No Greater Love

The convoy stalled somewhere just north of Baghdad. The mechanized beasts we controlled lurched to a halt in a fractured herringbone formation. Daniel and I just looked at each other with “what now” expressions, grimacing. It was already a long mission, and convoys weren’t supposed to stop. We felt like sitting ducks on MSR Tampa that any terrorist could exploit. We were tired, dirty, and hungry from the never-ending road trips across Iraqi highways, which made us even more prone to attack. Our mission tempo was at an all-time high at this part of the war, and being stranded was the last thing you wanted.

Broken communication made its way a few miles up and down the stopped convoy, as each truck relayed to the next that we needed to check our loads and pull security. We were the last vehicle in the convoy. We drove a “bobtail” tractor-trailer. This meant we never pulled a trailer. Given I was a terror on sixteen wheels and often crunched things I shouldn’t crunch with my vehicle, it was for the best. I liked being more mobile. Coming from rear convoy security, formerly in a Humvee gun truck, to the rear convoy element in a bobtail felt like a decent transition. I was used to the serpentine tail of the desert-colored beast.

Our job was to grab a trailer if a truck went down. We also had an ancillary duty to take care of the needs of our foreign nationals integrated into the convoy. Around twenty civilian trucks were mingled into our convoys with truck drivers from every third-world country imaginable. They had no armor on their bodies or vehicles. Those third-country nationals—TCN as we called them—had a bad habit of getting lost, falling asleep at the wheel, and boiling food and hot tea while driving down the crater-riddled roads. This kept Daniel and I busy chasing them when they’d mysteriously veer off the highway into the desert. They provided comedic relief and frustration in equal measure.

We got out of our vehicles, chambered rounds into our rifles, and screamed at the TCNs to get back in their trucks. We ambled to appropriate sectors of fire adjacent to one another and tried to conduct rear convoy security. Word came down that a load had shifted or maybe a truck had mechanical issues towards the front of the string of vehicles. Our position in the rear of the column left us with little information regarding the “why” of our stop, most of the time. The rules of engagement were that if someone came within a certain distance of our convoys, we could fire on them. If they didn’t heed our commands to shift to the other side of the highway, we were authorized to escalate things.

While pulling security with guns at the low ready, a small four-door sedan with a plywood box affixed to the top began to creep towards our position. In broken Arabic, I screamed “Imshee,” which meant stop or go away—maybe. My Surefire flashlight in my free hand alternated between trying to blind them and redirecting them to the opposite highway. When that didn’t deter them, I infused my Arabic commands with American profanity and raised my M249 to my shoulder. A well-aimed rifle speaks a language with little need for translation. Our hackles were raised. The offending vehicle crept to a halt within twenty-five meters of our truck. From every angle, it was entirely too close.

With my voice becoming hoarse from screaming and my trigger finger seconds away from releasing hate and discontent in five to ten-round bursts, Daniel shoved me behind himself. Effectively, he used his body as a human shield and took over giving commands as he sprinted towards the stalled vehicle. I maintained a defensive posture and watched in disbelief as Daniel stabbed the barrel of his M-16 through the offending windshield and hit the passenger. Broken Arabic and hand signals failed to communicate what violence seemed to articulate. They threw their little white car in reverse and didn’t stop for a hundred meters or so before jumping the median and crossing the highway to go the other way.

Here's the deal. Hindsight is what it is for a reason, but at the moment, we knew we were dead. We assumed the vehicle contained a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device—a VBED if you’re nasty—and every second we stayed in the kill zone was a threat to our very lives. Neither of us knew how that scenario would turn out, and the fact that Daniel, who outranked me, threw me behind him in an act of selflessness to shield me from a potential blast or gunfire speaks volumes to his character. Moments like those weren’t unique. The group of guys I deployed with developed a love for one another that persists. It’s hard to explain. It’s a bond closer than blood and tested in the crucible of war.

Every year, when the weather begins to warm ever so slightly, I think of my time in the land of eternal sand and summer. Today, being Good Friday, turns my focus to sacrificial love. That same sergeant—Daniel—who used his body as a human shield for me during our deployment, introduced me to the creator of the universe a few years later. Through our conversations while on missions and in the years afterward, he showed me the nature of Christ. Three years after that deployment, he and I hiked to the peak of a small mountain, and he led me in a prayer for my salvation. John 15:13 (NLT) says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Growing up in the South, we’ve likely all been to church and heard about Jesus, but something was different here. There was no pretext, no greasy pastor trying to add notches to his spiritual belt, just two friends sharing the most important moment in one of their lives. I’m thankful that Daniel kept me alive on all those missions while we were in Iraq. I’m eternally grateful he guided me to accept the sacrificial love of Jesus on that mountain. I’m also thankful the Bible lays out the ruggedness of the disciples and other men of God like David and the Apostle Paul. None of these people were perfect—most were extremely rough around the edges—but they had all found perfect love. They, like us, were forgiven by the grace provided by Jesus. Happy Easter.