A Year In The Sandbox

We took a trip out to Bati Kot the other day to assess some clinics and ended up a little lost. All we get for the locations are a rough grid and from that we have to try to find it on our own. We have some aerial imagery and maps to try to nail it down, but a lot of times that stuff is out of date and where there used to be a road there isn’t anymore. We found the first 2 clinics but while we were looking for the 3rd we hit a dead end when our road ran into a canal. We had driven through an old graveyard on a dirt road on our way in, so going back out the same way would be no problem, right? If that was true I wouldn’t be writing this story…

I was in the 3rd vehicle, an MRAP. The lead vehicle, also an MRAP, had the ground give away under it’s real wheel and was stuck. At the time we didn’t realize that the road we were on was right over the top of old graves, so we maneuvered our truck to get in front of the stuck one to pull it out. The TC (Truck Commander) and the other guy that was in back with me got out to ground guide our truck into position, so it was just the driver, the gunner and me left. We were moving pretty slow and had made it past the stuck truck when I heard the guys outside yelling for us to stop. The driver stopped and, assuming we were about to drive into a hole, backed up. It turns out we had made it over the hole as the ground was giving away, but when he backed up we backed right into it.

My truck

I thought for sure we were rolling and I grabbed the gunner by the britches and pulled him down into the cab but the truck rocked over and then back onto its wheels. We were cocked so far over to the side we were afraid to move, afraid that shifting our weight would send the truck on over. The guys outside told us the ground was keeping the truck from rolling, so the gunner climbed out through the turret and I went out the back door. The bottom of the back door is usually two big steps up from the ground, about even with my chin. Now it was only a foot or so off the ground.

Both of the stuck MRAPs

With everybody out we set about recovering the trucks. The first one was pretty easy, we just dug out behind the wheel that was stuck and then pulled it out with a couple of HMMWVs. The one I was in was a little more tricky. First we dug out around the driveshaft and differential that were buried. We wanted to pull the freed MRAP around front to pull the other one out but there were too many old graves around. We managed to get one of the HMMWVs over around to the side of the MRAP so the MRAP was leaning away from the HMMWV. Then we tied off the lifting lug on top of the MRAP to the HMMWV and pulled it tight to keep the MRAP from rolling all the way over. Then we put the MRAP in low lock and powered it on out of the hole. I have a video of it coming out, I’ll get up on Youtube some day…

SGT Porth digging us out

After all the trucks were unstuck we tiptoed through the rest of the graveyard and headed back to the FOB to get the MRAPs checked out to make sure we didn’t break anything. Surprisingly, nothing was broken and both the trucks were back on the road the next day.