Army truckers are Iraq’s road warriors

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq — Spc. Chanss Carpenter was driving his U.S. Army supply truck when a roadside bomb rocked the cab and fired a chunk of shrapnel through the windshield. Flying metal deflected off his M-16 rifle lying across the dashboard, narrowly missing him.

Sunday’s blast was the latest of a dozen similar attacks Carpenter has endured in Iraq, where roadside bombs have become the weapon of choice for the anti-American insurgency. Convoys seem to be the preferred target.

"We believe we’re still in combat," said Carpenter, 24, a lanky suntanned man from Jackson, Mich., one of about 600 soldiers in the Army’s 181st Transportation Battalion.

He and other truckers at this sprawling logistical base north of Baghdad are the lifeline for 130,000 U.S. troops flung across this California-sized country. Despite the attacks, they operate supply lines stretching over 800 miles, hauling food for 475,000 meals per day, as well as a million gallons each of fuel and water.

"It’s something we’re proud of. We’re the Road Warriors. We’re based on Mad Max," said the 181st’s Maj. Robert Curran, 38, of Manchester, Mass. "And we’re starting to look the part."

The truckers have developed defensive driving techniques, such as keeping to the center lane and blocking civilian cars from entering the convoy. They watch for suspicious bomb-disguising debris at the roadside.

They’re even retrofitting trucks with steel plates and mounted guns that look like something out of "Mad Max," the 1979 cult movie about warring gangs who drive customized armored cars.

"We’ve said since summer that it’s a trucker’s war and the 181st is on the front lines," Curran said.

For truckers, the war began in May, just after President Bush declared major combat over. That month, convoys emerged as the main target of guerrilla cells harrying U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Attacks on convoys have risen every month since then, except December, Curran said.

Sixty-nine convoys sent by the 181st across Iraq have been ambushed or hit by hidden bombs.

"The whole cab pretty much shakes and you go deaf for a while," Carpenter said while his truck was being fixed at Camp Anaconda, headquarters for the Army’s 3rd Corps Support Command.

No match for foreign firepower, guerrillas appear to prefer attacking convoys — which normally have orders to continue on their missions — than combat patrol units, which will stop and fight.

Every day the 181st, one of several Army transportation battalions, sends as many as 200 trucks — escorted by 50 gun trucks — onto Iraqi roads, grouped into convoys of two dozen or more.

Fourteen 181st soldiers have been wounded while hauling freight across Iraq. None have been killed, Curran said. On Nov. 2, an Iraqi contract driver was killed when five daisy-chained roadside bombs exploded near the western town of Hit. Four other Iraqi drivers have been injured, Curran said.

On Monday, Iraqi welders clambered over an Army 5-ton truck at Camp Anaconda, converting it into a sinister-looking gun truck — one of 50 the garage has finished.

They welded 1/2-inch-thick steel plates onto the doors, floor and rear of the cab. They erected a steel-ensconced perch for the passenger-seat gunner. And they covered all but a narrow slit of the truck’s windshield with steel plate.

With the cab almost completely boxed in — and the driver and the gunner wearing body armor and helmets — it would take a very unlucky shot to hit one of them.

"The troops love it. They feel good and secure," said Lt. Mitchell Bierl, 28, who oversees the truck conversions. "You can’t really add more steel without inhibiting their ability to drive."

The battalion has also armored Humvees for the unit’s "tiger teams" that cruise ahead of the convoys and search for bombs and ambush zones. When a convoy comes under fire, the tiger teams circle back and take on the guerrillas long enough for the convoy to pass.

Earlier this month, a convoy had just pulled out of the base when it came under attack from armed men in an empty house across the road, said Capt. Issac Bristow, 38, of Fairfield, Calif., who leads one of the teams.

"There were two large-caliber automatic weapons putting down a lot of fire in our direction," Bristow said, as a knot of his men gathered around him.

Within a few minutes, there were two tiger Humvees and one armored gun truck parked in front of the house, blasting it with four .50 caliber machine guns and RPG rounds. Five minutes of sustained fire was enough to get the convoy past safely. They didn’t bother to try and round up the rebels because escorting the convoy is more important, Bristow said.

"We tell them ‘Be the wolf out on the road, not the sheep,’ " said Brig. Gen. Vincent E. Boles, the 3rd Coscom’s commander. "We want our soldiers to look everybody in the eye and let them know that if they take action against us, they’re going to pay a high price."