for a couple of weeks. For security reasons, though, the convoy had to leave Baghdad after ten PM, which meant that everyone had been up all day waiting around for roll-out time to come. The convoy wouldn’t even be getting to Junction City for almost two more hours. So Sgt. Jo, who was the TC, or truck commander, of the LMTV we were in had racked out in the passenger seat. And that was why we hit the 55-gallon drum that was sitting in the middle of the road.
Sgt. Josephson was a sergeant-first-class with the mortar platoon, and was about as laid back as a person can be in a war zone. As an SFC, Sgt. Jo was pretty much golden, being one of the most senior NCOs in our battalion. Only the company First Sergeant and battalion Sergeant-Major out-ranked him. And Sgt. Jo wasn’t about being hoo-ah all the time. On our little post, when the day was over it wasn’t odd to see him walking around in flip-flops, shorts, and a civilian t-shirt. On a lot of post’s in Iraq, that wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, but we were a short stretch of road outside a very bad town, on a post about the size of two football fields. Everybody was in DCUs all the time for most of the year, except Sgt. Jo, who looked like he was just about to go out to the backyard and fire up the grill. At the same time, he was one of the best NCOs around, only worried about the things that were worth worrying about, and he was almost worshipped by the mortar platoon he led. I have no idea why he was on this particular run, which was an unimportant resupply jump. Hell, he might’ve just wanted to get to a place where they had a PX, a movie theatre, a swimming pool, and decent chow for a couple of days.
So he was assigned to the LMTV I was driving, which was just fine with me. I could have just as easily been trapped with some knucklehead, with whom we were a bit top-heavy on that run. Worse, I could have gotten Lieutenant Nielsson, my platoon leader, who seemed hell-bent on being all of the worst stories about new officers come to life. But I got Sgt. Jo, who only cared that we got to our post in one piece. Which we did, barring a bit of excitement along the way.
Standard procedure was that we were running about a hundred meters behind the vehicle in front of us. That particular night, for reasons that escape me, the convoy was running with headlights on, instead of using night-vision goggles, and I couldn’t really see the vehicle ahead of us very well. The other units in the convoy had obviously avoided the barrel we were coming up on, and no doubt a radio message was passed back that there was an obstruction ahead. Problem with that being that the portable radio in my vehicle was between Sgt. Jo’s feet, and the mic was in his ear, not mine. And, as we were booking along at about fifty MPH, the barrel hove into view only a few seconds before we made contact.
That is actually plenty of time to swerve and avoid something ahead of you, even on a two lane road and in a 17,000 pound truck that steers like a cow. Had it not been for the oncoming car in the second lane, and the ditch, and tree, on the other side, I would have. My reflexes aren’t the best in the world, but vivid stories of explosive-filled drums just like the one ahead of us, left by those up to no good, had been a prominent part of the training for our time in country, along with pictures of the unfortunate vehicles, and their even more unfortunate inhabitants, after hitting such things. This had driven the need for caution and quick thinking home. But at that moment, facing a choice between hitting the barrel, hitting the car, or driving into a deep ditch at high speed, I did the only thing that made sense. I screamed as loud as I could.
Sgt. Jo woke up, quickly figured out what was going on, and joined me in a good, healthy yell. We both braced for impact.
The barrel didn’t explode, and we didn’t die, because the thing had just fallen off the back of a truck, and hadn’t been placed by ne’er-do-wells intent on destruction and mayhem. It did, however, become lodged under the front of the vehicle. Sgt. Jo and I took about a hundred and fifty meters to get ourselves back together, while the drum, stuck fast, scraped along the tarmac, throwing off sparks and a festive orange glow.
“Okay, Lee, okay, okay,” Said Sgt. Jo in an ‘I-coulda-died-but-didn’t’ voice. “Okay, what we gotta do is pull over and, y’know, get the thing out from underneath. Okay? Let’s do that.”
So I pulled over into a conveniently situated lot. We stopped, I threw the truck into reverse, and the barrel reappeared, slightly crumpled, slightly red, and slightly smoking from the friction. Sgt. Jo and I stared at it for a minute. Then, startlingly loud, the radio mic in Sgt. Jo’s hand burst into life. He listened for a moment, the started to giggle.
“Apparently, there’s a barrel in the road.” Sgt. Jo said. “They say we should avoid it.”
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