Private Military Contractor International April 2014 | Page 26

ones that had been tested in battle. What
better place to look than South Africa?
The South Africans had over 14 years’
experience making explosive-resistant
vehicles, and the US Army was already using
a version of the Casper under license. Spoilt
for choice, the Reva was chosen as the main
escort vehicle, as it was heavily armoured for
its size, but manoeuvrable, four-wheeled and
with cross country capability. It was designed
for a four-man crew, but could carry up to six
passengers comfortably inside at the same
time. With two gun turrets, each mounting a
PKM Soviet general-purpose machine gun, it
was a formidable bit of kit – one that saved my
life on numerous occasions.
At the time, American units were using four
or five Humvees to escort up to 100 civilian
cargo-carrying vehicles. When they came
under fire, the escorts in many cases were too
far down the convoy (in some cases several
kilometres away) to give any substantial
support. The convoys were too big, and the
Humvees too few to make a difference. There
are several documented cases of convoys
being wiped out with hardly any return fire
from their American escorts, who were just
overwhelmed by the enormity of the task they
were presented with.
Despite the fact that they would get more
pay for more vehicles escorted, Aegis chose
to cut the size of the convoys down to 16
trucks, but even then we would cover over

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a kilometre and a half in length. Each convoy
would have an additional vehicle in the shape
of a ‘bobtail‘, a spare cab that could be used
to recover any trailers from broken down
units. This would normally have the convoy
mechanic in it as well. The escort would be
provided by two Revas, one at the back and
one at the front, with at least three level-14
armoured hard cars, each armed with a PKM
machine gun and carrying a crew of four Iraqi
security guards, spread among the convoy.
If we were ambushed, whichever Reva
was closest would engage the enemy fire
positions, while three hard cars took the
convoy out of the ambush and several
kilometres down the road to safety. While this
was happening, the second Reva would join
in the fire fight, usually slow-rolling to give the
gun turrets a more stable platform to fire from,
and to give the convoy a chance to escape. In
99 per cent of the ambushes I was in, we won
the fire-fight, and the enemy, under a withering
hail of one-in-one tracer from our four PKMs,
gave up the fight.
During this time, the hard cars would stop the
convoy where they thought it safe to do so.
The convoy would then be split into two lines
of trucks, one on one side of the road, and
one on the other. This gave us the chance to
rescue any wounded drivers from the inside of
a safe corridor formed by the vehicles, using
the trucks as cover. The Iraqi security team
leader’s vehicle would be at the front of the

convoy, straddling the road to prevent head-on
attacks, and the other two vehicles would be
at an angle across the road to the rear of the
convoy. This way they could cover the rear in
case we lost the fight and were destroyed.
They were also in a position to give us heavy
covering fire should we need it while breaking
contact. Once we had finished with the
enemy, we simply drove up to the trucks, with
the team leader’s vehicle driving through the
centre of the corridor to take up his position at
the front of the convoy, and the rear vehicle
dropped in behind. In this fashion we could
take on multiple ambushes one after the other
without losing the ability to protect the convoy.
In the two-and-a-half years I served on
convoy protection this system worked every
time.