March 26, 2003
"Critter" Crittenden
I used my GPS and walked tank to tank through the dust storm to Johnson’s tank to see how he was doing after his night out. I climbed up on the tank’s big deck and lowered myself down through the hatch into the turret. It was significantly more cramped than our luxurious Bradley digs, and smelled of rank sweat and grease down there. I guess it’s like houses. You don’t notice the smell of your own, but other people’s smell different.
“I thought last night was the last night,” said Johnson, 26, a gunner from Panama City, Fla. ”I ain’t leaving this tank again unless I have to go to the bathroom, and then I’m tying cord around me.”
Around sunset the night before, when the storm was at its worst and the air all around us had turned blood red, Johnson had climbed out to walk over to the next tank in the line, 200 meters away. He wanted to tell Sgt. John Miller, newly shifted from Johnson’s tank to the next one as tank commander, that he couldn’t find Miller’s big missing bag of M&M’s. Johnson figured he’d stay and socialize with the other crew for a while.
“At first I could see the tank,” he said. “Then the sand kicked up and I lost it. I turned around to go back to my own tank, but I couldn’t see it anymore, either. I lost my direction.” ...
