Grandpa’s War – Part 12 – Breakdowns and other Tragedies

Some of our equipment had a problem. It had been designed for and was suited for European operations.

The desert was a whole another problem. In Europe there isn’t a whole lot of dust.

The Middle East had a corner on the market. Everything attracted it and that especially true of oils. Some of what we did routinely almost bit us in the butt here. In the military, we’re taught do daily PMCS (Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services) on our vehicles. What this means is simple. You check the oil, fluid levels, brake fluid and so on.

This practice proved to have some negative impacts. One of the things you do as part of a PMCS is to check the brake fluid. You take the cap off and visually verify it. We’d wipe caps off to try to avoid getting dust in, but in some cases it didn’t help. Dust still got in and the only way to fix it was to bleed the brakes.

Another of our tasks was beating dust out of the air filters was a daily task. We’d put cloth (towels, t-shirts, even pantyhose) around them to help, but that met with mixed results.

The other thing we ran into was totally unexpected.

First the definition of a Desert. Webster defines it as: having a very warm climate and receiving less than 10 inches of rainfall annually.

This area certainly qualified.

What the definition didn’t say is they got most of their rain all at once.

The San Luis Valley is called a desert, and so I’m used to the idea of flash floods. This is where it rains enough that some dried-out arroyo comes back to life. For at least a little while, it becomes a river again.

What I wasn’t expecting was flash lakes. There were whole expanses of mirror lakes in the deserts. The ground was bakes so hard that these would persist for days. Companies had to move because they’d set up in low spots that became lakes.

In our case, the ground near the tents became soft. We had to pound the tent stakes down deeper or they would have come up out of the ground. Some of them we had to double up on.

Another unexpected issue was generated by a really good idea. Shortly after we arrived, the engineers began making roads across the desert.

These were really handy for finding our way around. but when it rained, the roads became rivers full of water. The traffic going through it stirred up the sand and the sand was kept it in suspension. This got up into the brakes and ate the brake pads alive.

The majority of the Humvee fleet was sidelined because of brake pads. It took setting up a special shipment to get new ones in. When we got them, our mechanics had their hands full replacing them.

We all pitched in and helped.

In most case all that meant was just jacking up the Humvee and yanking the tire off.

One day we went out to a site where they were painting the vehicles. Our HUMVEEs were sporting the green paint job that would have been perfect for Europe. But it stood out a little in the desert. They were to spray-painted sand color. They were also painted with an upside down “V” that would mark us as coalition vehicles. We had Military Police stencils and that was painted on as well.

The painting process was pretty slick. Using rolls of paper and masking tape, we covered all the glass and markers. That a guy came along and sprayed paint all over it. Reminded me a little of the operation a guy had in Antonio. Since no primer was used, it eventually began to wear off. But it was quick and within an hour, the vehicles all looked good.

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All photographs Copyright – Richard L. Muniz