OK, it is officially summertime here, 110 at least in the shade today and the wind was like a blast furnace. Perfect time for a road trip, especially if the air conditioner in your MRAP (55,000 lbs. of steel, hermitically sealed with a huge, sun magnifying, bullet-proof windshield) has started to laugh at you and the heat. The AC in our steel monster works sometimes (especially when the Socrates has it at the mechanics) and quits most of the time (especially when you are 5 minutes into a 1 hour and 30 minute trip). There are very few places that we have to go that are close, so driving these days kind of sucks the life out of you.
MRAPs are pretty good vehicles, in previous posts I have commented on how they do what they were designed to do, but their AC is definately a lowest bidder product. Today was a perfect example, we were driving to FOB Hammer with the National Police to drop them off for some training. FOB Hammer is truly in the middle of nowhere, the road to it is paved, kind of, but has these huge pot holes all along it, so you can't get over 20 miles an hour. We left at 7 AM, got there about 9 ish, before it got too hot (it was only about 90). The AC was just fine. We ended up hanging out there for 5 or 6 hours, opening ceremony, tour of the training base with the General, conference with one of the coalition force battalion commanders (who I went to Infantry Officer's Basic Course 21 years ago, and was stationed with at FT Ord, CA for a few years - - - small Army World), lunch at the big FOB (no ice cream for me, I just wasn't in the mood), some shopping at the PX (even if it is the same stuff you have seen for 9 months the pure joy of being able to shop trumps the selection, and some of the magazines were new) and one of our other MRAPs was in maintenance for 4 hours for - - take a guess - - a broken AC.
All the while we were sitting around the FOB, Socrates had the AC turned on and it was keeping the insides of the vehicle mostly cool. Once we got geared up and headed down the road, I felt the hot blast of air that means the AC just quit. So, 1 hour and some change worth of driving, heading due west, right into the setting sun, 110 ish degree air circulating inside our vehicle. I hit the ice water hard (we keep a cooler of water on ice for such an occasion, cold water beats warm water ten times out of ten over here) and just let the sweat pour on down.
While you are rolling outside the wire you wear: your Advanced Combat Helmet (good piece of gear, much more comfortable than the two previous versions I have experienced) which manages to keep all of the heat from escaping your head; radio headphones, rubberish pieces over both ears (nothing worse than ear sweat, especially when you can't do anything about it); ballistic glasses, which keep the heat right over your eyes; fireproof ACUs (if they are designed to keep fire out, do you think they are going to let the heat escape from the inside?); 35 pounds of assorted Kevlar plates and pads, nylon webbing, and other heat retaining materiel and your boots, weapon and fireproof gloves (see fireproof ACUs for my comments on that). Anything you touch is HOT because of the sun and lack of AC.
If I were back at Bragg or Riley when this happened, I would just roll down the window, but that is discouraged and well, impossible. The windows on the MRAP are more chunks of ballistic glass. Sigh, you just have to sit there and sweat.
Anyway, we made it back to COP Cashe South with no additional discomfort. It is funny when it is 110 degrees outside, you open the door and it feels like cool air is rushing inside the vehicle. Weird.
I am sure that the veterans of the WW II North Africa campaign that read my post will have absolutely no sympathy for me, they not only did not have AC in their Sherman tanks, they also rarely got cold water and most definately didn't have Baskin Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream. So, I will keep my complaining to a minimum.
87 days til no Kevlar is required. Sorry about the wining.
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