Kraz Trucks

The funny smell here in the morning is the refinery, it’s distinctive and hits you as you walk out the door. It’s like that farmer’s response to people wrinkling their noses at the smell of manure who says, ‘smells like money’. You get used to it.

Our four visitors didn’t make this morning; I received the news as I called back to my HQ. Their transport fell thru due to weather, full flights, re-missioning, change in the winds, who knows pick one. They’ll try again tomorrow. It affects all of us here because the Iraqi’s are alerted and they get prepared, we have to arrange convoy transport to get them from the US side to our side, we have to prepare billets for them to sleep, meals, etc. It’s definitely a different perspective because I use to be the one coming in to visit and now I’m the host. You start asking questions like, do they really need to visit or are they just taking a vacation. I do like it away from the flagpole and out working with a fun mission.

We’re planning a move for this weekend and I’m just praying it’ll all go well. It’s the longest trip they’ve made so far and we’re spending this week getting ready for it. We have to dig for all our missions while we’re in training mode because we have no oversight from the unit that will eventually manage us. Normally, these transportation regiments (Old Russian term, the CF kept it for continuity) are a division asset. Each division gets an MTR and controls them for movements and missions and provides them support. Since we’re training them, we have to come up with the missions. My fingers have been flying across the keyboard looking for cargo to transport and I’m getting good responses. The bad news is that some of these missions are on the outer boundary of our range. These are long trips and we have to choose our vehicles wisely which means ruling out the non-U.S. vehicles.

Vehicles are not the major problem in transport units like these, it’s the parts necessary to keep them running. We have a large mix of vehicles with the biggest group being U.S. cargo trucks. We also have Russian Kraz 5 ton’s with 8 gears which are absolutely the worse. They kept complaining about them and breaking them and then had one of our convoy’s torpedo’d because the clutch broke even before it got out the gate. That’s the big problem with them, breaking the clutch and usually because they’re in the wrong gear. I took one of my NCO’s out and him and I went down to the Motor pool to see how bad they really were to drive. I grew up on a farm and pride myself on being able to drive most anything, so I hopped in and tried my luck.

Its eight gears but a strange design. It’s an H design so one to four is similar to US, but then you have to flick the switch on the shifter and go back to gear 1 for gear 5. Five to eight is then the same as one to four. If you can follow that, it’s a pain to start off in 1 because it’s such a low gear, so they’ve been starting off in 5 and breaking the clutches popping it to get it rolling. It’s a heavy cargo truck, so starting in 5 is tearing them up, in fact the Maintenance team just called to refuse to work on them anymore. I’ll have to go down there and find out how to reconcile that.

On the road we’ll stick with the U.S. Five tons to keep everything mechanically sound. There’s plenty enough trouble on the road without worrying about break downs.

So we’re planning for that and everything else seems to be going smoothly. We’ll do the next 4-5 missions with them as a group and then we’ll back away and start letting them do this on their own.

We’re usually at the front and back of the convoy’s and smooth the way for them with coalition forces. We call in to traverse the different battle space of the different units and check in with them to ensure that all is well. It’s a huge support requirement for the U.S. forces but they go thru this every day with hundreds of convoys on the road. They’re helping us walk thru our procedures. I was told that a past mission went awry because they didn’t use CF guys and took a route they found out later had been marked “black”. They saw some action and got shot at. We’ll follow the procedures on this one. I won’t be able to travel on this one, there are limited seats and I’ll stay back with the operations team and monitor and pace. Please wish them safe travels, Ma’salama.

I’m in a cycle now and loving it. I try to spend a lot of time with the MTR and their soldiers. They must be getting used to me because they’ve stopped bringing out the tea when I show up. It used to be 4-5 times a day they’d bring in the tea, now I get a can of juice if I want it, maybe a bottle of water. I usually decline. I’m working closely with Major S who's one of the senior officers of the Regiment. He’s the most gregarious of the group and knows more English than the rest. He’s the one who checked into a hospital with chest pains the other day and they told him to go home and take it easy. He still comes to work every day, en’shalla.

We had soldiers who missed some training last week; they threw them into jail for 10 days. They had one of the officers go AWOL and he showed up today, so I have to go see what they’re going to do with him. I was told they’ll just not pay him for the month, but that doesn’t make sense. I’m more worried about where he went as opposed to why, we include the officers in very sensitive conversations and need to ensure he’s a “good guy”.

Best wishes from Iraq