The boy’s father boarded the aircraft alongside his son but wouldn’t speak to us. He just glared at us with his sun-darkened, wrinkled eyes. It was as if he expected us to try to kill them both at any minute. The little boy, on the other hand, quickly stole our hearts. We could see that he was in pain and utterly terrified. The sound of the helicopter was probably the loudest, most frightening thing he had ever experienced, and Thor, who was checking his vitals, was clearly scaring him. It was at that time my medic won my loyalty forever.
I had never really noticed, but apparently, Thor carried a Beanie Baby–sized teddy bear on his vest for times just like this. When he pulled it from its pouch and then lifted the boy’s hand to place the bear on his chest, the little boy’s fear disappeared. The smile that briefly crossed his face before he snuggled into the teddy bear was the type of moment that reminded us why we were over there.
After we got him back to the base and into the hospital, I couldn’t seem to get him out of my mind. I kept going back to visit this little angel, as I often did my other patients, to see how he was doing. Each day he looked a little better. On the third day, I came in to see him, but he wasn’t there. I was disappointed not to see him but was so happy that he had recovered enough to go home. One of the nurses who knew me walked over to me as I smiled down at his empty bed.
“I’m so sorry. I guess it was just too much for his little lungs.”
He hadn’t gotten better—he had contracted pneumonia and died the previous night. I walked out trying to convince myself that it was okay, that he had died peacefully, but no matter how I painted it in my mind, to this day I cry for that sweet casualty of this terrible war.
—
Soon enough we were replaced by another crew for their six-week rotation, and we returned to Kandahar. While we hated being back under the microscope of the brass and other “non-ers,” being at Kandahar Airfield (KAF) did have its benefits. Since we would once again be working only twelve-hour shifts with a twelve-hour break, we could count on a good night’s sleep (if one of our eight roommates didn’t leave their damn alarm on). We also were happy about getting a decent cup of coffee at the Canadian Tim Hortons.
The lodging at KAF was sort of like long double-wides. The cement-floored rooms contained four bunk beds, eight particle-board wardrobes with a couple of drawers in them, and no windows. But with a little ingenuity, you could make the barebones lodging quite comfortable.
I bought a great Afghan rug for a hundred dollars to cover up the cement, hung up a sheet for some privacy, then strung a few Christmas lights overhead to get some light without bothering those nearby who were on opposite shifts. I ordered groceries online from a website that would mail me nonperishables like powdered milk, which I would mix up to pour over the cereal I always grabbed from the chow hall. The chow hall was all juice, soda, and water. Milk was, oddly enough, one of the things I missed most from home.
KAF was also fun because of all the different people we could interact with there. I was particularly close to our Army comrades. We often flew escort for the unarmed Dustoff guys. These are the crews whose primary mission is medevac. The Red Cross on the tail of their aircraft demanded that they be unarmed, but this didn’t matter to our enemies. They would kill someone trying to save a life (often an Afghan life) just as quickly as they would someone shooting at them. Between missions, I really enjoyed getting to know the Dustoff crews. Their tactics differed from ours tremendously, and I felt like it made me a better wingman to understand how they flew so that I could predict their actions better during a mission.
While on shift at the TOC, there was a litany of things to do with ourselves to pass time between missions. While I certainly played my share of Xbox, one of the things I enjoyed most was double-checking my gear and cleaning my rifle. It was a ritual at the start of each shift to go to my locker and ensure that everything was right where it should be. But on one particular shift, I was in for a surprise. Ammo was tightly controlled, and for good reason. You had to answer to your chain of command anytime you fired your weapon, and every round was carefully tracked and counted. That day I stared dumbfounded into my locker until it finally soaked in. I was clearly missing a magazine of 9mm ammo for my handgun. But that was impossible. No one was more careful about their gear than I was—no one.
I started tearing apart my locker, looking for it, refusing to accept the fact that it was missing. I turned out every pocket, emptied every bag, and desperately ran my fingers along the edges of the locker. I must have searched for twenty minutes. Then I heard a chuckle behind me that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Lose something?”
It was the guy who told me he didn’t want to fly with me because I was a woman: Richard. He was leaning against the lockers across from mine, eating a Ding Dong. He shook his head and gave a short chuckle as he walked away. I felt in my gut in that instant that he had taken it and there would be no finding it now. Furious, I made sure my radio was turned on, the volume high enough to hear a REDCON call, and I stormed out of the TOC. I found myself walking down the taxiway, my heart pounding, my stomach in knots. Being around the aircraft usually reminded me why I was here and kept me from going crazy, but this time, nothing helped. I was still livid. Then I looked up and saw the lights on in the Army TOC, so I decided to pay them a visit. I could use some friendly faces, and unfortunately, I already knew from experience that none of the guys in my squadron would take my side against Richard.
Luckily for me, a few of the pilots I had gotten to know were hanging out and greeted me with cheery salutations. In that low moment, it felt really good to be treated like I belonged. I’d been hanging out with them for about an hour and was starting to feel a little less angry when one of them pulled me aside and asked me what was wrong. He could tell I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t help it—I relayed to him the whole story, half expecting him to report me for the missing ammo.
“Who cares what one old fart thinks?” he asked.
“No, it’s more than that. I’m going to get my ass handed to me over the missing ammo,” I replied. “I guess I better just go report it missing and get it over with.”
“Oh, is that what’s bothering you? Here, I have an extra mag,” he said, and handed one over without hesitation.
I stood there staring at my salvation resting in my palm. I sputtered a “thank you” and stared up at him.
“Don’t worry.” He laughed, noting the disbelieving look on my face. “I can get more.”
I couldn’t believe it. Clearly things were different in the Army, and it made me realize how ridiculous some of our Air Force rules were. I felt a knot loosen in my chest. I threw my arms around him in an uncharacteristic hug, and he just laughed and patted my shoulder. My relief was almost overwhelming. From that moment on, I never let my ammunition out of my sight again—I took it with me everywhere I went.
I walked back to my TOC and slipped the spare mag into my vest in my locker. Just then I started to worry. I couldn’t pretend I had never lost the magazine; above all, I prided myself on my integrity. But mere minutes later, I happened to overhear Richard tattling on me for the missing ammo. Before I could even turn around, my commander stalked into the room with Richard on his heels.
“Jennings,” he barked. “Can you account for your ammo?”
I looked Richard square in the eye. “Yes, sir, I can,” I told him.
“Bullshit,” Richard said.
“Show me,” my commander instructed, a tired edge to his voice. I think he had seen this particular prank before, and he had better things to do with his time.
“Here you go.” I waved my arm like Vanna White at my vest hanging in my locker. He counted and turned to Richard.
“She’s good to go. Anything else?”
Richard just stormed off without answering. My commander shook his head and started to walk back to the desk he occupied.
He turned around. “That’s all I needed, MJ.”
“Right, but I have to tell you—” I started to say, but he just raised a hand and cut me off. I could see in his face that he knew exactly what had happened.
“No, you really don’t. You’re good to go, and that’s all I need to know. Hang in there, MJ. You’re doing a great job.”
Over the weeks that followed, rumors circulated about the incident that were even more painful than the moment itself. A friend reported to me that Richard started telling people about my “lost” magazine and that he happened to have it on good authority that I had lost it “out by the fence.”
When this rumor was relayed to me by a fellow pilot, I was confused. Did he mean I’d lost my ammo while I was jogging the perimeter? The pilot shook his head uncomfortably and explained to me that Richard was insinuating I’d been on my knees, servicing a fellow airman, and must have dropped it in the heat of the moment.
My stomach roiled, and I felt like throwing up. I had been so careful since arriving in Kandahar to stay above this sort of thing. I hadn’t so much as flirted with any aircrew members precisely to avoid being made into such a joke. My behavior thus far was above reproach, and now this guy was spreading rumors all over the squadron about me just because I had foiled his plot and made him look like an ass instead of the other way around? I couldn’t believe it.
Back at the barracks, I was telling a friend about it in the bathroom we all shared. One of the other girls overheard us and chimed in.
“But I don’t see what the big deal is. It isn’t true, so why do you care?” I just shook my head. This particular girl had a different standard of behavior than I did and epitomized everything I was trying to avoid. Of course she wouldn’t understand.
I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t the fact that he had lied about the sexual act that was bothering me. It was the fact that Richard and the others didn’t see me as a strong, competent, well-trained pilot who deserved his respect. Just because my anatomy was different from his, he had to objectify and sexualize me. He had to paint me in a role subservient to him and his fellow men, and what was worse, they had gone along with it. I could no longer pretend he was the only one who felt that way just because he was the only one who was dumb enough to actually say it out loud. Enough of them had been entertained by his gossip that the rumor had made it all the way back to me.
I was furious and decided I wouldn’t stand for this treatment. I wasn’t trying to demand their respect. I had earned their respect, dammit. It was obvious that I was never going to fit in with this unit. About half of the guys were really awesome, and I would love to fly with them again someday. But that other half, the ones who defined their masculinity by the job they did, were obviously threatened by the fact that I was just as good at my job as they were. After all, if this job made them a man and a woman did it just as well or better than them, what did that mean for them?
—
Over the next few weeks I found myself spending more and more time alone. It was an entirely self-imposed isolation. I withdrew from the people around me, no longer knowing who my real friends were. I would have taken a bullet for any one of those guys, but many of them apparently didn’t feel the same way. They just wanted me to disappear.
Outside the TOC, there were a few cargo bins, like the ones you’d see stacked up at shipping docks, where we kept various pieces of equipment and supplies. Someone had built a gazebo on top of one along with a rickety staircase that led up to it. Not a lot of people hung out up there, partly due to the smell of the nearby “shit pond.” The base’s sewage was sent there, and we joked daily about the lovely smell of Kandahar. In a stroke of brilliant engineering, the flightline area was positioned directly downwind of the shit pond. But to be honest, I preferred it to the stench of male chauvinism given off by some of my fellow airmen.
The Christmas lights on the gazebo emitted a colorful, soft glow, and I would usually just enjoy the solitude watching the sun set while smoking a good cigar. Occasionally someone would come up to join me and chitchat, but I wasn’t much for conversation those days.
About halfway through the deployment, at one of my lowest moments, I was leaning on the railing, looking out over the flightline at night, when I heard heavy boots stomping up the unsteady stairs. I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t care.
“What the fuck is this?” I heard an unfamiliar voice declare, and I turned to see a new face.
“Hi,” I said, not offering my name or my hand. I had grown untrusting over the last few months.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Hi. I’m Steve.”
I shook his outstretched hand and said, “MJ.”
“Good to meet you,” he said. “Now what the fuck is this?” he asked, looking around at the view.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Over the next twenty minutes or so, I ruminated with him about the glory of the gazebo and the lovely stench coming from the shit pond. Then I gave him the lay of the land at KAF and he told me a little bit about himself.
He was part of a unit from California that had just arrived to do their rotation in the TOC next to ours. We would continue doing medevac while they pulled the CSAR alert. I didn’t know it then, but Steve Burt, a Flight Engineer from Oregon who served the 129th Rescue Squadron in the California Air National Guard, would eventually become one of my closest friends.
Steve was soon joined by other members of his unit, and within minutes I felt my mood lift. These guys instantly welcomed me, happy for the intel I was giving them about where to get the best coffee and how to order cigars. It wasn’t long before we were laughing and kicking back.
Then my radio crackled, and I grabbed it off of my belt as I dashed for the stairs, handing Steve my cigar as I ran past him.
“REDCON ONE,” I heard blaring from all the radios scattered around the area as I jogged off.
“Have fun!” Steve called after me, raising my cigar in salute. My mind was on the mission at hand, but there was certainly a little more pep in my step as I headed out to the aircraft and spun her up, ready for the next trip across the fence. I knew in my heart that I had found my people, and I couldn’t wait to hang out with them again.
A couple of weeks later, my first impression of these guys was cemented. It was July Fourth, and apparently, they felt like celebrating. A bunch of their guys transformed themselves into walking wounded by covering themselves with gauze and Ace bandages. They marched down the flightline beating a makeshift drum, then entered the British hangar to the astonishment of our allies inside.
The California commander approached the British commander, lightly slapped her across the face with a glove, and challenged her and her unit to a water gun battle for colonial independence. Preparations were made, and a giant water gun and balloon war ensued. I watched from the sidelines as others from my unit grumbled their disapproval, but I looked on, glassy-eyed—wishing I were part of their team.
Over the next couple of months, I spent a lot of time next door to my own TOC in the CSAR building, hanging out with the guys from California. We would hit chow together, play basketball or work out together, and kick one another’s butts at Halo. This fantastic group of men and women were laid-back in attitude but tight when it came to the things that mattered, somehow easygoing while simultaneously maintaining very high standards. They were quick to laugh and treated each other like family. I knew my unit resented my hanging out with them, but I honestly couldn’t have cared less.
—
Within a few weeks, when it came time for my unit to go home, we all had thoughts of family, cheeseburgers, beer, and clean air at the forefront of our minds, but to be honest, I was in no rush to go back stateside with my unit. While I considered a few of them to be friends, I’d had just about enough of the rest of them and their shitty attitudes.
As
it happened, I had heard that one of the pilots from the unit coming in to replace us had a wife who was about to have a baby. I had been looking for an opportunity to keep racking up my combat hours, and since I was more than happy to stick around with my new buds from the California unit, I decided to volunteer to augment the incoming unit. I would pull my second tour in Afghanistan without ever going back home.
My unit thought I was crazy, but I waved good-bye to them happily as they boarded their plane. I would never have chosen to stick around with those guys, but I was really looking forward to staying to get to know my new, temporary unit. Whoever they were, I doubted they’d be as cool as the folks from California. But I also knew they couldn’t be as bad as some of the people I’d flown with from New York.
Lucky for me, my new unit, the 33rd Rescue Squadron from Kadena, Japan, was another awesome group of folks. I was truly excited to be flying with them. Some of them had been to Kandahar before, since the active-duty folks deployed a lot more frequently than us Guard people.
Right off the bat, they crewed me with a seasoned Flight Engineer and Gunner but an inexperienced Aircraft Commander. The AC was a young guy named Mike who was being groomed for Weapons School. Weapons School was like our version of Top Gun, where the best of the best would go to train. I was excited to see what I could learn from him.
As it turned out, though, flying with this guy would be no learning experience. Mike would yank and bank the aircraft into aggressive attitudes (the position of the aircraft relative to the ground), frequently putting his crew in danger.
More than once I expressed the opinion to him that, should we take a round of fire to anything critical on the aircraft, many of the situations he was putting us into would be unrecoverable. I was sure he was just excited to finally be flying in combat, but I had quite a few combat hours under my belt already, and I had learned the hard way that this wasn’t something to be excited about. He needed to learn to respect the environment and the fact that the enemy was hiding behind every rock.
Shoot Like a Girl Page 13