Risk Management Magazine

After returning home from a year in Afghanistan, I couldn’t wait to take a nice, relaxing trip with family and friends. So, two weeks after redeployment/reintegration, we packed our bags, coolers and paddleboards and headed for the beach. There, we’d join three other families already enjoying the beautiful weather. Little did I know that this trip would be anything but relaxing.

The structure wasn’t exactly what comes to mind when picturing a bridge; it was more of a low water crossing. If not for the previous days’ rain, crossing this bridge would have been simple. Now, it was flooded.

It was a typical summer night at the Joint Readiness Training Center — hot and humid. A unit was conducting an exercise that simulated an assault on a town and included mounted and dismounted Soldiers. Shortly after the exercise began, the light infantry dismounted from a truck about one kilometer from the objective and linked up with some M1 tanks.