{"id":577184,"date":"2010-05-25T00:34:58","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T04:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/?p=19880"},"modified":"2010-05-25T00:34:58","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T04:34:58","slug":"faces-of-war-the-mechanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/577184","title":{"rendered":"Faces of War: The Mechanic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even the toughest military vehicles break down in the harsh conditions of Southern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Temperatures are topping 110 degrees daily.\u00a0 There are almost no paved roads in Helmand Province and none in the 1<sup>st<\/sup> Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion\u2019s area of operation, plus the sand and grit wreaks havoc with many of the moving parts on the LAV\u2019s (light armored vehicles) and the bigger trucks and personnel carriers the Marines use.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why Corporal Rhett Buford and his team are so busy.<\/p>\n<p>The 21 year old from Charleston, South Carolina is known as a\u00a0 \u201cmaintainer\u201d, which is Marine-speak for mechanic.<\/p>\n<p>In 14 days at Forward Operating Base Payne, he\u2019d already fixed 12 engines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s all I\u2019ve ever done my whole life\u2026\u201d he says during a short break on another blistering hot day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s what my dad and stepdad do, what my granddad did\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard sometimes\u2026 it\u2019ll test you, it\u2019s a little stressful, but it\u2019s what I signed up for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Buford, who enlisted when he was 18, also did a tour in Iraq, repairing the LAV\u2019s Detroit Diesel 6-cylinder Turbos in Anbar Province.<\/p>\n<p>He says he hasn\u2019t decided if he\u2019ll re-enlist next year.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if his family is nervous about him being in a war zone, he says he tells them not to worry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m a mechanic!\u201d he says, with a big grin.<\/p>\n<p>A very busy mechanic for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even the toughest military vehicles break down in the harsh conditions of Southern Afghanistan. Temperatures are topping 110 degrees daily.\u00a0 There are almost no paved roads in Helmand Province and none in the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion\u2019s area of operation, plus the sand and grit wreaks havoc with many of the moving parts on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4752,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-577184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}