Apparently he drove a truck in Iraq.
I’m sure it was stressful.
I hope you were being sarcastic, because the truck drivers in Iraq were definitely targeted for IED attacks. So, yeah. It would be pretty stressful driving a truck down a road where the next bump in the road could be an IED. I’m not saying anything particular about the shooter. I’m simply making the point that supply and logistics folks like truck drivers were certainly subject to hostile fire in Iraq.
One picture shows him wearing a blue cord (Infantry), but yet he was a truck driver.
Something is definitely wrong with that scenario.
Even if he holds a 11B MOS(job), he is not authorized to wear it if he is not in an Infantry slot.
Just my two cents.
Apparently he drove a truck in Iraq.
I’m sure it was stressful.
IED’s are stressful.
Depends on when you are driving a truck.
My son drove his 12-1/2 ton truck, loaded with bridging equipment, 750 miles from Kuwait to Balad Air Force base in March/early April, 2003 as part of the 3rd ID 100 mile long invasion column.
While he was not attacked, other trucks were by Iraqi fedeyeen forces (and were slaughtered by our guys who were wearing night vision goggles). This took place during one of the worst sandstorms of the century which turned everything blood red and black.
My son had to stand guard on top of his truck for many hours, trying to spot attacking infiltrators, all the while being scoured by the massive sandstorm that lasted for days.
Then he had to unload his equipment at the Euphrates River, control a briding boat (that holds the Ribbon Bridge units in place against a downflowing river), while under enemy fire. The 299th Army (Reserve) MRB Company of Ft. Belvoir, Va. earned a Presidential Unit Citation for their combined assault on Iraqi positions (with the 54th Ordance Company) on the eastern banks of the Euphrates as well as for putting up the first Ribbon Bridge in combat.
Then my son got back into his truck, took it across the river, dismounted, and conducted checkpoint operations, sniper suppression counterfire (M249 SAW), helped to capture hundreds of Iraqi Regular troops/disarm them, and take them back for processing, and then seize major arms caches which contained chemical warfare suits.
After that little rest, he got back into his truck and drove up to Balad Air Force base about 45 miles NW of Baghdad where is did supply runs until his truck broke down in Kuwait.
The remaining trucks in his company pulled out of Iraq in July 2003, heading back to Kuwait. They got hit by one of the early IEDs, sustaining damage but no casualties.
Driving a truck in Iraq was dangerous. Just ask Pvt. Lynch, one of the few, or only survivor of an Army truck convoy that got ambushed early in the war, with some being killed in the ambush and others shot afterwards.
I remember us going about 80 MPH on a 1/4 Ton Truck throughout parts of SVN during the war (I was a journalist). We went through “Ambush Gap” outside of Pleikeu without any problems but a Christian missionary and his station wagon took a direct RPG hit there a few weeks later. He didn’t make it.