The first part of this story features Yarmouk Traffic Circle, a traffic feature in Mosul that survives to this day, and which was the bane of all who encountered it. Probably about a quarter-mile across and with five major roads, including two four-lane highways, and countless little alleys all leading into it, plus dozens of low-rise buildings all around and, during the day, typically no fewer than 100 Iraqi cars zooming in and out in all directions, it was and is essentially impossible to secure while you were moving through it. You’d have to permanently commit a company team to it. There was no real going around it since it lies on one of the only modern roads going through what was still, in 2008, at least a mostly intact medieval city. When we first got to Iraq, we tried various schemes to secure it on the fly while driving through, but it never really worked because you never had the numbers to cover everything at once. About all it had going for it was that you were never in the circle itself for very long, so you just sort of cinched up your seat belt, pulled on your gloves and hoped for the best. We never got hit there, but there were definitely a number of IEDs/VBIEDs/firefights over the years.

MSR Tampa is Iraq Highway 1, which runs up the West side of Mosul. Driving through in 2008-9 was a weird juxtaposition of cell phone stores with neon lights and air conditioners mixed in the same block with large buildings completely flattened, and car-sized craters. By 2018, of course, the whole place looked like Stalingrad, and for the same reason.