Driving Ms. Hummer

Driving Ms. Hummer

The other day we got our official driver’s license to drive tactical vehicles. Today we kicked it up a notch and did a combat convoy. Actually, they aren’t called “convoys” anymore because the powers that be didn’t like the sounds of it. So they call them something else now, and for the life of me, I don’t know what. For some reason my thought process is being interrupted by C.W. Mcall’s song... “…Pig Pen this here’s the Rubber Duck and I’m ‘bout to put the hammer down, 10-4!” Anyway, we drove around and trained on scenarios of what it would be like to drive in Iraq. For what we’ve learned, driving in Iraq is much like driving in New York, but instead of beggers running up to your car at a red light with Windex and paper towels to wash your windows, people in Iraq run up to your Hummer with machine guns and rocket launchers, especially after an IED goes off. This was the reason we put our resident driving expert at the wheel of my track (it’s a hummer, a truck with wheels, so why we call it a track is beyond me). His name is Pete and he’s from Baaaaahhhston. Yes, his accent is that bad, but he’s a good guy and we like having him around to keep us straight, not to mention the fact that he knows how to drive aggressively. We did a lot of training prior to the convoy run with 2 other vehicles filled with members of my team and headed out to “lanes” to see how much of the training we learned. I won’t go into the details of it, but let’s just say that it was a good day of training. The OCs taught us things that were very applicable to our future situation and they helped us learn a thing or two from guys who have been there and know what it’s like. Today was a breath of fresh air compared to the last few weeks and it reassured me that all this training wasn’t a bunch of malarkey. We actually got our uniforms dirty and used our weapons for something other than a hat holder when we go through the line at the chow hall! I’m sure I’ll be sore tonight after trying to pick up a few reserve lieutenant colonels whose weight would suggest that they haven’t skipped too many desserts in their lifetime, but it will be worth it if I can learn a skill or two that will save my hide later on.

Driving a HMMWV is difficult, but as you can see, it can tackle the
toughest
terrain

Here's the mighty gang road marching back from training. This begs the question, why are we walking if we have a bunch of high speed trucks?