Orlando Sentinel (Florida) March 29, 2003
U.S. Supply Lines Crucial, Vulnerable
By Roger Roy, Sentinel Staff Writer
IN THE IRAQI DESERT -- The exhausted Marine drivers listened intently as Maj. Jeff Eberwein gave them a much-needed pep talk.
"I know it's rough," said Eberwein, 33, of Valrico, near Tampa. "You're tired. I'm tired, too. But there are Marines up there fighting the fight. They need food and water and ammo. Our job is to get this to them."
The Transportation Support Group convoy, carrying vital supplies of food, fuel and ammunition for Marines on the front line, was losing valuable time. One sleepy driver had missed a turn and taken half the 70-truck convoy in the wrong direction.
Commanders of the convoy, which includes the Orlando-based 6th Motor Transport Battalion, rounded up the errant trucks and reversed them, reforming on the highway in a painfully slow parade.
Suddenly, Cpl. D.J. Parr, a member of the security team, had had enough.
He chewed the drivers out, warning what would happen if they were lost. The drivers didn't need convincing. They had heard reports of another convoy being ambushed and the drivers taken prisoner by the Iraqis.
"They're starting to fight back," Parr shouted at the dazed Marines. "They are going after the stragglers. . . . The next one of you I catch sleeping is going to hate life."
The rapid advance of American forces has caused problems for military planners, leaving frontline forces as much as 300 miles from their main bases. For the supply convoys, the work is dangerous and grueling. They have been slowed by ambushes, enemy shelling, bad weather and constant breakdowns.
On Friday, the convoys were still trying to get supplies of fuel, food and ammunition to about 22,000 Marines north of Diwaniyah, which is more than 100 miles south of Baghdad.
After listening to Eberwein and Parr, the drivers went back to their trucks, formed up in two lines, started the engines and began moving out.
Then Lance Cpl. Dustin Hernandez, 20, shouted over the wind that his truck, a big LVS heavy transport, wouldn't start.
Squad leader Sgt. Joseph Gomez, 23, yelled at Lance Cpl. Robert Kissmann, who spun the truck around.
Kissmann, 24, of New Fairfield, Conn., pulled alongside Hernandez and fished out a jumper cable.
But the engine in Hernandez's truck wouldn't turn over. Trucks began pulling around.
A call went out for mechanics, but within minutes, the two trucks and four Marines -- Hernandez, Gomez, Kissmann and Lance Cpl. Scott Stasney, 21, of Wisconsin -- were alone on the highway. Stasney, armed with a .50-caliber machine gun, kept watch from the roof of one truck.
A steady stream of Iraqi civilians kept moving along the highway. Three men walked by, keeping their distance when they saw the Marines.
An ancient bus drove slowly along the road in the opposite direction. Stasney tracked it with the machine gun.
Off the road, just visible through the dust, a dump truck bounced along. A small pickup emerged from the dust behind us, quickly spinning around and driving away when it saw the machine gun.
The wind gusted mercilessly, blowing dust and sand into the men's eyes, seeping under their goggles.
Gomez, who's from Chicago and whose parents recently moved to Sanford, had taken up a position at the roadside behind the concrete base of a streetlight.
A member of the Marine Corps baseball team last year, Gomez imbues such a feeling of confidence that it is hard to believe he is only 23.
As long as Gomez was there, the stranded four figured the Iraqis might take them, but not before the first 30 or so were brought down.
Finally the mechanics arrived with more Marines in two Humvees, one with a machine gun on the roof.
"Truck!" Gomez shouted, and a tractor-trailer drove up behind. The Marines stopped it at gunpoint and pulled three men from the cab, and Gomez climbed into the trailer to check the load: tomatoes and three more men.
The mechanics, whose only words seemed to be strings of profanity, still struggled with Hernandez's truck, sparks flying while one worked on the electrical system. No one had any idea how far ahead the rest of the convoy was.
It wasn't being left behind that worried Hernandez. He was concerned that he would get chewed out about his truck not starting. But after an hour stuck on the road, he was tired of waiting.
"I say screw it," Hernandez said. "We should just blow it and get going."
It would have made quite a bang: His load included 24 Javelin guided missiles.
But the ammunition was needed too badly to destroy, and when the mechanics gave up, the decision was made to tow the truck.
Then, through the howling desert winds, the stranded Marines heard the ominous squeaking clatter of tracks on the pavement.
Tracks could only mean armor. Against tanks, the lightly armed Marines would be defenseless. The four men had no illusions about what would happen if tanks flying Iraqi flags emerged from the dust.
As the clatter of tracks neared, the Marines spread across the road, but there was no real chance of stopping what was coming with their M-16s and the .50-caliber, or even with the shoulder-fired antitank missile in the truck.
"We might as well have had slingshots," Kissmann said later.
But as they emerged from the dust, the tracks belonged not to Iraqi tanks, but to four U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Army units inexplicably in Marine territory.
They seemed as surprised to see the Marines as the Marines were to see them. The Army units stopped abruptly, backed quickly and changed to the other side of the road. The men whose heads stuck up out of the hatches did not wave, and as they passed, they kept their cannons trained on the Marines.
The mechanics got the tow bar rigged, and another LVS came back from the convoy to tow Hernandez's rig. After a few minutes, the episode with the Bradleys seemed funny, and everyone joked about how scared they had been.
Five minutes after the Bradleys churned up the road, through the wind a voice could be heard yelling.
It was Stasney, up at the .50-caliber 12 feet above. He had stared down the Bradleys with his machine gun.
"Hey, man," Stasney said, "whose tanks were those?" and everyone laughed.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Sgt. Joseph Gomez. The parents of the Marine squad leader from Chicago recently moved to Sanford.
PHOTO: Stalled. Lance Cpl. Dustin Hernandez's stalled truck (left) sits by the road as Lance Cpl. Robert Kissmann's security truck
approaches.
ROGER ROY/ORLANDO SENTINEL
DIAGRAM: Supply line backs up combat unit
Iraqi troops have attacked U.S. combat units' supply lines in an attempt to stall their advance on Baghadad.
How military supply lines work:
'Tail-to tooth' ratio of U.S. forces
Military slang for proportion of support ('tail') to frontline
personnel ('teeth') Ratio in Iraq is about 1 supply soldier for every frontline fighter.
Depot
Behind front lines, sometimes in existing buildings
Temporary supply point; constantly guarded; relocated forward as troops advance.
Supply line
Extends for several miles behind combat zone
Maintenance, supply units travel far enough behind combat troops to avoid artillery fire.
Trucks and Humvees shuttle between front, supply depot.
Front line
Tanks, vehicles regularly stop to refuel and take on supplies.
Mayor types of supplies
Food, water
Clothing, tents
Fuel, oil
Ammunition
Medical materials
Repair parts
Construction materials
Personal items
Note: Distance not to scale
SOURCES: Defense Logistics Agency, GlobalSecurity, The Associated Press
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
COLUMN: AMERICA AT WAR
STORIES FROM THE FRONT
70-TRUCK CONVOY
Copyright © 2003, Sentinel Communications Co.
