my Platoon Sergeant, my First Sergeant. I wanted to go with those people. I chose to serve with them.
I wanted to go to war because the bottom line is, human natureâs a bitch. You never know how youâre going to react even if itâs the same situation youâve been in before. It wasnât going to be the way it had been during Desert Storm. We werenât going to be the backup element, we would be the men who led the charge. I knew that. I wanted to be in the charge. I just didnât realize I was going to be THE guy to lead the invasion.
CHAPTER 6
E IGHT B ALL AND THE L IPSTICK L IZARDS
T here were endless things to do before we headed out to Kuwait. We packed up a million things and started shipping them out months ahead of time.
Whenever we were out on training or maneuvers, everybody would always visit my Bradley. I had a coffeepot, and creamer and sugar for the guys who liked coffee that way. They would come by and weâd spend a lot of time drinking coffee and talking during breaks in the action. As the time to leave approached, I went to Samâs Club and got all the coffee and all of our other supplies, and the plastic containers to put them in. (Just so you know, if you have something with an aroma, like soap, and you store that with your creamer and your sugar, even though theyâre in different containers, all your coffeeâs going to taste like soap. Six thousand miles away from the nearest grocery store and all the coffee we had tasted like Irish Spring. Quite a disappointment.)
Once we arrived in Kuwait we moved to an instant tent city called Udairi. It was in northwestern Kuwait and was only put in place in January 2003. Now itâs this big complex, and they renamed it Camp Buehring after one of the highest-ranking U.S. officers killed in the war, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Buehring. They run the Predator drones out of there now, but back in 2003 it was just a tent city in the middle of the desert. It was us, camels, goats, sheep, and the bedouins. And sand berms.
We didnât ship our Bradleys over there. My Bradley, which I named âCarnivore,â was PREPOSedâprepositioned. Sometime between the end of Desert Storm/Desert Shield and 9/11, it had been put into storage in Kuwait, waiting for the next dustup. Maintenance people would go out to where the vehicles were and start them up occasionally, make sure they were working, but when we got there and were assigned a vehicle we had to do the PMCSâprimary maintenance checks and services. If something wasnât working, or wasnât the way it should be, thatâs when we called a mechanic.
My Bradley, the Carnivore, was officially an M2. M2 Bradleys are designed to carry infantry and have seats in the back. An M2 crew consisted of the driver, the gunner, the vehicle Commander, and a seven-man dismount team. We turned our M2 into an ad hoc M3. The M3s are cavalry/scout vehicles and carry more gear than people. The first thing we did to it was rip the seats out of the back. That enabled us to load all the ammo that would fit into the back.
The Commander and gunner are in the turret of the Bradley, and the Commanderâs hatch is on top of the turret. The driver is below, in the body of the vehicle, and he has his own hatch, in front of and below the turret. There is a large door at the rear of the vehicle for loading, as well as a cargo hatch on the top of the rear deck.
The Bradley Fighting Vehicle has a 25 mm main gun, and there is a coaxially mounted M240B machine gun. Wherever the main gun was pointed, so too went the coax. The M240B fires the 7.62 NATO round, and our belts were loaded with standard FMJ (full metal jacket) ball ammunition in a four-and-one mix (four rounds of ball with one tracer). The ready box for the coax holds 800 rounds.
Our Bradley also had a TOW (tracked optically, wire-guided) missile launcher. The launcher held two missiles, and the range on those is in excess of two
I wanted to go to war because the bottom line is, human natureâs a bitch. You never know how youâre going to react even if itâs the same situation youâve been in before. It wasnât going to be the way it had been during Desert Storm. We werenât going to be the backup element, we would be the men who led the charge. I knew that. I wanted to be in the charge. I just didnât realize I was going to be THE guy to lead the invasion.
CHAPTER 6
E IGHT B ALL AND THE L IPSTICK L IZARDS
T here were endless things to do before we headed out to Kuwait. We packed up a million things and started shipping them out months ahead of time.
Whenever we were out on training or maneuvers, everybody would always visit my Bradley. I had a coffeepot, and creamer and sugar for the guys who liked coffee that way. They would come by and weâd spend a lot of time drinking coffee and talking during breaks in the action. As the time to leave approached, I went to Samâs Club and got all the coffee and all of our other supplies, and the plastic containers to put them in. (Just so you know, if you have something with an aroma, like soap, and you store that with your creamer and your sugar, even though theyâre in different containers, all your coffeeâs going to taste like soap. Six thousand miles away from the nearest grocery store and all the coffee we had tasted like Irish Spring. Quite a disappointment.)
Once we arrived in Kuwait we moved to an instant tent city called Udairi. It was in northwestern Kuwait and was only put in place in January 2003. Now itâs this big complex, and they renamed it Camp Buehring after one of the highest-ranking U.S. officers killed in the war, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Buehring. They run the Predator drones out of there now, but back in 2003 it was just a tent city in the middle of the desert. It was us, camels, goats, sheep, and the bedouins. And sand berms.
We didnât ship our Bradleys over there. My Bradley, which I named âCarnivore,â was PREPOSedâprepositioned. Sometime between the end of Desert Storm/Desert Shield and 9/11, it had been put into storage in Kuwait, waiting for the next dustup. Maintenance people would go out to where the vehicles were and start them up occasionally, make sure they were working, but when we got there and were assigned a vehicle we had to do the PMCSâprimary maintenance checks and services. If something wasnât working, or wasnât the way it should be, thatâs when we called a mechanic.
My Bradley, the Carnivore, was officially an M2. M2 Bradleys are designed to carry infantry and have seats in the back. An M2 crew consisted of the driver, the gunner, the vehicle Commander, and a seven-man dismount team. We turned our M2 into an ad hoc M3. The M3s are cavalry/scout vehicles and carry more gear than people. The first thing we did to it was rip the seats out of the back. That enabled us to load all the ammo that would fit into the back.
The Commander and gunner are in the turret of the Bradley, and the Commanderâs hatch is on top of the turret. The driver is below, in the body of the vehicle, and he has his own hatch, in front of and below the turret. There is a large door at the rear of the vehicle for loading, as well as a cargo hatch on the top of the rear deck.
The Bradley Fighting Vehicle has a 25 mm main gun, and there is a coaxially mounted M240B machine gun. Wherever the main gun was pointed, so too went the coax. The M240B fires the 7.62 NATO round, and our belts were loaded with standard FMJ (full metal jacket) ball ammunition in a four-and-one mix (four rounds of ball with one tracer). The ready box for the coax holds 800 rounds.
Our Bradley also had a TOW (tracked optically, wire-guided) missile launcher. The launcher held two missiles, and the range on those is in excess of two
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