a mobilized year

In a recent post, I mentioned the wonders of the cooling vests that some of my guys have had the opportunity to try out. On a recent mission, I got to experience the other extreme.

We had an SP time of about 0800 in the morning for a mission that was anticipated to have two, three hour segments. We were going to try to start the second segment in the late afternoon in order to miss some of the hottest weather of the day. We did our maintenance checks before we left and everything looked fine.

We headed out on time and everything seemed to be working OK. The inside of the HMMWV gets rather hot from a combination of the engine temperature and the sun beating down on the roof of the vehicle. When the air conditioner is doing its job during the day of the summer months, the inside temperature of the HMMWV is about 100 degrees or so, which isn’t too bad. When the crews arrive at their destination, they are quick to shed their body armor, goggles, gloves, helmet, etc. Typically, they’ll sweat a lot but the air conditioned temperature is just a mild irritation. When the air conditioner doesn’t work . . . well, that’s an entirely different story.

About 20 minutes into our mission, the air conditioner in our vehicle stopped working (or as my driver put, “hey, the a/c crapped out on us sir”). It quickly got very hot. Because of IED and sniper threats, we have to keep the windows all the way up. There were a number of vehicle issues with the trucks on this mission. What was suppose to be a three hour leg of a mission, turned into 4 ½ hours. With the temperatures soaring as the day wore on, sweat was just pouring out of us. Our eyes were stinging. We had each gone through about 2 gallons of water and Gatorade in just under three hours. The outside temperature at the beginning of the mission was about 105, but by midday it was somewhere between 120-130. I don’t know what the temperature inside of the vehicle was by then, but it was much hotter in the vehicle than it was outside of the vehicle.

To keep things light, I started a top 10 list with my crew members. It went something like this: “You know the air conditioning in your vehicle in Iraq has gone out when . . . .” I can’t remember all the ones we came up with, but here are a few of them (all of which are true):

• When the gunner complains that the top half of his body is substantially cooler in 125 degree heat than the bottom half of his body that is in the vehicle.
  
• When you can’t rest your covered elbows, forearms or hands on any internal HMMWV component (other than the steering wheel, thankfully!) for more than 15 seconds because they are all too hot.
  
• When the three bags of ice in your cooler have all melted within a short time frame.
  
• When you get up out of your seat, the canvas seat cover is as soaked as if you had left the vehicle window open during a rain storm.
• When you take off one of your nomex gloves and your fingers are as wrinkled as if you had been swimming for the last hour.
• When you can’t hold your 9 mm with your bare hand more than three seconds because it’s too hot.
  
• And finally, you know the air conditioning in your vehicle in Iraq has gone out when you open the door and first step out into the 125+ degree heat, it feels like a spring breeze that is only surpassed by the feeling you get after taking off your body armor and getting a little chill down your wet spine.

For a Wisconsin boy, now that’s hot.