2 Million Miles, Makeshift Armor And No Fatalities

"We realize they had a limited number" of ceramic-equipped vests, Breeding said. "One thing I didn't think they realized is how the transporters are on the front line, too."

Some things the truckers could change themselves. Makeshift armor was cut from steel plates at the machine shops in the sprawling base set up on a former Iraqi airfield outside Balad, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Driver-side doors got steel plating, later replaced by sheets of an alloy called Armox. Kevlar-coated ballistic blankets were laid on cab floors. Cargo Humvees became battle wagons, their back ends enclosed in steel that protected the soldier manning the .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the rear.

"You came here and basically you took care of yourself," said Spec. David Howard.

The improvised armor made the company, which is due to leave Iraq this month, the envy of incoming units.

Sgt. 1st Class Kelvin Davenport, who will return to work as a sniper on the police SWAT team in Bristol, said the newcomers ask, "When are you leaving? Can we get your vehicles?"

There was a limit, however, to how much the truckers could do to armor their own bodies. The Kevlar vests had no ceramic plates, and there was no space between layers of Kevlar to slip in an improvised plate.

Vests with slots to accommodate plates arrived in June, but the boron carbide ceramic plates did not begin making their way to the unit until November. The entire company was finally outfitted in January.

"We got that stuff after we got off the road," said Sam Stone, a mechanic and part-time driver, shaking her head.

The unit was in fact still driving in January, but by then much of the military transport was being handled by a civilian firm, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., a subsidiary of Halliburton. The 1032nd provided the armed escort, sending its makeshift battle wagons ahead to scout for roadside bombs -- Davenport spotted more than 30 himself -- and bringing up the rear, still the most dangerous position.

"KBR was better equipped than we were," said Stone, a student from Chatham. "We used to joke about that. All their drivers had actual bulletproof vests."

Many of the unit's 105 drivers recount close calls. More than a dozen of their trucks were damaged by roadside explosives. But only five people were wounded, and all five returned to duty.

Two of the wounded were hit not by roadside bombs but by mortar attacks around the 1032nd's original quarters at the corner of Texas and David Letterman Drive on the Balad base. "I think that was scarier than driving," said Pilson, idling with his fellow drivers in the shade of a eucalyptus the other day. "You wake up in the night to a boom, your heart stops, man. You're supposed to feel safe here."

The men beside him nodded and chuckled. National Guard units grapple with a reputation as the military's second-class citizens, frequently accorded less respect than reservists. But the sense of family so often found in shared adversity has a more familiar feeling in a unit where the youngest member is 19 and the oldest 59. The only death in the 1032nd this year was from cancer. It killed a man who had survived Vietnam.

"We've been lucky," said Spec. Michael Bauman, 40, a construction worker from Hillsville. "I mean, you consider over 2 million miles in this area, we've been lucky.

"It's the heat that kills you."