CLP

CLP, pronounced "clip", or Combat Logistics Patrol. The generic term for "we can’t fly there so we’re going to drive", because most of the CLPs we do don’t directly provide logistics for combat units. We do have some direct support patrols, where we escort trucks with food, water, and other necessities to units deployed throughout the AO, but most of the patrols my company does are to provide transportation or security for engineering missions. This past mission was my first experience as a patrol leader, responsible for transporting Marines and heavy equipment over 250km to their work site and back.

This mission had two distinct phases. Our first mission was to replace a bridge. The Medium Girder Bridge is a standard piece of equipment used to bridge small gaps (think: canals and streams, not the entire Helmand River). They are designed to be replaced after a certain time span so that microfractures do not grow and cause the bridge to fail while something heavy is driving over it. They fit together like a lego set, so that a team of twenty or so Marines can go out, pull a small bridge, and replace it with a new one in a day, or a night. The only heavy equipment required is a forklift to move the pallets on and off the trucks, and a 7-ton truck used to pull the bridge from the gap or push the new one into the gap. All the disassembly and re-assembly is done with pure muscle, and it’s a treat to watch a trained bridge crew at work.

The heavy lifting (literally) was done by another platoon; my platoon provided security. It was a pretty quiet night; the only problems came up the next day when the locals wanted to use the bridge before we had cleaned the site. One gentleman on a motorbike produced a laminated identification card and explained that he had to be at work at a certain time. Our plan was not to let any local nationals into the bridge site, but we rolled with the circumstances and escorted several local nationals on their bikes across the bridge and through the work site. Other than that, the mission went off without a hitch. We returned to the nearest FOB, about a click away, and crashed for the day before we ate dinner and then crashed again for the night.

For the next leg of the mission we dropped half the Marines and the heavy equipment off at a small patrol base and took the security trucks on a reconnaissance, looking at three more locations in the southern part of the AO where we could potentially put in additional bridges. Again, the other platoon commander was doing the heavy lifting; my job was just to get him where he needed to go. For the first two sites, this was pretty easy. I took us down to a COP (Combat Outpost), and then the grunts* responsible for the AO took the other Lt out to the sites they wanted him to look at.

The third site? Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. The grunts gave us a secure route we could use to reach the site, but we were responsible for getting there. The first part of the plan went well. We reached an outpost where we left two vehicles we wouldn’t need for the recon and continued on. The grunts advised that they didn’t normally take minerollers through the city. Minerollers are contraptions with wheels that we push in front of the vehicles to trigger IEDs before they hit the vehicles. They work. We don’t like rolling without them. We elected to take them against the grunts’ advice.

My first clue should have been the part where I saw a vehicle’s wheel start to dip into a canal as it tried to make a tight turn with the mineroller on it. I did my best not to have a heart attack, and all our vehicles made it past the turn safely. All the vehicles made it through four tight turns without rolling over or falling into a ditch, and then we reached a turn over a bridge where the bridge was too narrow for the mineroller. Yeah.

So we ditched the minerollers and flew down to the site with just the vehicles. It felt like riding a bike without gloves on--I feel naked when I do it; an essential piece of equipment that I rely in to keep me safe is missing. But we got down there, and back, without incident. After that, we got to go through those four tight corners again, and then it was open desert back to a really bumpy road to a slightly less bumpy road, where we could spend the night and then head back the next morning. Except...

We were headed back in open desert when I received a call over the radio from the Marines that owned the AO asking if we had a wrecker, which is used to recover vehicles that have gotten bogged down in deep sand or fallen into canals. We had a wrecker with us, so they asked if we wouldn’t mind heading about 600m out of our way to recover two of their vehicles that had gotten stuck earlier in the day. I thought about it for a minute—there was the possibility that we could get stuck in the same sand, and we were already behind schedule from the tight turns that afternoon. But few units have the recovery assets that we have, so we went out there to help them out.

I was glad we did, too. I found out later that the Marines had been out there since morning, and it was around 1800 by the time we caught up to them. We got one of our vehicles stuck getting out to them, but by the time we had recovered their two vehicles, we had also recovered ours, so our mission was accomplished fairly quickly. We didn’t make it as far as we’d planned that night, but we did make it to a FOB around 2300, so we decided to rest and move out again the next day.

There’s more to come. Thanks for all the e-mails and messages while I was gone. I have received a couple questions about whether I’m planning on doing National Novel Writing Month again this year. Unfortunately, I have decided that I will not be able to. I love writing, but I don’t forsee myself having the energy and free time this year to write at the level that I expect of myself. So I’m sorry...I’ll try again next year, but I’ll definitely be thinking of you all as you do!

*Grunts: Infantry Marines