Ruff's War

by K. Sue Roper

  Usually only two battle buddies were allowed to break formation from the stix at any one time. Going to the johnnies and relieving ourselves was an arduous task in itself. It was impossible to simply drop your drawers without first taking off the sixty-pound-plus Alice pack and other gear. The pack and weapons would be left outside the john under the watchful eye of your battle buddy.

  Within our eight different stix, we were lined up like little ants, and we remained standing for hours. No food had been brought into the camp because we were not expected to still be there. The food providers had been told that we would be well on our way to Iraq and that food delivery to our camp would no longer be required. As the noon hour approached, it became essential for us to be provided with nourishment from a source other than the nine MREs we had in our Alice packs. That food would be the only means we had to survive for the three days immediately after we left Kuwait. That food should not be consumed before we even left a place where another source of sustenance was available. Eventually, action was taken so that we were given lunch sandwiches and a dinner meal, which were brought to us by the Kuwaiti civilians.

  At 5:30 PM, twelve hours after we had formed into our stix, we were told we could go to one of the empty tents to consume our dinner. We were given fifteen minutes to eat, and only two stix groups were allowed to go at any one time. It was close to 7 PM by the time my stix was finishing dinner, and the sky was growing dark. We knew the choppers would not be flying at night to transport medical personnel into Iraq, especially because Scud-missile traffic was so heavy during the twilight and nighttime hours.

  Disregarding the fifteen minutes we were allowed, we took our time consuming our meals, and when we did return to the staging area, we sat around some more. At 8 PM we were told that we could return to our berthing tents to rest and that we needed to plan for an early flight out the following day. Once again it seemed that we were on the receiving end of yet another April Fool’s joke. This time our delay was a result of headquarters failing to validate the manifest for our flight into Iraq. The reason did not matter much to me. It had been a very tiring, useless, and frustrating eighteen-hour day, and all I could do was hope and pray that 2 April would prove to be more positive.

  Although we had been told to expect a 5 AM reveille, we were awakened at 3:30 AM on 2 April. Two C-130 marine cargo planes had landed outside the Alpha Company’s camp and were waiting for us to board for transport into Iraq. We loaded onto five-ton trucks for the nearly thirty-minute ride to the planes. It was a rough ride, but bearable. At least we were finally going somewhere, although we did wonder how long we would be waiting this time before we actually boarded our transport into Iraq. After experiencing the frustration, delay, and misery of waiting all throughout the previous day and going nowhere other than back to our berthing tents, we were very skeptical, and our trust in the system was shaky at best.

  We began boarding chronologically according to our assigned stix number. We walked up the rear loading ramp of the plane and planted ourselves anywhere we could on the plane’s floor, sitting on our packs. A total of ninety-six of us were smashed liked sardines within the plane’s interior for the ninety-minute flight to Al Diwaniyah. The slightest movement by anyone for the purpose of relieving a leg or arm cramp or trying to obtain a more comfortable position would invariably cause major discomfort and even pain to those wedged in alongside that person.

  The plane was forced to make severe turns and take an erratic flight pattern to avoid being a target for the enemy’s ground-to-air missiles. The heat within the plane, combined with the cramped conditions and constant swerving motion, caused many people to become airsick, and they began vomiting onto themselves and, in many cases, onto their neighboring battle buddy. I was one of the last ones to board the plane and had the luxury of sitting on the mailbags at the very tail end of the plane’s cargo hold. I found that it was one of the better places within the plane to be situated because I could look out one of the small portholes. Being able to look out helped to curb my own nauseous feeling, and I felt very fortunate.

  At 10:00 AM we descended, and the plane landed just outside Al Diwaniyah on what was once a highway and was now a makeshift airstrip. We had arrived at Camp Hasty, a desolate place offering very little security, no shelter, and no bathroom facilities. As soon as the plane landed and the rear ramp door was opened, all we could hear were people shouting, “Get out, get out!” We needed to disembark quickly so the plane could become airborne again and not serve as a stationary target for the enemy.

  As I ran down the plane’s lowered rear ramp, images I had seen on television of troops entering North Vietnam came to mind. Instead of watching it, I was living it, and it was a very eerie, surreal experience. The first thing I noticed was a green grassy area, something I had not seen since I left the United States. Off in the far distance I could also see a few palm trees. I was so awestruck by this greenery, something I had been deprived of seeing for almost two months, that I thought little about the fact that I was placing my foot into a country on which we had declared war. It was such a stark contrast from the miles and miles of nothing but sand that we had viewed every day from our camp in the Kuwaiti desert.

  As soon as we disembarked from the plane we were directed to an area far back from the landing strip and behind a road that was bordered by palm trees. The area was interspersed with some grass, a lot of dirt, and some scraggly sage shrubs. We were told that we needed to stay together as a group in a very precise and specified area and that our bathroom facility was a small, adjacent, open-exposed area containing nothing, again, but dirt and a few sage shrubs. We were sternly warned not to go beyond this specified area because anything beyond its boundaries had not been cleared of land mines, and therefore our safety could not be assured.

  Any semblance of bathroom privacy we once might have had was left far behind at Camp Guadalcanal. Now that we had entered Iraq, it mattered little where and when we would drop our drawers for the purpose of relieving our bowels or our bladders or even changing our tampons. There was no room on the battlefield for such luxuries as modesty or even real privacy. That which we had once considered to be a big deal in our own country had now become a nonissue for us, especially considering that our lives were very much in jeopardy.

  We had landed at this place called Camp Hasty, which was nothing more than a relatively “secure” small plot of dirt and gravel land, to wait for choppers to transport us farther north to Camp Anderson. We were told that land travel was too dangerous a mode and that we needed to wait for helicopter transport. The sun was blazing overhead, and because we continued to be fully attired in our MOPP gear, we all felt hot and miserable, and we were trying desperately to recuperate from the residual airsickness symptoms caused by the hot, cramped, and ever-swerving flight of the C-130s.

  At 2:30 PM, more than four hours after our arrival, two five-ton trucks arrived to begin transporting us to Camp Anderson via ground transport. Even though we had been told that land travel was dangerous, it apparently had become even more urgent that we be transported immediately from the vicinity of Camp Hasty. We couldn’t wait for air transportation; time was of the essence. Although a few combat marines had set up web tenting and were there to guard this area, they were small in number, and a full-force attack by the enemy could easily result in disaster. Camp Hasty was simply a temporary stop, a place for us to wait for further transportation, and it was becoming more and more obvious to us that we needed to get out of there as expeditiously as possible.

  The two five-ton transport trucks accommodated a maximum capacity of thirty people, and once the first thirty were loaded, the two trucks quickly rumbled away, heading north. The rest of us returned to our various perches on the dirt, where we would await the return of the trucks after they off-loaded the first group. At 4:30 PM, six and one-half hours after arriving on the desolate and exposed terrain of Camp Hasty, three CH-46s (small helicopters) arrived, and several members of our group boarded to begin
their short journey to Camp Anderson. That left just seventy of us, and when the choppers did not return by 5:30 PM from what was a short five- to ten-minute flight to Camp Anderson, we began to doubt that we would be going anywhere anytime soon.

  We watched the marines who were guarding the area begin to pack up, and we still had no indication that we were going to be transported. At 6 PM we were told that we would be staying the night in this godforsaken place, so as darkness fell on us, we pulled out our sleeping bags, huddled down very close to one another, and prepared to spend the night. We doubted that we would be able to sleep because we were also told to “get ready for the fireworks.” Although we did not know what that comment meant, before long it became very apparent.

  I had no sooner settled in my sleeping bag than I experienced the need to relieve myself. I asked Lt. Cdr. Dave Sheppard, a fellow nurse anesthetist, if he would go with me to the bush area that was our designated bathroom, and he agreed. (We had truly entered into the “gender-neutral” aspect of war, where a battle buddy was a battle buddy and the sex of our buddy made absolutely no difference.) Flashlights were strictly forbidden, so we blindly made our way over to the “bathroom” in total darkness, did our business, and managed to find our way back without stumbling over too many of our sleeping shipmates.

  Shortly after we had returned and crawled into our sleeping bags, we saw Apache helicopters at a distance begin firing their missiles. We could easily see the streaks of missile fire and hear the explosions when the missiles found their targets. The sky was filled with red streaks of missile fire; the fireworks show we had been told about had obviously begun.

  Within fifteen minutes of the commencement of these fireworks, we heard frantic shouts: “Everybody, get up! Get up! Get your packs! They are coming to get us! Hurry!” We immediately scrambled out of our sleeping bags and began to quickly reassemble our sixty pounds of gear. We were all exhausted, frustrated, hungry, thirsty, and disoriented. The whole area was pitch-dark except for the illumination from the explosions we could see on the horizon. We were in total chaos, yet we helped each other as much as we could and made our way to the piece of road that was also the makeshift airstrip our plane had landed on earlier.

  It was now 9:30 PM, and we could do nothing but stand there near this airstrip, out in the open, totally exposed. We saw no planes, no choppers, no aircraft of any kind. Eventually, a few ambulances drove up, but not nearly enough to transport all seventy of us. Some of the company members were loaded into the ambulances, but instead of driving off as we expected, the ambulances simply sat there on the road, waiting. We were then informed that additional trucks would be coming to take all of us, via convoy, to Camp Anderson. Despite waiting almost twelve hours for air transportation because land travel had been determined to be too dangerous, we were now going to travel by convoy through unsafe territory in total darkness.

  Several five-ton trucks arrived around 11 PM, and we were told, “Get on the trucks. We don’t care which truck you get on, just get on one, and get on now!” There were no seats in the beds of the trucks and no canvas tarps or canopies covering them. Riding in these open truck beds, we would be totally exposed to the environment. We helped each other load our gear into the trucks first, and then we climbed on board. Our packs and gear would serve as our seats.

  Being one of the last to climb aboard, I sat wherever I could, which was at the back of the truck on top of a large pile of gear. Perched on this pile of gear my silhouette extended well over the side of the truck bed, and I knew I was clearly visible and a prime target for an enemy sniper. I remember thinking, “Well, someone could easily shoot at me, and there is nothing I can do but sit here.” There was no place else for me to sit, for once again we were smashed into this small compartment like sardines, and the slightest movement would cause those next to us significant discomfort and even pain.

  Our twenty-mile trip to Camp Anderson became a three-hour ride. The trucks were making their way without the benefit of headlights, and forward movement was excruciatingly slow. All the while, I sat on top of those bags of gear fully aware that I was a target and that my life could easily be ended in an instant by a single shot from a sniper’s rifle. I could do nothing more than think about what my life was all about and how I would survive this. It was the longest ride of my life, and for the first time I truly felt I was in harm’s way.

  14

  CAMP ANDERSON

  The Other Side of Hell

  We arrived at Camp Anderson at 2 AM on 3 April. Those who had been transported in the first trucks from Camp Hasty at 2 PM the previous day had set up what looked like one or two small tents. We could see very little in the blackness of the night and were told to keep our red-filtered flashlights turned off because snipers had fired at the camp earlier that evening. The early arrivals were spread out in the darkness on the open ground in their sleeping bags, trying to rest.

  Too afraid to venture very far for fear of stepping on a land mine and yet needing to empty my painfully full bladder, I jumped off the truck as soon as it stopped and relieved myself right next to it. I then found a spot near the truck’s tires and lay down in the dirt dressed in my MOPP gear, armor vest, and helmet, with my pistol at my side. I was exhausted and cold. The bare, damp ground intensified the cold nighttime temperatures. I was freezing and tried to curl up as close as possible to the tires, hoping they still held some warmth from our trip to this other side of hell.

  This camp, like the one we had just left, was nothing more than a small area in Iraq that had been designated a “secure area,” cleared of land mines. There was no vegetation, or anything else, just a small plot of dirt located next to the road. Across the road from the camp was an area of thick grass, about four feet high. We were told the bodies of several hundred Iraqi soldiers were strewn within the grass as a result of heavy fighting that had taken place the night before. To the rear of the camp was a large pit at least eight feet deep. On the other side of this pit was more thick, tall grass that could easily be used for cover by the approaching enemy.

  Of course, we saw little of this when we first arrived that night. Also, our new surroundings were much less important to us than getting some sleep so we could begin setting up our surgical support unit with the dawning of first light.

  At 5 AM, after getting no more than three hours of sleep, we got up from our dirt beds and began the chore of setting up tents and equipment that would serve as our combat trauma surgical center. While we toiled at this laborious task, we were able to view more of this new hell into which we had entered.

  We could now see the tall grass on the other side of the road and wondered about the dead bodies of the Iraqi soldiers lying there. We also saw the deep pit at the rear of our camp and were told the bathroom was located at the bottom of this pit.

  The “bathroom” was nothing more than a hole that had been dug within the pit. This primitive place was where we were expected to squat, relieve ourselves, and move on. There was no privacy and no hand-washing area. To access this latrine you needed to walk slowly and carefully down a steep eight-foot embankment and hope you did not lose your footing and fall. With nothing preventing the enemy from firing down at us from the other side, which was shielded by the border of thick, tall grass, to me this pit was a very unsafe area, and I viewed going down into it a means of early execution.

  After seeing this setup, I quickly came to the decision that there was no way I would be going down there. It was a death trap. When I had to answer the call of nature, I simply found a place on the perimeter of the camp, squatted, and completed the deed. I tried to be as discreet as possible, but occasionally someone would inadvertently approach during these private moments. On seeing me, the person would immediately turn away, and the situation ended up being no big deal for anyone. We all understood that there was no time for feeling embarrassed and that privacy had become nothing more than a concept. We were all human beings with the same bodily functions, we were in the middle of God only
knows where, we were at war, and we were there to do everything we could to save the lives of our troops. Nothing else really mattered, least of all bathroom privacy.

  Setting up the triage tent, two ORs, and an ICU took four hours to complete. It was grueling, strenuous, labor-intensive work performed beneath a scorching sun. By 10 AM the temperature had risen to 110 degrees, and our clothes were soaked through with sweat. Still, we continued to wear our hot, stifling MOPP gear.

  The urgency of the situation and the immediate need to be prepared to receive casualties was real and reinforced by the awareness that one of the FRSS units located at the perimeter of the camp was already in the midst of performing surgery. We needed to set up and assume the care of all incoming wounded so the FRSS could shut down, pack up, and move forward with the marines.

  The surgery being performed by the FRSS was on a two-year-old child. The child, along with two Iraqi civilian women and another child, had been kidnapped by Iraqi soldiers and placed in a car with a propane tank strapped to it. Believing that the sight of the women and children riding inside the car would deter the U.S. Marines from firing on it, the Iraqi soldiers attempted to drive this explosive-laden vehicle through a marine barricade.

  The civilians were being used as human shields and were nothing more than innocent victims of this vicious war. As the car approached the barricade, the marines ordered it to stop. When it failed to do so, the marines had little choice but to open fire, and the Iraqi soldiers were killed. Fortunately, both women survived. One of the children sustained minor injuries, and the two-year-old suffered severe head injuries from exploding shrapnel.