Spare Parts

by Buzz Williams

  Beyond the berm there were minefields and booby traps, trenches and bunkers, mortars and artillery, rifles and machine guns, grenades and flamethrowers, tanks and armored vehicles, and God knows what else. . . . I felt as if I had been abducted by the monster of war. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t ready. I was going right into the fiery hell beyond that berm. And I would be going without Sgt. Moss.

  22 FEBRUARY 1991

  Our LAVs were staged in a circle like wagons in the Wild West.

  At the center we gathered for the evening brief. The sun had set and already rounds were exploding just beyond the berm. A loud thump thundered overhead. A burst of antiaircraft fire streamed into the sky. A barrage of allied bombs crunched the earth. What was going on beyond that mound of sand?

  The questions started from the back of the formation.

  “Are those rounds incoming?”

  “Can their arty hit us from here?”

  “Who’s watching the berm?”

  That was just it. We were responsible for the berm. So when Black Six got the word Iraqi forces were headed toward the berm—

  our berm—all hell broke loose.

  “Mount up! Prepare for contact at the berm! Power up your turrets!”

  I ran as fast as I could to our LAV, climbed aboard, and dropped inside the driver’s hatch. No sooner had I started installing my night sight then Nagel’s spastic voice crackled in my helmet. “Move out!

  Move out!”

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  Move out? I couldn’t even see. Instead of answering I kept both hands on the sight.

  Again the wired voice jarred my headset. “Williams! Williams!

  Fire up this beast! What are you doing down there?”

  Frustrated, I held the sight with one hand and flipped my comm switch with the other. “I am putting the fucking night sight in so I can fucking see. . . . Give me a fucking minute!”

  I slammed the sight back into the cavity and started winding the wing nuts, feverishly.

  My helmet buzzed a third time. Startled, I dropped one of the wing nuts onto the deck. “Williams! If I don’t hear this engine fire up in one second I’ll make you a scout for the rest of this goddamned war!”

  The smoke from the oil wells, combined with nightfall, left zero visibility. The instrument panel was only inches from my face and I couldn’t see the controls.

  On touch alone I flipped the ignition switch. “Fire in the hole!”

  “Forward! Go!”

  My foot was still on the brake. “Are you fucking deaf? I can’t see shit out there! Give me thirty seconds!”

  Nagel didn’t quit. He wanted to be the first to the berm. He wanted the glory of engaging, capturing, or killing—at any cost.

  “Drive by my commands! I can see!”

  I didn’t respond. If I couldn’t drive blind in LAV school with instructors I trusted, I wasn’t going to begin now.

  As I reached below for the lost wing nut, Nagel’s voice boomed over the intercom.

  “Cpl. Shane! You’re our new driver! Switch with Williams!”

  I didn’t give Cpl. Shane the chance to open the rear hatch.

  “Hold tight, Cpl. Shane! We’re on the move!”

  With all my weight I mashed the accelerator to the floor, hoping to jar Nagel right out of the turret. No such luck.

  Nagel’s voice was still in my ear. “Dougherty! Is the gun up?

  Dougherty?”

  Dougherty’s comm was down again. No comm . . . no fire. . . . .

  Nagel knew he needed to be able to speak with Dougherty to S P A R E P A R T S

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  issue the fire commands. But he didn’t need to speak to Dougherty more than he needed to guide me. He should have waited to help Dougherty. He should never have ducked inside the turret to fix those fucking cables. He should never have removed his eyes from his night vision goggles.

  Without Nagel’s voice to guide me I was left alone to navigate. I picked up a faint visual of tracks, so I followed them, figuring they would lead us to the berm. They might have if they had been LAV

  tracks, but they weren’t. They were tank tracks—tank tracks that led directly into a tank ditch. A ditch big enough to swallow an entire tank below the surface of the earth, to shield it from fire. By the time I saw the dark mass in front, it was too late. My swerve left us straddling the crater, with our left side grounded and the right side suspended in midair.

  The right four wheels dipped into the hole and the front of the vehicle smashed head-on into the far wall of the ditch. The force threw me into the steel rim of the hatch and knocked the wind out of me. We hung suspended for a moment before the inevitable rollover. My knees caught the underside of the steering wheel as we flipped, which was the only thing keeping me inside the hull. Had I fallen out I would have been crushed beneath the fifteen-ton mass of the LAV. As the vehicle turned bottom-up, my knees gave way and I dropped through the hatch onto my head. The steel hatch broke loose from the weight of the vehicle, swung down, and bashed my helmet. That was the first thing I remembered after the roll. Then screaming. A lot of screaming.

  Upside down, I lay disoriented and trapped in the two-foot space created by the height of the turret. Then I smelled it . . . felt it . . .

  and tasted it—fuel. It kick-started my senses enough that I managed to wriggle my way back into the driver’s compartment. Once inside I crawled toward the rear of the vehicle. At least I tried to. Down was up, and left was right, and I was so disoriented I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Then I remembered the red-lens Mag-Lite tied to my flak. First I flashed it toward the VC side, as it was the most accessible route to the back hatches. But Nagel’s body blocked the path—twisted, contorted, and upside down.

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  His arms were pinned beneath him, disappearing after the elbows. For all I knew his forearms lay outside the vehicle, crushed flat, or maybe even severed. And for all I cared they could have been. I hoped they were! He wasn’t getting any help from me. As I maneuvered past him on the gunner’s side of the turret, Nagel screamed, and flailed, and begged for mercy.

  The gunner’s side was also impassible. Doc lay there unconscious, beneath a pile of hundred-pound ammo boxes. One lay on his head, torqueing his neck perpendicular to his body. He was much worse off than Nagel. At least Nagel was well enough to scream. The sight of Doc’s limp body turned me back toward the driver’s hatch.

  Nagel’s bloodcurdling screams were relentless. It sounded like he was being murdered inside the turret. The others might have been screaming, too, but I didn’t hear them. Maybe they were less injured than Nagel. . . . Maybe they were more. . . . Either way I needed to get out to get some help.

  The crawl space outside of the driver’s hatch was a dead end. All around, sand. After a quick scan I determined the only way to free myself was to tunnel out. The sand was so soft, I moved it with my bare hands, reaching above my head, scooping, and sweeping it downward toward my boots. It was like swimming upward, after a dive to the bottom of a pool, toward the surface of the water. But I was swimming in sand, and the pool walls were closing in. My body slid upward, inches at a time, pinched between the sandy wall and the hull steel. The dig lasted only minutes, but they were long and tense. I feared the vehicle would shift as I tunneled, and crush me.

  When my head popped out of the sand I traded Nagel’s screams for Dougherty’s distant call.

  “Will? Nagel? Anybody?”

  “Dougherty! Over here! Can you hear me?”

  No response. My legs quivered from shock and buckled under my weight the first time I tried to stand. I crawled along the edge of the ditch to the back of the LAV. It looked so strange upside down, wheels up. The vehicle rested on the turret, with the front angling S P A R E P A R T S

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  downward, jacking the rear into the air. Once around back I saw Cpl. Shane suspended from the left troop hatch, tangled in a web
of straps and camouflage netting. As I made my way closer he kicked open the rear hatch and Nagel’s screams poured out.

  It was difficult to yell over Nagel’s agony. “Cpl. Shane! You hurt?”

  “No! Just tangled. Can you pull my rifle out?”

  His rifle had slung across his back during the rollover, and caught the underside of the hatch, preventing him from falling out. Amazingly, my knife was still in the sheath strapped to my leg. Cpl. Shane used it to cut himself free. After he dropped to the ground, he reached back inside to pull Haley out.

  By that time Dougherty had made his way to the rear as well.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling?” he asked. “I thought you were all trapped inside!”

  Dougherty hadn’t held on to the inside of the turret, like Nagel, when the vehicle pitched. He was catapulted across the desert. So far, in fact, that he hadn’t initially been able to see the vehicle from where he landed.

  Dougherty worried even more after he heard Nagel’s screams up close. “What’s the headcount?”

  Cpl. Shane reached out and touched us one by one. “You and Will are out. Nagel’s stuck in the turret. Haley and I made it out.

  That leaves. . . . Doc.”

  “Doc’s bad,” I said. “He’s real fucking bad.”

  Until I spoke the words, I had kept myself together. It was all I could do to keep from crying. “Jesus Christ, Dougherty. . . . I think Doc’s dead.”

  My mind raced through the options. Crawl back in and call on the radio. Shoot a flare. Start CPR. Stick him with morphine. Run for help. That’s it. Run for help.

  “Cpl. Shane! I’m going to follow our tracks back to our rally point. . . .”

  Before he had a chance to respond, I was running off into the darkness, staring down at the tracks. We had only driven about a half mile, but in zero visibility it seemed like a thousand miles. After 226

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  a hundred meters my legs seemed like lead, my adrenaline gone, and I slowed to a walk. Then the sky lit up. An illumination round! But is it ours, or theirs? My mortar days during weekend reserve training had taught me enough to know that illum meant take cover. There was no cover to take, but the adrenaline surge allowed me to start running again.

  The night was so dark, I nearly ran headlong into one of the LAVs back at the rally point. As I ran I shouted for help. “Corpsman up! Corpsman up! Corpsman up!”

  Sgt. Pitts was the first to stop me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and held me still. “Calm down! What happened?”

  “Our vehicle rolled about a half mile out. . . . Nagel’s trapped . . .

  and Doc’s hurt bad. . . . He might be dead. . . .”

  Sgt. Pitts mobilized a pair of vehicles and drove us out to the crash site. When we arrived, I ran to the rear hatches. Nagel’s screams had faded to a whimper, and Doc was still limp. Another illumination round lit the sky, and the crash scene. The LAV looked horrific upside down. The flickering light from the sky made it creepier still. Moments after the illumination popped, rounds started impacting. One fell in the distance. Then another fell closer.

  Sgt. Pitts called out to the rescuers, “Let’s hurry the fuck up!

  Those rounds are walking in on us!”

  I was spent. It was just too much—the roll, the run, and now artillery and mortars exploding beyond the berm. I sat down, buried my head in my hands, and fought to keep from breaking down crying. It was all I could do. My legs wouldn’t carry me farther. Sgt.

  Pitts understood. He scooped me up and carried me over the berm, where two sand dunes provided cover.

  For some time that night I lay awake thinking . . . second-guessing . . . crying . . . and praying. Back at the ditch the recovery vehicle’s winches whined as Red Two righted, and the chopper blades thumped as they flew Doc and Nagel out. The ground vibrated soothingly as bombs exploded far away, and shook violently as rounds impacted closer to the berm. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to me at that point—unless, of course, one should fall in between my dunes. But even that, as long as it was quick and painless, S P A R E P A R T S

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  wouldn’t have mattered. At times that night I would even have welcomed it.

  The first morning light showed the shambles that our crew had become. Our gear and personal effects were strewn across the desert.

  Some were between the berms, some back at the ditch. During most of the morning I worked like a zombie, painstakingly collecting, inventorying, and organizing my gear. The most difficult thing was revisiting the hole. Our LAV was gone. The tracks were haunting.

  Dougherty knew me well enough to wait until I was finished with my gear-organizing compulsions before he visited. He didn’t seem nearly as rattled as I was about the rollover. Neither were Cpl.

  Shane or Haley. They knew I was taking it hard. I felt responsible, but was playing a hell of a blame game inside my head. Interviewed for the after-action report I was adamant that Nagel was responsible.

  He and his quest to be first to the berm, to be the hero of the war, to be anything but the whining, sniveling, immature fuck that he was.

  That was my story, and I stuck to it.

  Nagel should have let me install the night sight. Nagel should have stayed topside with his night vision goggles on. Nagel should have waited for Dougherty to fix his own cables. Nagel. Nagel.

  Nagel. But deep inside I felt responsible. All my reports about Nagel were true, but they were beside the point. I was behind the wheel, succumbing to Nagel’s asinine tantrum, deciding to drive instead of switch with Cpl. Shane, following the tank tracks, and swerving too late. The guilt was paralyzing.

  The morning later brought two pieces of good news. Most important, Doc and Nagel were alive at the time they were evacuated, though we had no news on their present condition. The second scoop was that our LAV was returning around noon. Vehicles had been rolling over all across the desert, and battalion maintenance had become experts at getting them back into service. Having our LAV

  back was bittersweet. Sweet that we would be able to participate in the ground offensive as LAV crewmen instead of trench-clearing 228

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  grunts. Bitter because I was gun shy about getting back inside, sitting behind the wheel, in the turret, in the rear . . . I knew it would all come back to haunt me. And who would replace Nagel?

  We watched as our LAV approached in the distance, blurred and wavy on the horizon under the radiating heat of the afternoon sun.

  The engine’s roar grew louder as it approached, full speed, from the distance. We stood at the ridge of the berm, waiting for its arrival.

  When it was about a few hundred meters out we could see a body, exposed from the waist up, in the VC position. He was waving his arms in a jumping-jacks motion, and yelling so loudly we could hear him over the engine. Cpl. Shane used his binoculars to identify our new VC. His mouth dropped when he saw who it was.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Will!

  He was right. I couldn’t believe it. It was Sgt. Moss! Not the depressed Moss, or the awkward Moss, or the embarrassed Moss . . .

  the John Wayne Moss. When the LAV skidded to a halt, he pulled off his helmet, flipped up his collar to show off his sergeant chevrons, and stood atop the turret like Moses on the mountain.

  He leaned back to fill his lungs and then wailed, “Yahhh-hooo!

  Yeahhh, boys! Climb aboard. . . . It’s time to go make history!”

  It was one of those few times in my life when I actually believed in the power of prayer. If I had to climb back into the crypt, suit up in MOPP gear, drive over the berm, fire and kill, and maybe die in the process . . . I was glad it was going to be with Sgt. Moss.

  24 FEBRUARY 1991

  The smog from the burning oil wells blanketed the sky, hanging just below black rain clouds, making even the night sight ineffective during midday. That left me driving with my head popped just above the safety of the armor, straining my eyes to
avoid the hazards of the battlefield and keep us on the path into Kuwait City. When the rain clouds passed and the smog thinned out, we could see two hundred meters. Most of this day, though, we couldn’t see our hand in front of our faces.

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  Dougherty and Sgt. Moss were talking constantly on the intercom, scanning for enemy tanks, bunkers, trenches, mines, and troops. Cpl. Shane stood up through the top hatch in back of the vehicle to cover our rear. Haley and our new scouts, Lance Cpl.

  Bennett and Lance Cpl. Wells, prepped their trench-clearing weapons in the rear of the LAV.

  Although I wanted to be in the gunner’s seat, Sgt. Moss convinced me to remain the driver. Regardless of the initial proficiency we had when we first picked up our LAVs, I now had logged the most time behind the wheel, and Dougherty behind the gun. Sgt.

  Moss explained that he needed the most experienced driver to keep us from hitting land mines, which threatened our lives as much as hostile fire.

  That was true. The path through the breach was laced on both sides with engineer tape and tags marking mines. We rolled through the minefield breach for about an hour before entering the battlefield and opening our formation. Much of the Iraqi armor we encountered was in flames, already destroyed by the wave of M1

  Abrams tanks that had rolled in ahead of us. We were to engage anything and everything that the tanks left behind. Dougherty pumped armor-piercing rounds into any tank that appeared intact, to be sure there were no Iraqis inside waiting to fire on us. It seemed more like target practice than combat.

  The biggest threat during the first hours of the ground war was the hidden bunkers and trenches that harbored Iraqi infantrymen.

  Unlike the unknown danger of the stationary tanks the trenches were manned, and assumed to be hostile. Our first encounter with trench warfare was nothing like what we had practiced with Staff Sgt. Rodriguez. Not for us crewmen, anyway. Sgt. Moss was the first to identify the thin dark line, about a hundred meters to our front.

  We could see enemy soldiers moving in and around the trenches as we halted and called in our report. At first we followed procedure, and called to ask permission to engage the target. But there were so many targets, and so many requests to engage, the radio was jammed with traffic.