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Convoy delivers through dust, heat, mines

Aug-27-2005 » Filed Under: TF Freedom

Soldiers Supporting the 1/25 SBCT

Link to Full Article
By Rick Emert, Stars and Stripes

RAWAH, Iraq — The temporary home of the 535th Engineer Company (Combat Support Equipment) is a dry, dusty place called Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul.

But the company’s 3rd Platoon “High Rollers,” along with soldiers from Company A, 94th Engineer Combat Battalion (Heavy), have come to see Marez as an oasis after driving four tactical convoys through a desert where the dust surely must be on steroids.

The convoys carried building and personal supplies to soldiers from the 94th Engineers at Command Outpost Rawah near the Syrian border. The engineers have been building the outpost since mid-July and work should be complete Sept. 1.

The 535th, based out of Grafenwöhr, Germany, was attached for the deployment to the 94th, based in Grafenwöhr, Vilseck and Hohenfels.

Without the soldiers who made these desert voyages, the construction at the outpost would have come to a halt long ago.

Driving up to 25 hours through the desert posed a challenge for the soldiers, but there also was a threat of makeshift bombs and anti-tank mines. The soldiers anticipated that, though.

“We did a lot of movement training before we deployed, and we had to drive up from Kuwait to Mosul,” said 1st Lt. Heather Sprowls, 3rd Platoon leader and commander of the tactical convoy.

She told soldiers in a security briefing before the final convoy began on Aug. 17 that a previous convoy had been hit by a roadside bomb. And on another convoy, a dump truck had driven over an anti-tank mine. No soldiers were injured in the incidents, because all of the vehicles in the convoy were armored. [...]


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