Faraway Thunder
A Journey through Army Life & the Gulf War

Faraway Thunder: A Journey through Army Life & the Gulf War
by Carey Jones

 Paperback: 200 pages
 Publisher: Vista Publishing - February, 2000
 Language: English
 ISBN: 0-9672615-0-3
 Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.5 x 8.5 inches
 Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces

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Editorial Reviews

"He is skillful in his use of conversation ... In my opinion, Jones is a master of suspense."
~ Gwen Haugen: News Record

Excerpt from Faraway Thunder

Copyright © Carey Jones Books. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We crossed the Neutral Zone at 1621 hours yesterday afternoon. We traveled a good part of last night and all day today through this part of Iraq. It is desolate here, absolutely nothing in sight for miles ... I can't believe the rain. Isn't this supposed to be the desert? There are no windows in any of our vehicles and driving this humvee through the rain without the damn windows is no fun. I guess the enemy can see the sun glaring off windshields from a great distance, but hell, the sun hasn't shown for two weeks! How could there be any glare?

I keep worrying about this damn broken-down air force hummer. Just how did I end up driving an air force humvee? There's a good story. The air defense guys attached to my unit drove the thing over a cliff bending both front wheels to the outside of the vehicle. It sat around the maintenance area at least a month waiting for parts. When the parts didn't arrive and the war was about to start the mechanics decided to heat the torsion bars and bend the wheels straight. We never really told the air force their vehicle is fixed; technically it's not. You see, our high speed decision makers at battalion HQ figure a lowly couple of commo guys don't really need a vehicle. Sergeant T's been pissed about this for months. I've got to calm him down about every other day when he finds out we've got 18 radios to transport to higher maintenance and no vehicle to get them there. That's been my main mission; keeping Sergeant T from tearing somebody's head off at battalion. Anyway, we just loaded this humvee and started driving it. Everybody keeps quiet about it around the air force boys. They think the thing is still parked back in the desert somewhere. So the wheels mechanic who heated the torsion bars and bent them straight says it's in good shape. He tells me not to drive faster than 35. He's not sure what would happen if those bars decided to give.

We drove a hundred miles today and didn't see anything. No towns, no people, no animals, nothing. Just this desert weed; like sagebrush but not quite. The sand and hard rock-like crust of this place remind me of pictures I saw from Apollo moon-shots when I was a kid. Total desolation.

We stopped for the night at 2100 hours. It's 0300 hours now and the shelling to our south keeps me awake. The artillery bombardment from that area has been incessant. I can't imagine how much lead, steel, and shrapnel we must be dropping on those guys. I pity anyone in its path. I can occasionally see flashes of light from explosions as the shells and missiles hit their targets. The ground shakes. I guess they are 20, maybe 30 klicks to our south, though I can't be sure.

Sergeant T is sleeping on the hood of the hummer. We took one of the tents in the back and draped it over the top of the vehicle down to the front of the hood. He climbed through the non-existent windows and laid out his bag. I sleep across the front seats. With my softer gear underneath for padding it's somewhat comfortable. I crank up the vehicle now and then to get some heat out to the front of the hood, the only advantage I can see to having no windows. 40 degrees and rain. What kind of desert is this? I begin to think about how it is that a college boy like myself ends up in the army, driving a broken down air force humvee, in the middle of a desert fighting a war. Wouldn't any reasonably bright person be somewhere else? These are good questions. I guess I've got time to think about them. The shelling isn't slowing. A far-off incessant rolling storm, distant and pounding, almost comforting. Like faraway thunder on a dark summer's night; only the thunder is manmade.

I won't be sleeping any time soon.