The Worst Dust Storm Yet!

We are back in our tents at VBC after one interesting adventure. Outside the worst dust storm I have yet seen is raging. The wind is blowing hard and visibility is down to just a few feet! I have seen a lot of dust storms, but nothing like this. We were lined up earlier to leave on our return trip to Camp Taji when the storm blew up. It was already pretty bad out there, but we had gotten special permission to roll without air support. We were just starting our roll when the word came down that the mission had been canceled. We just had one problem. Our convoy was lined up at the gate with no room to turn around. We had to leave the gate, go down the road a couple of miles to a point were it was wide enough for us to turn around and then come back in the gate. The whole trip couldn’t have been more than four miles, but it took us 30 minutes. Even with his tail lights on, I couldn’t see the truck in front of me if he got more than 30 or 40 yards away. We crawled along with only our headlights on because any more than that made things worse.

Right before we rolled out we picked up an extra passenger. He was a First Sergeant from a company here at VBC that needed to get to Taji for some reason. When we got back inside the gate he asked if we could give him a ride back to his company. We said that we would, but it proved to be more difficult than we thought it would be. Once on post the storm got even worse. I couldn’t see more than 10 feet to either side of my truck. Our passenger tried to give us directions, but we couldn’t see any landmarks. I finally got as close as I thought I could to where he was directing us and told him he was going to have to walk. Being in the back of the truck where there are really no windows, I don’t think he understood how difficult it was for me to see anything. He seemed a little upset at my inability to find his stop until he opened the back door of the truck and was greeted by a wall of dust that blew into the truck as if it was water rushing in the open door. Our truck was almost instantly full of dust. He decided I had done a good enough job given the circumstances and quickly disappeared as he walked away. We drove back to our staging area and got our of the truck as quickly as possible. In the 40 or 50 yards from our truck to the tent we got covered in white dust like talcum powder. Most of us are still covered because we know that if we walk to the shower to get clean we will just be dirty again by the time we get back. Thank goodness for baby wipes!