Stage Three "the Ride of My Life"

Stage three.
The most dangerous thing I have ever done by far. Make it to the CITY without getting blown up. As I stood and listened to the briefing I prayed, as I loaded up in the truck I prayed. As we pulled out the gate I prayed. One and a half hours and I slide into home….SAFE!!!!!!.
The night was very dark and nothing could be seen except the lights on the roadsides. It is a strange site to see fluorescent lights outside at night but most of the smaller houses had them. I could not see much further than that in the darkness. And we drove through checkpoints on the wrong side of the highway and then the right side of the highway. Ever vigilant was the driver to ensure that he did not cross over the top of anything on the roadway. I cannot imagine trying to drive like this. It brings defensive driving to a new level. How many times had I at home been driving and seen something in the road, dead animal coke can anything and just centered it on the truck and kept right on going. Scanning the road ahead the driver and Co-driver relay info back and forth and the co-driver to the rest of the convoy. It was like a well oiled machine if one missed something then the other one caught it. I just sat there with eyes wide open looking for things that did not look right not knowing what would explode. We trained for this type of thing prior to coming over but I had never seen it this close and the training was pretty darn good. We complained while receiving the training but now I see that it was right on the mark. (as far as convoy training goes) As we approached the CITY we slowed checked for the convoy they were quite a ways back As we get close to the city the worst thing you could ever imagine as a GI came over the radio. The radio traffic that night only came from the internal convoy radio frequencies. So we heard things like convoy speeds and things like that to keep us abreast of distances and things. Then I hear IED!!! IED!!!! It was one of the guys at the back of our convoy. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest. How would I explain to someone that this was actually my choice and that I did not have to go this route home? As I sat and thought about what was going on I realized that if I heard someone say IED then I was in no danger if I had not seen it. At least that was my reasoning. We kept on hauling but and a short time later found out that it was in the other lane of traffic. We all breathe a sigh of relief but know that it could have been one of our comrades out there who will never make it home. We will never know. The rest of the trip I spent in a quiet meditation and finally reached my drop off point, my safety barrier. The wall that had closed in on me so many days before was now a welcome wide open country that I will not leave again unless there is absolutely no way around it. One thing is for certain I may not be a Real Soldier in my mind but I met some real soldiers this night. I know that what I do makes a difference and I know that I will have a different outlook on things from this point on. I pray for the safe return of the Convoy escorts and I thank them for giving me the ride of my life.