3

Mph. Yes, three miles per hour. That was our average rate of march last night, for 75km, as we returned home from our last mission. Making for a grand total of 15 hours on the road. And here's the real kicker: we left at one in the afternoon. (Side note: Yes, this was our last mission. For real this time. As in, by the time we get the pre-requisite rest time between missions, the transfer of authority will have already happened, and someone else will be in charge of our missions.)

Our first vehicle to break was one of the trailers carrying a TRAM (Tractor, Rubber-tired, Articulated-steering, Multipurpose). Now, TRAMs are a handy thing to have when you're trying to build a new patrol base, as they're quite good at scooping up dirt and dumping it into HESCO. Which is what we spent most of our time doing on this mission. So there were no regrets that we'd had the equipment, resulting in a broken trailer that cost us two hours while the drivers unloaded the TRAM and removed the broken axle. Excuse me, axles. I'm still not quite clear on the details of how you can break 1.5 axles, but that's what happened. Did I mention we were still within sight of the base we'd just left? Yeah, not good.

The next vehicle broke about 5 clicks out; I think the one after that was 15. Considering that there were 140 clicks total between the base we left and the one we were trying to get to that night...well, I already gave it away. We ended up stopping at a different base, halfway home.

We brought six towbars with us on the patrol when we left. Around midnight was when our sixth vehicle broke, and we had no more towbars left to tow vehicles with. But even as we were still hooking up that sixth vehicle the call came over the radio--another vic was having problems with its brakes. We called the mechanic instead, and after another hour wait, we were Oscar Mike again. (This is the military, we can't just say "on the move". No, we have to abbreviate it to OM. Then, because it might get garbled on the radio, we have to say it phonetically. So we say we're "Oscar Mike". When you think we're talking in some strange and useful shorthand, really we're just thinking of ways to make simple things more complicated.)

The seventh vehicle to break wasn't going to be so easy a fix. It wouldn't start--the alternator was suspect--but it wasn't something we were going to be able to fix on the fly. So we hooked for tow with chains. The mineroller on the dead MRAP went to a third MRAP. Turns out it had been on the third MRAP originally, but the original MRAP was having problems with the all-wheel drive, and the extra weight of the mineroller might have caused it to get stuck. So we had moved it. Now we were moving it back. The dead MRAP was hooked to mine; the lead driver has never towed with chains before. It took them a while to get the hydraulics for the towed vehicle hooked up so the brakes would work. I thought the stairs hanging off the back of my MRAP were toast.

But did I mention that my Marines are awesome? Sure, there were a few jerks and false starts. Sure, we got bogged down in the sand--for a second. But we made it through, and the stairs were in tact.

We pulled in the lot at 0400. We'd had someone on alert to come get us in case too much more should break, and we weren't able to make it in ourselves. We were--just barely. The Marines set up cots and passed out. It was that time of the night where for the past week I've been waking up and unable to go back to sleep because of the cold. I volunteered to watch the BFT, our only communications link to our Battalion, and to half-hourly communications checks. Turns out we ran the heater, so I was warm and able to get in half-hour cat-naps between checks until I was relieved.

Last mission. Last set of HESCO. Last bucket of fill. We're working on the last manifest right now. (Manifest: document detailing all personnel and vehicles on a trip. The form we have to fill out has redundancy on top of redundancy. No, I am not kidding. I wish I were.) Soon I'll be saying "last day in-country", and then, "first day back in the states".

Tomorrow we cover those last 65 clicks back to base. We're starting out with vehicles already in tow; we'll see how many we're towing when we finally roll through the ECP. (Entry Control Point, or gate. See what I said about the code is really just a complicated way to name a simple concept?)

There's one thing I do know, though. Whatever needs to be done, my Marines will do it. And we'll roll through under our own power.