“You!” I shouted, pointing at a guy I'd never met. “Reach into that day sack in front of you and get out my TCCC kit. Do it now!” I slammed the door shut and ran over to get my helmet and body armour from where it was hanging and began putting it on. . . .
“INCOMING! INCOMING!” the LCMR operator screamed again.
Crap, crap, crap . . . I spun around and cranked open the door to the little medic container and slammed the door shut behind me.
KRAANG!
The door muted the noise of the incoming round, but it was unmistakable. That round sounded a bit farther away. I looked around and met the nervous gaze of about ten guys, all crammed into the one container. Med centre! I saw what I was looking for and started stuffing as many Israeli and Oales bandages and plastic tourniquets as I could cram into my pant side-pockets. As I put on some latex gloves I went to the door and listened. No one was shouting “Incoming!” so I made a break for it. I ran across the wooden walkway and ripped open the other container's door and leaped inside.
“TCCC kit!” I shouted, as hands began to pass it forward to me. I didn't want to make eye contact with anyone as I said in a loud voice, “I won't order you guys to come with me, but I want you to know there are wounded soldiers out there who need our help!” With that, I turned and ran out the door, slamming it behind me. I covered the ground back to the truck and started searching for the wounded Afghan. Ginge rounded the corner of the tent and accidentally ran into the back of me—he had left the safety of the ISO container to come and help.
I told Ginge to look for a wounded Afghan as we peered under the truck to see if he had crawled underneath. No, not there. Is there a blood trail, has he crawled into a bunker? I started scanning the ground for a drag mark in the dust, but . . .
“INCOMING!” The LCMR operator yelled from behind us.
“Move move move!” I shouted at Ginge as we scrambled back around the other side of the truck and into some cover behind the bunker.
KRAANG!
Dust and bits of shrapnel flew in all directions as the round landed just where we had been standing. My ears began ringing and my head started pounding again. We coughed violently but got up and fought our way through the dust into the ANA CP. I almost ran into Sergeant Park, another one of our OMLT medics, who had all of his weight behind his hands as he pressed down on the Afghan's spraying neck wound. The ANA captain was in the corner, physically restraining an Afghan soldier who looked ready to kill Park. He probably thinks the doc's hurting his friend.
“Ginge, help the captain restrain that man!” I said, pointing at the soldier. I looked at Sergeant Park. “Doc, what can I do? I've got my TCCC kit, do you . . .”
“As I ran out here, sir,” the medic said between clenched lips, as he strained to fight the artery's pressure, “I saw some more wounded . . .” he was fighting to keep his hands in place as the Afghan spasmed violently “. . . on the other side of that tent. I don't think anyone's gone to help them yet. Can you . . .?”
“Done,” I said, and then looked at Ginge. “You stay here and help the doc.”
“Sir, I want—” he started.
“Do as you're told!” I shouted and turned to go back outside. I felt bad for shouting at him, but I didn't want Ginge to follow me. I knew he was brave to a fault, but today that virtue could get him killed. I sprinted out the door and ran to the far side of the tent where I ran face-first into Omer.
“Sir, sir,” he cried as tears streamed down his dirty face, “Hassan is hurt. He is dying, he has blood all over his face and . . .” Hassan was another OMLT terp and Omer's best friend.
I grabbed Omer by both shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “I'll help him, Omer, but where is he?” Omer looked away, a vacant expression passing over his face.
I gave him a hard shake. “Omer! Listen to me! Where is Hassan? You said he was hurt. Where is he?”
“Come with me, sir, I will show you.” Omer began to run around the tent over to the gap between the Hesco, leading us to the ANA bunkers. As we were running two Canadians ran up to me, a reservist sergeant from the OMLT and a young guy I'd never met.
“Sir, can we help?” the sergeant asked.
“Yeah, come with me!” I turned to follow Omer and half-tripped over an Afghan soldier who was moaning and twitching in the dirt. I looked down and realized he was in a terrible way. His legs had been ripped apart, both his shin bones jutted out from his trousers, and he had pink bubbles frothing from his mouth. Lung wound! His face was a terrible mess of blood and ripped flesh.
I started to help him when Omer shouted, “Sir! Hassan!” and pointed at the other side of the Hesco. My mind raced as soldiers yelled in the background. This guy's in a bad way, but if I lose Hassan, I'm screwed—we can't speak Dari. Then it hit me—I had to decide whom to save: Hassan, or the bleeding and twitching soldier at my feet.
“We'll come back for this guy. C'mon!” I yelled at the two Canadians who turned and followed me as I ran through the gap in the Hesco wall.
“INCOMING!” the LCMR operator screamed again.
Crap, where can we . . . I saw a large flatbed truck with gear strapped down on it, blocking the road to the bunkers.
I grabbed the sergeant and threw him underneath, then shoved the young guy right next to him. I dove onto my stomach and started crawling as fast as I could under the wheel well of the truck. I shoved my fingers into my ears and for the second time on my tour, I was truly terrified. I started praying in my head, God, please don't let me die here! Not like this.
KRAANG!
The incoming mortar had fallen on the other side of the Hesco, toward the west. I started to crawl out from underneath the flatbed. “Let's go guys, c'mon!” I yelled. I stood up, reached down to pull the guys out, and then told Omer to take us to Hassan, quickly.
We ran around the corner of the Hesco and saw ANA running back and forth, shouting in Dari at each other. One guy was waving at the others, pleading for help. One with the doc, one over there, one back the way we came, and Hassan. We chased after Omer as he ran to the first bunker and bounded down the stairs into the small room.
Just as we entered the bunker I heard a disembodied voice shouting “Incoming!”
I spun around to make sure we were all accounted for and then began searching the bunker for Hassan, but it was too dark to make anything out. There was only a small kerosene lamp, barely lighting up the back corner of the bunker. I found Hassan next to the stairs, moaning softly and holding his head as blood ran down his face between his fingers.
KRAANG!
Other side of the Hesco, more shouting.
I reached into my trouser pocket and ripped out an Oales bandage. “Hassan, it's Rob, can you hear me?” I asked as I squatted down next to him.
Omer started pleading, “Please help him, sir—”
“Be quiet Omer, please. Hassan, it's Rob, are you okay? We're going to move over by the lamp and I'm going to move your hand . . .” I gently peeled back his hand and parted his hairline to see his scalp. He had only a small cut on his head, but because the skull was so vascular, any wound on it bled like crazy. Aw, man! Why are we wasting our time here, when I just tripped over a guy ten times worse than Hassan!
“Omer,” I said as I quickly began wrapping the bandage tightly around the top of Hassan's wound and the back of his neck. “You're going to stay here with Hassan, okay?” I ordered Omer, “Keep talking to him, keep asking him questions, and don't let him fall asleep, okay? Can you do that?” We have to get going; there's no time for this!
“Yes, sir.”
“Whatever happens, don't leave this bunker until you're told it's safe, okay? Don't poke your head out—wait until someone comes to you. Stay here!” I shouted. I started running up the stairs as I told the two Canadians “Let's go, on me!” I ran out of the bunker and took off around the corner at a dead sprint, hoping we'd get to the ripped-apart soldier before he bled out.
He was right where I had abandoned him, his body h
orribly twisted as he coughed up pink froth and started to spasm.
“Sergeant, grab his legs. You, grab his middle. I've got his feet.” We all squatted down around him.
“One, two, three, lift!” We hoisted him up as gently as we could. I felt his legs twitching and my hands quickly became soaked with blood.
“Around the corner, go go go!” Even though he probably weighed only one hundred and thirty pounds, in his near-unconscious state he was incredibly hard to carry. His body was completely limp and no matter how hard we tried, he kept slipping out of our arms. I had to keep my TCCC bag scrunched under my armpit as I carried the Afghan, but I was struggling to do both.
I suddenly heard myself shout, “Medic!” but then realized, The doc's busy; I'm TCCC qualified—I just became the medic!
“Careful, careful,” I said as I walked backwards to the nearest ANA bunker, next to the destroyed truck. Shamsallah ran over to us, carrying extra bandages.
“Open the tarp, move the tarp out of the way,” I said and motioned with my head, pointing at the bunker entrance. He ran down the steps and pulled the tarp back so we could enter. I went down the steps as carefully as I could, but only got a few feet into the bunker when my legs rammed into something. It was dark and my eyes were having a hard time adjusting from the brilliant sunlight to the pitch-black bunker. I strained to see what had stopped me and realized it was an American cot in the way.
“Shamsallah, please move that, quickly,” I said and again motioned with my head at the cot. He took a few seconds to figure out what I meant, and then—
“Holy fuck, get in there! WE'RE STILL EXPOSED OUT HERE!” the sergeant roared down at me.
I wanted to shout back, “I'm fucking trying!” but knew that wouldn't be helpful, so I took a quick breath and said in a calm voice, “Sergeant, there's a cot in the way. Shamsallah's moving it. He's shifting the cots as fast as he can. Please don't shout at me, okay? That's not what we need right now.”
“I . . . I'm sorry, sir,” he said, shame resonating in his voice as he realized panic had made him shout.
“Don't be sorry, it's okay. You're not the only one . . . I'm scared shitless right now! But we've got to get a grip so we can help this guy, because fuck me, he's in a bad way.” Shamsallah had finally gotten the last of the cots out of the way and I was able to walk backwards all the way into the bunker. We entered the bunker and slowly lowered the wounded man to the ground. I started pulling out the bandages from my pockets and ripped open my TCCC bag to get at my scissors.
I looked at the sergeant, who was gently holding the Afghan's bleeding head in his hands. “Sergeant, you take care of the wounds on his head. You,” I said to the young Canadian, “what's your name?”
“Pastel, sir.” He looked a helluva lot calmer than I felt.
“You're gonna take care of the wounds on his torso. After you've done your anterior primary, let us know and together we'll roll him so you can check posterior, okay?”
“Yep,” he said, and began unbuttoning the Afghan's shirt to get at his chest.
“I've got his legs,” I said, and swallowed nervously. They were bleeding heavily and obviously shattered. As I took in the scope of his injuries, my mind started to unravel. Ah . . . I can't see, there's no light. Why doesn't someone get us a light? Where's the doc? Why can't they just open the tarp? I don't have my flashlight, this isn't fair. THIS ISN'T FAIR!
Sergeant MacVitty's cruel, hard voice took command and shouted over top of my smaller, panicking voice. “Oi! Cunty!” he raged. “Stop whinging and moaning about what's fair and what ain't, and git to fuckin' work! Shut up and do the job!”
I took a few deep breaths, and then once I'd regained some calm, I took my scissors and began cutting the injured man's trousers from the ankle, all the way to his hips on both legs. I looked at his shins. The blast had broken his lower legs and thrust both his tibia bones out through the skin to the front. I quickly made two donut bandages and placed them over the protruding bones.
As I was prepping the bandages, I looked at the Afghan's torso. Pastel opened up his shirt to find two small holes above his left lung. Entry wounds.
I looked at the Afghan's face, where the sergeant had begun applying bandages. The sergeant had to pull back a long, loose flap of skin and then bandage it back in place. I went back to his legs and started applying bandage after bandage to his numerous wounds. Some entry wounds were the size of a quarter, others the size of a penny, but he literally had about thirty holes peppered all over his legs. I looked at his upper thigh and there was a fist-sized chunk of flesh missing, right over the femoral artery. Why wasn't that squirting blood? Must've just missed the artery. I knew shrapnel could migrate, and I was afraid any second he would start shooting blood across the room, so I got out a tourniquet and began to apply it to his leg, going a few inches above the wound. I started cranking it and cranking it until I couldn't anymore, then locked it off in place. I looked for a pen to mark a “T” for tourniquet on his forehead, along with the exact time I put it on him, but I didn't have one. I'll just have to remember and tell the doc.
As we worked feverishly to stop his countless wounds from bleeding him to death, his friend was right up close to his face, talking to him the entire time. At the start, the wounded soldier was muttering things back, but now he was becoming less responsive. He's fading. What've we missed?
I feared he would soon become fully unconscious so I got out the pharyngeal airway from my TCCC bag. I applied the lubricating agent just like I'd been taught, and then put the long, rubber airway hose into his nose and down his throat. It would keep his airway open if he passed out.
I looked at Shamsallah and pointed to the bandages. “We need more bandages. Please, go and get more bandages.” He quickly grasped what I meant and ran out the door with no thought for his own safety. I hadn't heard any more shouts of “Incoming.” Maybe the Brits had killed the enemy mortar team with their counter-fire. I hope they killed all those bastards, for what they've done!
Pastel said he was ready so we tilted the Afghan gently onto his side and saw two small holes on his back, over his other lung. Entry or exit wounds? Damn it! I got out the clear Asherman chest seal bandages and quickly sealed the wounds off so no air could get in. If he had a sucking chest wound, and it certainly seemed like he did, the bandage was designed so the air that was building up inside his chest cavity could escape through the plastic valve on the bandage.
Sergeant Park, the doc, poked his head into the bunker and asked what we were dealing with. I spoke for the group and said, “One ANA, multiple shrapnel wounds to his legs, two protruding tibias, and two entry wounds over his right lung anterior, two entry wounds left lung posterior.” Did I say those backwards or was that right? “Multiple cuts to the face and neck, we put a pharyngeal airway down his nose. Was semi-conscious five minutes ago, but now seems fully unconscious.” Did I forget something? Oh yeah—“And I put a tourniquet on his upper thigh.”
“Okay, good work guys,” the doc said, “but what about his eyes—are his eyes gone?” Good question. We all looked at each other. The doc waited.
“Have you checked his eyes?!” he asked, more agitated now.
“We don't know, we haven't checked,” I said. It was obvious none of us wanted to do it. The thought of peeling back his eyelids to find nothing but empty holes filled with muck was a little too much to bear.
“Oh, for God's sake,” the doc said and came down the steps. He gently nudged the soldier's friend out of the way and then deftly peeled back his eyelids. “No, they're still there.”
“Doc, with those four entry wounds, should we do a needle decompression?” He looked at me and then leaned closely to the soldier's mouth, listening carefully.
“No, he's got a good airway. Best to leave it, for now. Good work, I'll be back.”
Before he left I asked, “How many wounded have you got?”
He turned back to face me and used the nine-liner code. “So far, one VSA o
r Echo, two Bravo, five Charlie, one Delta.” That meant one guy was vital signs absent (dead), two guys were in need of urgent surgery, five guys were priority cases, and the last guy was considered routine. Probably Hassan with his head wound.
The nine-liner was the medical evacuation request form we used over the radio. Obviously, it was made up of nine separate lines that would have to be filled out accurately and sent up properly if we wanted the medical evacuation choppers to arrive on time, in the right spot, and carrying the right gear.
I couldn't help myself; I had to know. “Any Canadians?” Pastel and the sergeant both looked up at the doc.
“Negative, all Afghans. I gotta go.” He turned and pulled back the Hessian flap and walked back into the bright sunlight. Shamsallah came running back in and handed me more bandages. I was sweating like a madman, racing against the clock. I worked feverishly to seal off the soldier's leg wounds, and by the time I thought I'd gotten them all, I had applied twenty-seven bandages to his legs. Shamsallah had made three bandage resupply runs, just for us.
Ginge poked his head into our bunker and said, “Doc wants all the wounded outside, where he can see 'em.” Fine, but where are the damn choppers?
We looked at each other and then on my three-count we gently lifted our patient up into our arms. Shamsallah and the wounded soldier's friend helped us, and together we carried him outside and laid him down on one of several cots that someone had placed in a row. I looked around to take in the damage.
The Ranger was still smoking from under its hood, and the tent next to us was pockmarked with hundreds of tiny holes where the shrapnel had perforated it. Someone was shouting in the distance as Canadians and Afghans began to walk around the corner and come out of the nearest bunkers, carrying the wounded. Some of them were crying out in pain; some were unconscious. One Afghan had sat down by a tent and was crying into his hands.
The wounded were gently laid on the cots as the doc walked up and down, looking at them and making notes in his FMP.
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