America's North Shore Journal

reprinted from May 16 2007

Ashely and Tasha's mother sends the the fol­low­ing from May 10:

I am OK!

Just wanted every­one to hear my story before it gets blown way out of pro­por­tion.
Yes…I did get hit with a road­side bomb (IED)
Yes…I am ok. I only have a few lit­tle cuts and bruises
Yes…I do have some hear­ing loss in my right ear
No…I did not do com­bat rolls out of the truck while still mov­ing
No…I did not hit it on pur­pose (i didn’t see it till last sec)
Yes…My truck did catch on fire imme­di­ately after the detonation

The IED was called a pres­sure plate…a thing where once there is weight put on it, it will cause it to det­o­nate. My dri­ver and I saw a lit­tle pot hole in the road at the last sec­ond. My dri­ver swerved to the left to miss it and we both saw some­thing black in it. I was about to call it up on the radio but my side front tire hit it. The IED went off under me, which is where the fuel tanks are.

The truck imme­di­ately caught on fire and we could not see through the wind­shield due to the flames and smoke. I told my dri­ver to stop the vehi­cle. He was hav­ing a hard time to get it to stop…it is a very big truck and going 45 mph will take some time until a dead stop. I didn’t think the truck was gonna stop but as I was about to tell my dri­ver to bail, he brought it to a stop.

I told him that there was no way I could get out on my side because my side was the side on fire. He jumped out and I was almost right behind him when I got caught on some­thing in the truck. I tried to get my weapon but couldn’t tell where it was through all of the smoke. I con­tin­ued to free myself from the cooler that was in the back seat. Just as I was about to climb to the front to get out, I got caught on my head set. I couldn’t find the cord to unplug it so I strug­gled with it to get it off.

This whole time my dri­ver was yelling for me because he real­ized that I was not out of the truck. I finally got untan­gled and bailed out the dri­ver door. As I jumped out I saw a post stick­ing up and I could have sworn I was gonna land on it. Thank God I didn’t.

I fell to the ground…it is a long drop. When I got up the truck totally burst into flames. I ran to the gun­truck and got in. We then watched the truck burn for about twenty min­utes before we left the scene. All of my stuff was in it. I have noth­ing. All I have is a cou­ple of uni­forms and some civil­ian clothes wait­ing for me back at base. I dont even have a weapon right now.

That all hap­pened after 2 am. I got word around 7 am that the truck was still in flames. It will be on fire for a while. Even­tu­ally some­one will pick it up and bring it back to base.

Every­one was ok and I am ready for another mis­sion.
–tasha

More about Tasha and her twin sis­ter, Ash­ley:
Our Best: Babe Edi­tion TWINS!
Help Our Deployed Sol­diers
Inter­view With Ash­ley and Tasha