There’s an old saying that everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. In Washington, DC I imagine that happens if your car stalls out in rush hour and every news station reports on “stalled car blocking the middle lane.” But we had one soldier who got far more than fifteen minutes of it, all over the 6:00 news.

We drove 915 trucks, which are very similar to tractor trailors, except green. The trailer part is a flatbed, so pretty much anything can be put on it. Add sideboards and a tarp and you can carry pallets of mail as we did during Desert Storm. A forklift can add a shipping container, or load poles. Lots of things can go on it.

We also had two main roads that we could take. But had two bridges. The design was strange because the bridges were together, and the road dipped under the first bridge, and then came up. If the drivers had a trailer, they were not supposed to go on that road, becauase there wasn’t enough clearance.

One of the drivers was carrying two 20 foot shipping containers on the trailer. They contained medical supplies. He forgot about the second bridge and went under it with the trailer. Hit it hard enough to knock off one shipping container and damage the other. Medical supplies were scattered all over the street, and the news crews came out to take pictures. Accident! Military truck! Terrible! Shocking!

We had a second accident, which occurred a few years later. The news footage showed the truck—no trailer—sitting on the freeway divider at an angle. They’d flown a helicopter over it. The mutliple car accident had occured in front of the military truck, and the driver went on the embankment to avoid hitting the disabled cars and also to get out of way. But if you listened to the media, it was “Army driver causes accident.”

Sometimes what seems like the truth isn’t.