I was later told of some kind of kevlar or other type of matting that can be put down on the floor of the HMMWV, to protect against any shrapnel, but we were unable to get it. It is necessary, because you can't stick sandbags under the brake and gas pedals. However, from that point on, we never drove off the roads again. Just like in Bosnia - stay on the road.
We didn't think there was any threat from landmines, given the heavy presence of friendly forces in the area and the number of times that we had driven in that particular area. Either that mine had been there for a while and a whole lot of people got lucky, before us, or Haji pulled a slicky-boy when nobody was looking - and did a good job of camouflaging it. But, once we were wise to this threat, we never got hit again. Just as we were wise to the IED threat and never got hit by those either. In Baghdad, where so much of the violence is concentrated, the need for protection against landmines is minimal (zero, if you abide by our new rule of not driving on any dirt) because almost every part of the city that you will patrol is paved. As previously stated, the best defense against IEDs is vigilance. The guy in the turret will still be killed by an IED, in an M1114. If you sit Qatar-6 style, then you can detect the IEDs before you hit them - and they are not too difficult to spot, in a city. A bunch of wires, leading to a burlap bag, trash bag, rock pile, trash pile, et cetera - kind of sticks out. Additional countermeasures include driving in the middle lane of a highway, to ensure that you are as far from the blast of an unseen IED as possible; be alert for explosives on telephone polls or pedestrian overpasses; never drive under an overpass without clearing (Haji likes to chuck grenades at you); use Bradleys whenever possible - they provide all the advantages of the M1114 and almost none of the disadvantages. There should never be a patrol composed exclusively of HMMWVs, if there are FMC Bradleys sitting around, unused.
The photos below are of an M1114 that also struck a mine with its left front tire, on April 1, 2003, in Afghanistan. None of the occupants was injured, though it is worth noting that the blast only left a crater about 2 feet wide and 32 inches deep. The one that my vehicle hit left a hole 2 to 3 times that size. This may be because the mine had been placed upside down, to create a larger surface area for the vehicle to initiate the mine - not sure.
