Soldier a father figure
The Ogden-based 172nd Medical Logistics Battalion of which he was part joined a convoy in Kuwait transporting ammunition and supplies to the fast-moving front-line forces. The fighting wasn't too far in front of them.
"You could see the missiles and hear the large-caliber guns going off," McBride said.
The casualties of war were right in front of him, too. The convoy passed smoldering cars with dead bodies inside. About halfway into the two-day trip over rugged roads, the supplies trucks came under fire.
"We had a little excitement going on, probably not as much as is going on now, but for the time, it was a little tense," he said.
Convoys, McBride said, travel light and fast. Troops are told not to engage in gunfire unless they are in imminent danger. They aren't equipped with heavy weaponry. "All we had was M-16s," he said.
The convoy couldn't get to a safe area, so it hunkered down for the night "kind of like a wagon train," McBride said.
"You don't know when you go to bed at night if you'll be OK in the morning."
That would be one of several convoys between Kuwait and Baghdad that McBride participated in as his MedLog unit delivered medical supplies and repaired medical equipment for hospitals and clinics. "We were on the go most of the time," he said.
McBride, 51, has been on the go several times in his 17-year military career, including six years of active duty. He joined the Navy just out of high school in 1973 thinking he would be sent to Vietnam but was stationed in Athens, Greece. As a reservist, he did a tour in Saudi Arabia as part of Desert Storm.
A father of seven children and grandfather of nine, McBride says he goes overseas to protect his family.
"I'd rather go over there myself than have my sons go over. I think I'd rather be in harm's way than have my kids go through something like that. I'd rather fight the bad guys over there than have them come over here and destroy our way of life," he said.
McBride found himself as a father figure to some of the younger soldiers deployed for the first time. He made himself available to the homesick, the scared and the frustrated. "I've been around the block," he said. "Most of them are young like my kids."
Now more than two years removed from Iraq, McBride has had a chance to reflect on the war.
"I hope there is going to be an end in sight," he said. At the same, he says it could take generations for democracy to take hold. "You just can't give them freedom and send them on their way. But I think anything is better than what they had."
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