taken from Kelsey Konen's blog
“I should not be alive. There is not a God forsaken reason,” Jordan Taylor, who returned from Iraq in September, said.
Taylor recalls his hardest and longest mission while in Iraq. It was in Kharma, rated by Times magazine as the most dangerous place to live in the whole world. It’s just north of Fallujah, which was the hot spot at the time Taylor left in September 2006. The mission lasted 32 hours.
Taylor was the gunner in the Cougar navigating for the lead vehicle referred to as a RG31. It’s a tan, large, jeep looking vehicle with what looks like a small satellite dish on top. Usually 15 to 20 members of a 30 or so man platoon would go out on a mission or sometimes multiple missions in one day. Several vehicles would travel out together. For this mission, the vehicles were lined up RG31, two vehicles referred to as Huskies that appear like a large tractor vehicle, another large jeep-looking vehicle with long razored arms off the front called a Buffalo, EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Cougar, and Gun Cougar (both the largest and furthest vehicles from the ground), RG31, followed by four Marine Corps Humvees. Husky vehicles have mechanical wings to detect the metal in bombs and are one man vehicles. The buffalo’s also have a mechanical arm and hold up to six men. Taylor usually rode in the lead car, the RG31, but for this mission rode in the Cougar.
“It was the Cadillac of military cars,” Taylor said of the Cougar.
Taylor’s platoon operated out of Fallujah. He lived there in a tent the entire year.
Taylor’s assignment every day was to look for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). Often soldiers would go out on missions for up to eight hours or more and find nothing, not one bomb.
Taylor’s platoon, the 2nd Platoon, Alpha Company, Task Force Pathfinder found 300 bombs during their time in Iraq.
The 32 hour mission they covered was a route no larger than a regular 10 minute drive. For them, it lasted 32 hours. They averaged 15 bombs in 15 hour periods. It was the most bombs found in one day their entire time in Iraq. Driving at five miles an hour, they would search for pot-holes and cracks in the ground. Discolored dirt or anything that seemed out of the ordinary such as garbage on the side of the road would “make your hair stand on end.” It was life everyday, 24 hours a day.
Taylor remembers that mission vividly. A bomb went off under the RG31, the lead car, causing it to flip and creating a massive hole in the ground. While Taylor and his comrades were recovering the RG31, a rocket grenade was shot at them. The grenade missed by far and then the shooting started.
Taylor was able to discover the direction of the shooter, coming from a house nearby. He remembers how odd it was that a family having a picnic, at what looked like a reunion, was just two houses away. Gun fire was going off everywhere.
“It was pretty scary knowing that bullets are flying all around you and you don’t have much cover,” Taylor said of the experience.
Things calmed down and several men continued to recover the lead vehicle. They never found the shooter, but did discover his weapon. They resumed looking for bombs. Now the Husky vehicle was in front controlled by Sergeant Kelly Chartier. It wasn’t long before a bomb blew up behind it. The vehicle, though sustaining damage, continued but less than a tire turn away then another bomb went off shooting the vehicle into the air. This bomb took out the entire back side of the vehicle. The sole man in the Husky, Chartier, had had his last mission. He survived, but hurt his back severely and was sent to work in the offices.
“He was pretty beat up,” Taylor said.
Taylor recounts recovering him when he saw two, what he referred to as “trigger men” start to run. Taylor starting to ask permission from his sergeant to shoot from inside his vehicle, he waited while his superior stuttered and finally gave him the go ahead. Taylor began to trace them and shoot when a truck came by and picked them up. Only one of them made it inside, these were the two that had set the bombs off. The survivor was able to hobble to safety. Taylor’s platoon called for air back up and a helicopter was able to take out the truck later.
Now, still daylight, Taylor recalled being out of the turret in his vehicle, much too high, exposed from the waist up to scan for other trigger men. He knew he shouldn’t have been so out in the open. While the group waited for the recovery vehicle, Taylor continued to scan. Just then, he heard the thud of a rifle grenade.
He turned to see it coming straight at him.
“I saw a rifle grenade … coming right at my face. I could see in the background the two guys that shot it,” Taylor said. “People talk about your life flashing before your eyes, it really does. At the last minute, it just came to my mind, duck. So I did. I could feel the heat strip for four hours afterwards. It blew up on the other side of the vehicle.”
Taylor ducked back inside just in time and remembers yelling, “Incoming, incoming!”
At this point they had to call for more support and they waited for five or six hours for another recovery vehicle. The support team they had called for chose to take a new route, not following Taylor’s group. As they were coming in, they too got hit, their lead vehicle, a Humvee, had its tires taken out. Taylor said they were really lucky.
“We yelled at them over the radio and said, don’t move we’ll come to you,” Taylor said. Taylor’s group sent their buffalo out scanning and found three more bombs in between, just about a football field, or 100 yards away. Hours later they were able to recover and all go home. During this mission they had discovered 20 bombs and got in about five different gun fights.
Taylor suffered nine different concussions while serving in Iraq. Regulation allowed three. It got to the point where the “next concussion could kill ya,” Taylor said.
“It got to a point where I felt like I was committing suicide every time I got in a vehicle.”
Taylor spent the last three months in Iraq working in the office. He feels that this allowed for him to recover from the fear before returning.
“Fire crackers scare the shit out of me,” Taylor said. He remembers fearing a pop can opening at first also.
Still, Taylor says the hardest part is easy to identify.
“People forget about it, and that’s what sucks.”
Taylor was raised in Smithfield, Utah. He returned this year and served as Alumni Relations for Sigma Chi. He has been elected to serve as Sigma Chi president next year.
“Transitioning was pretty easy for me actually because I got hit so many times I was forced into an office. I wasn’t allowed to go on missions anymore,” Taylor said. He was able to partially recover in Iraq.
Dave Petersen, a friend of Taylor’s for over 20 years now, recalls the changes in Taylor when he came back.
“I don’t think you can ever fully recover from an experience like that,” Petersen said. “But, Jordan was definitely a different person when he came back. He seemed more like a real man than he ever had, took things very seriously and acted so much more responsibly. You can tell those experiences have really made him recognize the seriousness of life, especially after seeing war.”
Taylor has risks of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but still claims the hardest part about coming home and the hardest part of being there is ignorance.
“The war doesn’t affect people here,” Taylor said. “If you don’t have a brother or a sister or a family member that’s involved in the war, it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t.”
“I hate it so bad, in World War II, when we were at war, women were in the factory, and it affected everybody. Every day you go to school and you drive you car. People forget about it. That’s what sucks,” Taylor said.
Taylor doesn’t agree with America pulling out of Iraq. He sees Iraq as “the greatest foothold in all the world. It’s the center of the world, it really is,” he said. “America needs to realize that it never was going to take a short amount of time. We have to stay there.”
America can’t leave while insurgents are there Taylor said.
“We shouldn’t bitch about it. We should support each other,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the war affected him most because life is different now. It makes you appreciate life and take advantage of it.
1 comment:
...and to think war starts because of hate and keeps going because of hate. It is inconceiveable to me that people actually live and function with war all around them, breaks my heart.
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