Tyler Jewkes, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by John C. Worsencroft, December 14, 2009: Saving the Legacy tape no. IA-26

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Tyler Jewke 14 c m r 20 9 till felt safe enough just being inside the vehicle and you re in ther ju t becau it really didn't seem like it was that big of a process. Then I think it was about, about three weeks after we'd been there-it wa August, somewhere between August 15th and 22°d that we were on the gates-I just switched places with Sergeant Redhouse, or Specialist Redhouse at the time. Both of us, we'd been working that gate, we'd just switched places. I was sitting inside the ammo carrier and he was standing outside on the ground on the [unclear] barrier, and we were just sitting there talking to each other. Next thing happened, a mortar landed-or a rocket, it wasn't a mortar-landed about ten yards behind Redhouse and I just dropped into the hatch as low as I could get. Just dropped down. A bunch of debris came flying in. It was really dusty, really smoky. At that time it was dusk. When we were in Ramadi, we got hit with mortar and rocket rounds at dawn and dusk just on clockwork. Every morning, every night we'd get hit, usually about three or four rounds. So it wasn't really anything that we were concerned about, but that time it came extremely close to us. The benefit we had is just before, just that previous day the sergeant that was up in the tower told us that we needed to build some barriers to kind of create some type of separation there on all sides so we'd have 360 degree coverage if we're standing outside. So we had already started to fill up sandbags and pile them up. So we had maybe a row of four or five, or a stack of four or five sandbags, and the mortar landed directly behind those sandbags. So just as a result that those were there that did a lot to help Specialist Redhouse. He still had to come home as a result of it. He got shrapnel in the buttocks. So he was laying in a hospital bed in Germany eating ice cream for quite a while. Then my 25