One of Ours

My company is fuel transportation. We are the Army Reserve 724th Transportation Company. But in Iraq we have civilian contractors Kellogg Brown and Root. They do all the fuel hauling. So we basically become force protection for convoys. Friday, April 9th, about 7 a.m., my platoon started getting ready for a fuel convoy from LSA Anaconda in Balad to Baghdad International Airport (BIOP). We were running security for 21 civilian fuel trucks. We had 26 in the whole serial. I was in the 21st truck with a civilian, riding shotgun (passenger). I had never ridden with a civilian on a convoy before. The American civilians are non-combatants; they do not carry weapons, so I was the only one in the vehicle with a weapon...

[...]

...Then, the next thing I knew, my LT (lieutenant) - who is in the lead truck - comes on the radio and says, "We are taking rounds - everyone get ready!" then not even a minute later, someone else comes on the radio and says, "The LT’s truck just blew up and I don’t know where to go or what to do!" I looked at my driver and said "Oh sh** it’s about to get bad." Next thing I know, the truck about a hundred meters in front of us blows up right in front of us.

It was unlike anything I have ever seen in my life. We were in the middle of Baghdad on a main highway being attacked; there were buildings all around us, and people in the buildings firing weapons at us. I looked off to the left at a frontage road and I saw nine cars in rows of three. There was a line of women in front of all the cars, and some of them had children with them. I thought they were just watching us get attacked, and then men started popping up behind them firing at us - they were using the women as shields!! It took me a second to realize that. They were standing on the hoods of the cars behind the women and children; it shocked the hell out of me. Then we started getting hit with small arms fire, which sounded like golf balls hitting metal. I started firing back at them but I couldn’t get passed [sic] the women; they were all I could hit, and they started falling down. The [male insurgents] turned around and ran back behind the cars to fire.

[...]

Finally, we saw the overpass we needed to reach. At this time, there were only three other trucks remaining with us. One truck was traveling over the overpass, and two were behind us. The one behind us was about a mile or two back, and there was a Hummer behind it. We went up the onramp to the overpass, but as we were turning left to head towards BIOP, my driver started yelling. I leaned forward and looked out his window. I saw a smoke trail heading toward our truck; it was an RPG (rocket propelled grenade).

The next thing I knew, our truck rolled onto its passenger side...

[...]

...Then I realized the blood on his face was from my foot - when I was kicking him I got shot! I found out later that two of my toes had been shattered. Looking down and seeing the injury, I realized how badly it hurt. But there was so much adrenaline pumping through me that I could still stand. I looked back towards the rear of the truck to see if it was on fire. There was about a six foot hole in the tanker trailer, fuel was spewing out everywhere, and a small fire was building inside the trailer and on the tires.

[...]

I turned and looked towards the front of the truck, down the bridge. But before I turned my head all the way toward the front, something hit me in the chest. It hit so hard it felt like Sammy Sosa hitting me with a bat. It knocked me off of my feet, back into the truck. As I laid there, I looked down and saw a round (bullet) buried in the vest on my chest smoking. It smelled awful. I pulled it out of my vest and it burnt the hell out of my hand. I pulled myself back up and got out of the truck. I looked down the bridge in front of my truck and saw two little kids on the bridge, about a hundred to a hundred-fifty meters away. They both had AK-47s; one kid was about ten years old and the other was about seven. The seven-year old was holding his weapon upside down by the magazine, and the ten-year old was firing three rounds at a time at me. His first round hit the driver's side windshield on the truck - right next to my head. I turned around to grab my gun, and when I did, he shot me two more times in the back; the rounds went through me and into the cab of the truck.

It infuriated me as he kept shooting me. I grabbed my weapon, jumped out, and fired two rounds over their heads; I didn’t want to shoot them - they were just l'il kids. After I fired over their heads, they turned around and ran down the bridge. Then I fell down onto my hands and knees; I couldn’t breathe or move. I had been shot four times!...

[...]

...I reached back, grabbed the truck's passenger window, pulling myself back up onto the truck, then I jumped up onto the hood and lied down. I fired left and right into the city. There were people everywhere with weapons firing at us...I heard a weapon fire really close to us, closer then the others, coming from my right side, which was the driver's side of the truck. I looked over and saw the two little kids that were on the bridge earlier, they were firing at me again. The older one, who had shot me earlier, was firing at the trailer and the semi, and the younger kid was firing two to three rounds at a time directly at me. I fired another round over their heads but they didn’t budge, and apparently they were not about to. Then I aimed at the younger kid's chest and fired the round. It went into his throat and out the other side, and he dropped to the ground dead.

The older kid looked down at him, then up at me, and started laying into it; firing twenty to thirty rounds at a time at me. I rolled over, trying not to get hit, then I aimed at his head and shot, but I missed and it went over his head and hit the wall. Luckily it knocked enough debris down on him to drop him. I knew he wasn’t dead, but he was down on the ground and that was good enough for me...I fired into the buildings wherever I saw anyone. At that time, to me everyone was the enemy except my own.

[...]

...We were still about two to three miles from the gate, and we were under heavy fire. There was no time in this entire attack that we were not under small arms fire, RPG’s, or IED’s (improvised explosive devices).

...We sat there for about ten to fifteen minutes.

Then we heard a loud screaming like a banshee. Three of us stood up and looked out the roof of the Hummer. We saw a Bradley [armored personel carrier] coming towards us, it drove into the city firing at anything that moved, and two more tanks were following behind it. They pulled up on both sides of us, and two armored Hummers pulled up in the front and back. They boxed us in for security...

...Then I got in the back of the Bradley. The soldiers shut the door and it took off. There were five people counting myself in the back of the tank. Three of them were dead.

The tank took us to BIOP to the hospital there. I can’t remember much of what happened there; I was in so much pain. I believe I passed out. I spent two days in BIOP Hospital, then I was sent to Balad for a night in that hospital. The following day, I was sent to Landstahl Regional Medical Center in Germany for a week. After that, I returned to the U.S., to Walter Reed military hospital in D.C., where I spent another week. The doctors there thought it might be best for me to go home and spend time with my family, in order to try and get over what happened. So now I am home until May 25th. I will then go back for surgery. If I heal fast enough, I will get sent back over to Iraq. I hope I do get to go back.