Today’s question comes from a camera that I haven’t seen since 2009. As I’ve been sorting through boxes that I haven’t opened since before I left the Army, I’ve been finding things that I thought were lost to time…which means I’ve found at least two Leatherman tools, one Gerber multi-tool with it’s leather case, one SOG tool with case, photos aplenty, old uniforms, clothes I can only hope to fit in, and surprisingly intact after all of these years, my first digital camera, one that I had taken with me to Iraq on my second deployment. There’s tons of photos of the usual stuff on there…landscapes, friends acting like idiots, people and places from way back when…but then I found pictures of an old friend. Or enemy. I’m not quite sure where this one fell, but either way I miss the little bastard.

Meet the 2000 Nissan…random truck. I’m pretty sure that this model was a Navara, but there was nothing to identify it besides the “2400” on the bedsides. This is a Middle Eastern market truck, so let’s break down what you are really looking at: Everything forward of the bed sheet-metal wise is 1997-esque Nissan Frontier, while the back section looked much older…almost Hardbody-like. Power came from a KA24DE four-banger that was running on a shoestring and a freaking prayer through a five-speed manual and out to a rear axle that functioned. It could seat six, four in some element of comfort, and needed to be started with a flat piece of metal, like a screwdriver or a thin-bladed knife. There was no neutral safety switch, and it had many roles, from troop transport to flight line cargo hauler. Really, the truck was there when we got to Mosul, sitting parked against a barrier, covered in a layer of dust. We were told it didn’t run and wouldn’t run ever again, which in turn caused the gearheads to start tweaking on this pile. All it needed was a charged battery and  new belts.

For fifteen months, this bare-bones, beyond basic little truck served well. It was gutless and uninspiring, but compared to a HMMWV, LMTV, or for the love of all that was holy, the John Deere M-GATORs that could barely do fifteen miles an hour, the Nissan was high living, and I adopted it as my own…which meant that when it was finally running low on fuel, it was up to me to scam gasoline from the supply depot, because every other vehicle we had ran on JP-8 aviation fuel. When our tour was just about up and we had to hand the little battered Nissan over to the next platoon, I honestly felt sick. You might have read stories about people shipping over stray animals that they adopted in country, but I actually wanted to bring this little white turd home. A final insult to injury occurred when, just days after they got it, the new guys killed it. I never did hear what happened, though my memory keeps bringing up “wire fire”.

In truth, the truck would’ve needed a complete suspension restoration, the engine was 1980s technology and had maybe 25 anemic horses left in the stable, and if it could hit 60 miles an hour, chances are good that shit would start to fall off, starting with the barely-there rear view mirror. It was craptacular in every sense of the word, but you have to love a vehicle that you’ve depended on for so long. Surely, some of you out there have had a car or truck in your history like this truck…you hated it while it was there, but you kind of want it back now that it’s gone. What did you have?