http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20040829/ts_latimes/iniraqroadwarriorsdeliverthegoods&cid=2026&ncid=1480<snip>
"Put your game face on," he says, strapping on a helmet and bulletproof vest as the call to roll out crackles across the radio. "It's time to put on the gloves."
Over the next three hours, Winter and the other truck drivers in his convoy will rumble through a landscape of violence and fear. They will take fire from Iraqi insurgents. They will pass through blinding black smoke from roadside fires. They will be stuck for tense moments on a stretch of highway famous for its ambushes.
It will, in sum, be a normal day for the truck drivers of KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. that finds itself on the front lines of the deadliest war the United States has fought since Vietnam.
Halliburton allowed a reporter to accompany a convoy on a typical run, providing the first glimpse of the hazards faced by its drivers, many of them blue-collar workers seeking to get ahead. Certain security measures were not allowed to be disclosed.