One duty that plagues nearly every junior enlisted soldier is to conduct preventive maintenance checks and services, or in the Army’s acronym soup, PMCS. Soldiers follow a checklist for each vehicle or piece of equipment and note any deficiencies, such as leaks, dents, or broken components. PMCS is so ubiquitous in the Army that it becomes a run-out-the-clock situation. PMCS may be allotted two hours, and soldiers will inspect their trucks, however halfheartedly, for the full two hours regardless of how long the procedure actually takes.
Army Sgt. Chris Peters recently shared an experience that offered him a fresh perspective on maintenance. Peters enlisted in active duty as a wheeled vehicle mechanic straight out of high school. His first duty station was in Alaska. Peters described flying in on a tiny plane to Ketchikan on Revillagigedo Island. “Water water water, rocks, runway, down.” A boat took them to Annette Island, where he and his fellow soldiers would help maintain construction equipment for National Guard troops who were building a road. On Annette Island, Peters and his fellow soldiers traveled seven miles each day to their work shed, riding in an old Army ambulance, mounted on a pickup body, a driver and passenger in the cab with Peters and three fellow mechanics in the big metal box in the back.
The road was a rough single lane cut into the side of a cliff, winding down a steep hill. Logs provided a guard rail to prevent vehicles from plummeting off the cliff. Since two vehicles couldn’t pass each other on this road, traffic was routed down the hill in the morning and back up in the afternoon. One morning, the Army mechanics were eager to get to the welding and hydraulic system work on the construction equipment but didn’t bother conducting PMCS on their old transport. On the drive down the hill, the men talked and joked. They couldn’t see out except through the small window in the back of the pickup cab. The vehicle hit a bump. Then another, harder. The guys pitched a little when the truck swerved to the right. They pitched back. Another big bump. “They’re messing with us,” said a private. They were thrown to one side of the box as they took a corner way too fast. The joking stopped.
Peters looked down into the cab and knew at once they were in trouble. The guys up front were too quiet to be joking around. The brakes were out. They were flying down a rough winding road on the edge of a cliff with no brakes and no seat belts. The four men hopelessly searched for the best way to hold on. They considered jumping out, but the refitted ambulance had been built to prevent patients from escaping on their own, and the doors could not be opened from the inside. The passenger gripped the dashboard tightly. The driver mumbled a curse, repeatedly stomping the brake and downshifting. “Aim for the ruts and holes,” said the passenger. “That’ll slow us down.”
“It was like a big metal death trap,” Peters told me. He didn’t think he’d live to see 20. “We were all pretty scared. Our eyes were big and wide. When you’re doing it, it feels like an eternity, but it probably only lasted a minute and a half.”
The road turned to the left. The driver put the truck into the dirt and shrubberies on the right. Finally, they stopped. Heart rates settled. Then, the four mechanics in the back had to hurry three miles on foot to retrieve the tools necessary to patch up the problem in the brake system temporarily. Even then, everyone but the driver walked to their repair shop where permanent repairs could be done on the old ambulance. Looking back, Sgt. Chris Peters would remind all those soldiers reluctantly schlepping through their PMCS duties, “Preventative maintenance is important.”
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns. Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
