Grandpa’s War – Part 19 – The Crossing

Something I would hear years alter had a lot of truth to it. The teacher was an old hand in Emergency Management and he said “All things come to an end.”

What he meant is this. All fires will go out. Either we’ll put them out or they’ll go out when there’s nothing left to burn.” Same thing with bleeding. “Either we stop the bleeding, it stops on its own, or it stops when the person dies.”

The moral of the lecture was simple. Every crisis comes to an end.

In our case, we were simply moving from one crisis to another.

For a couple of days now, we’d been getting ready to move.

Our platoon’s immediate mission was to help the division cross a major highway. We;d driven out to and looked at the stretch of highway we’d control. Our job was to stop traffic. Then we’d allow vehicles to cross from the Tactical Assembly Area to the Forward Assembly Area. This would position us for the invasion of Iraq.

We broke camp and loaded up everything we owned. That included the large tents we’d been staying in. We were already cramped for space in the trailers and they didn’t help any.

Taking down the tents was a huge effort. None of us had ever dealt with anything like that. The only place I’d seen one taken down was on an episode of MASH. Somehow we got them down and loaded up. Also loaded up were the basins and shaving stations, and in some cases, even the johns.

The company was breaking up to go handle the many different jobs assigned to us. The captain came out and gave us a little pep talk before we left.

Captain Kroupa was a great guy. He was one of the best Commanders I’d ever had.

We drove from the camp to a place some miles away.

This was the crossing on a single two-lane highway that we’d have to control. This was the area 1st Armored Division had to cross in order to arrive at the Saudi-Iraqi border.

Once the Division was across the road, we’d turn north and follow them. Our mission would become locating stragglers, breakdowns, or anyone who had just gotten lost along the way.

It took several hours to get Division across the road. Once we finished out sweep, we’d finally hook up with the Battle Central. The mission 6th Platoon historically had was the defense of the Battle Central.

As I mentioned, in exercises in Germany, we set up an access control tent. We did some light patrolling and static posts.

That had changed. Now be to protect part of the flank of the Battle Central. There would be no access control tent.

But first, we had to get there.

With Division across the road, we now followed them north.

The area reminded me of many of the areas in my native San Luis Valley. This area was a wide dry plain dotted with sagebrush. There were small rocks here, about the size of a fist. There even a few small dunes.

The only breakdown we found was a single truck, and their outfit knew they were there. We just made sure the two soldiers were okay, had food and water, and moved on.

One of the most heartbreaking pieces of the war happened while we were conducting this sweep up patrol.

We came across an area where some outfit had emptied out their refrigerators. Piles of food had been dumped. Mo-Gas had been poured on the pile and a match tossed on it.

I remember rolls of hamburger, burnt and rotting in the sun. Bread was now crawling with ants. There were eggs in the pile, their shells burnt and blackened. I looked at the tried to remember the last time I’d eaten an egg.

And it smelled awesome. Like the breakfast buffet at Golden Corral.

We dug through the pile of food. From it, we salvaged a couple of bags of potatoes that the fire and gasoline didn’t reach. We also found some jugs of cooking oil.

We stopped a few hours later for the night.

We spent some time peeling and cutting up the potatoes. Someone broke out a large pot from the platoon cooking gear and a stove was setup.

We made French fries. We cooked them up and that was our dinner. We had very little salt, no ketchup, and the fries tasted like a slice of heaven.

It was a perfect day to be a soldier in the U.S. Army

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All photographs Copyright – Richard L. Muniz