December 18th 2004;
After our morning safety/ security briefing all personnel loaded up for the convoy going from FOB Summerall to Arlington Depot. After radio/weapons/accountability check the convoy started its roll to work. Once out of gate one on the northeast side of the FOB a early model Chevy Suburban painted like a taxi was spotted on the side of the MSR Hershey. Both forward security vehicles cleared this vehicle and called in status to keep rolling. After the transport vehicle, directly behind security two, to my front cleared this vehicle, I and my co-driver noticed the Suburban starting to move at a fast speed towards us, and both of us saw him smile. Due to the close proximity of his vehicle to ours, and our vehicles lack of manuvering capability, he drove the Suburban under our vehicle on the left hand side and detonated the explosives on board his.
The amount of explosives onboard was later determined to be over one ton. This was based on the fact that there was only the rear axle of his vehicle remaining to ID it, and our vehicle was only traveling at approximately 30KPH, and the explosive force was enough to flip our 16ton vehicle, a South African Casspir, end over end, and still had enough force to disable three other vehicles in our convoy of nine vehicles.
12 people were inside our Casspir, 11 walked out on their own, one person received a back injury and was knocked out so he had to be carried. From the force of the blast and overpressure I had been slamed into the armor overhead doing damage to my cervical spine.
I now have three metal plates, and four out of seven cervical vertebrae fuzed in my neck. Do I beleive in God??? More now than ever, as I'm sure the other eleven do too.
Leighton
