Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The Echo Troop soldiers had been out searching houses and fields for insurgents all morning on the road the military calls Route Peggy. It was early afternoon and the Georgia troops were ready to call it a day.

Spc. Charles Flowers got into the Humvee, taking the seat behind the driver. Normally he would be behind the wheel. But last Thursday, Flowers decided to give Staff Sgt. Robert Hollar a break. Flowers would take the dismount seat; he would clamber out of the vehicle in case of trouble.

The five men of the Griffin-based 108th Cavalry Regiment led the convoy up the road, then heard a thundering boom. The Humvee tossed and turned like a roller coaster. For a few seconds, everything went black for Flowers.

“You just wait for the ride to stop,� he said.

When the Humvee stopped rolling, Flowers was upside down; the truck had flipped and was facing the opposite direction. Even with Flowers’ armored door in combat lock position, it had flown open.

Flowers jumped out to find gunner Spc. Charles Mays on the pavement 20 feet away.

“I did a quick check on him and told him to lay still,� said Flowers, 36, a mechanic for Delta Air Lines.

Then he found Sgt. George Draughn. Flowers looked back at the next vehicle in the convoy and called for a medic.

By then the medics were on the scene. Draughn, 29, of Hiram and Hollar, 35, of Thomaston were taken by helicopter to the Combat Surgical Hospital in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad.

Neither of them survived.

The bomb injured Mays and Sgt. Wyatt New. Mays was flown to Germany, while New was treated for minor injuries. He later returned to duty.

The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team has lost 18 soldiers since arriving in Iraq in early June. Bombs hidden on the roads, one of the leading killers of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, caused 14 of those deaths.

Just a few days ago, Flowers’ Humvee had hit a similar improvised explosive device. He was in a newly issued Humvee when they rolled over another bomb. This time Flowers lost two of his friends.

He was the only one who walked away from that Humvee unscathed. “I question that a lot,� he said Monday, the day of the memorial service for his fallen comrades.

“I should have been in the driver’s seat. Everyone tells me it wasn’t my time, that God wasn’t ready for me� he said. “I sure wish he’d let me in on his plan. What do you say to someone’s wife and kids?�

Flowers recalled a happy day in May when he and his buddy Hollar had taken their kids to see a Braves game during their 10 days of leave immediately before deployment to the Middle East.

“He loved his kids. He loved his wife,� Flowers said of Hollar. “He was always making plans for what he would do on leave, about maybe going up to Gatlinburg.�

Flowers and Hollar had known each other for five years, the same amount of time Sgt. Cleveland Carter, 41, had known Draughn.

The Clark Atlanta University police officer was in an M1A1 Abrams tank following Draughn and Hollar’s Humvee. When the bomb exploded, Carter wanted to rush to the aid of his friend.

“It’s so hard seeing a friend go down,� he said. “But you have to remain calm.�

Carter’s first sergeant told all his men to keep “your head in the game� that afternoon. They were soldiers still on duty.

But later that day, when Carter returned to his tent and looked at Draughn’s empty bunk next to his, he could no longer contain his pain.

“It’s afterward that it hits you, when your adrenaline goes down,� Carter said of the death of a man who had spent Christmas and New Year’s Day with him. The two vacationed in Cancun together and were planning a trip to Miami when they returned home.

“I just dropped. I wanted to go out and kill them all,� Carter said of the insurgents who planted the bomb.

Carter had not planned to go home to Atlanta on leave until midway through the 48th Brigade’s yearlong deployment. But now, he said, he would ask for time off in October.

“I need to get away from here,� he said.