From Kuwait to Iraq
We convoyed from Kuwait to Iraq.
It was supposed to be a two-day trip. Dust, diesel, and dread. The usual.
Mr. Quarterback—six-two, two hundred pounds, all-American prom-king-turned-warrior—suddenly came down with something. Sick, he said. Couldn’t ride. I gave him the side-eye, but I got it. Our Humvee looked like it’d been on loan since the Civil War.
No doors. No roof. No armor. Just open sky and bad luck. The .50 was the one redeeming feature.
So they tied me to the turret. Literally. Wrapped a hiking rope around me like some low-budget hostage situation—duct-tape energy, Army edition. They said it was so I wouldn’t get thrown off if we hit a bump. Or got hit at all. With the helmet pressing against your temples, goggles fogging from your breath, and the scarf cutting off half your face, words didn’t stand a chance. “Good” was a thumb up. So I gave a thumb up and a quick head tilt back. The rope creaked every time I turned, like the world’s most dangerous amusement ride.
All they told me was, “If you see something looking at you funny—point and shoot.”
That was the entire briefing.
Two days of sunburn, sandstorms, and trying not to fall asleep tied to a gun mount. The brown scarf issued by the Army to shield my face from the sandstorm was useless. After riding for two days, it felt like the wind and grit tore at my skin, leaving it raw. At some point I thought, I must be high.
Not from anything chemical—just the insanity of it. The comedy of being alive in the middle of something that shouldn’t be funny at all. I was twenty-something, running on caffeine and adrenaline, and I swear I laughed the whole way.
Brando would’ve loved that part. He’d squint, half-smile, and say,
“You’re out here, tied to a cannon, laughing at the end of the world. Hell, kid, that’s show business.”
And maybe it was.
The convoy rolled on. Nobody fell off. Not even me.
Looking back, I laugh at how we managed to communicate through the smallest gestures. Whole missions survived on nothing more than a few silent exchanges of motion and trust. Strange, how something so wordless could say everything. Convoys moved like long, segmented creatures—front, middle, and rear—each section its own little world. You’d catch a glimpse of a silhouette, a flash of a glove, the faint rise of a hand. That was conversation. That was camaraderie.
