by leo jenkins
There are exceptions to this, however. Our preceptor for this rotation was a brilliant surgeon named Doctor Jeff Salomon. He gave us reign to do whatever procedures we felt comfortable doing. I had the opportunity to treat more gun shot wounds during those three weeks than I had in the collective previous three years I had been in the Army. Those 14-hour days at Grady Hospital would prove to be priceless for what was about to come.
It was early 2006, I had just been promoted to Sergeant and my platoon had earned the top spot as the primary battalion effort after a top performance at platoon evaluations. Platoon evals was a three day training event that tested every aspect of a platoons combat effectiveness and capability. With the exception of a couple of brand new privates that just joined our platoon, our entire element had several combat deployments. We had refined our ability to communicate with one another and had become a very well oiled machine. We would need every bit of that proficiency as we stepped of the back of that cargo plane for the third time. This time we would be stepping off into Tikrit, Iraq at a time that was approaching the most violent in the history of the war.
At the FBI shoot house during Vanguard.
Vanguard training is as real as it gets. My boy Josh “embracing the violence”
Tactical knife fighting at Vanguard.
……
Chapter 10 - Grave makers and Gunslingers
“Hey Doc, wake up!”
I wasn't... I didn't even finish saying, I wasn't sleeping. The door slammed shut and Josh had moved on to wake up the next chu - an 8x8 cell like, connex box that we lived in while working in Tikrit, Iraq in the summer of 2006. NCO's and officers got their own rooms, privates typically had to double up. Even with two overgrown Ranger privates in an 8x8 room it was still hands down the best living conditions that I had experienced on any of my deployments.
This must be important, Josh usually talks shit for at least a couple of minutes. I glance over at the clock, its 16:00 so most of our guys were just waking up. I poked my head out of the door to see a handful of guys headed to the makeshift plywood Joint Operations Center (JOC).
“What's up?”
“Come on Doc, let's go. Mission brief in 5.”
As usual I had no clue of what was going on. Even now as a Sergeant, somehow I still seem to evade the chain of information passed through the platoon. I decide that shower shoes aren't the best footwear choice for this occasion and quickly get dressed. I walk in just in time to not get more than a dirty look from my platoon sergeant. I half heartedly listen while a certain officer that most everyone in our company had a great disdain for babbled on about two guys in a safe house that we would be our primary kill/capture objectives. We would fast rope in utilizing UH60 "black hawk" helicopters. He said some other things but honestly I was hungry and this was about as routine a wake up call as the alarm clock that awakens most college students. We had only been on this deployment for a month and had already executed dozens of successful direct action missions.
Wheels up at 19:00. So by the time that medal hungry Major finished his bloviating, we would have a little under two hours to eat and get our mission essentials together. For me that meant making sure that I had plenty of snacks in what I referred to as my "moral pouch." I'm telling you right now a watermelon jolly rancher is better than Christmas morning to a six year old when you've been on an objective for two days! I will also tell you that half of being a good medic is about keeping up the moral of your guys. When we were on the QRF for operation Redwings I handed out a lot more candy than trauma medicine.
The boys from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) pick us up right on time, which as usual was just past sun down. Those guys are about as nocturnal as they come and more than once I was grateful for their outstanding ability to operate under the dark of night. The feeling of letting your feet dangle out of the door of a Black Hawk helicopter a couple of hundred feet off the deck is unmatched. On this day, however, I was pushed to the back jump seat, which meant that I would be one of the last guys on the ground.
The flight is short and the hot night air feels good as it swirls around the inside of the bird. When we arrive Josh quickly gets his fire team to the front door as the Black Hawk pulls away showering us all with BB sized pebbles and debris from the open field that we had recently landed in.
We are less than 100 meters to the target house as we begin to advance. Second squad was approaching from the side of the building. Weapons squad was set in a blocking position behind the target house in the event that anyone attempted to run. As we moved closer to the tiny house in the middle of that field, it happened.
I feel the heat from the blast from 40 meters away, everything is white, sound is reduced to a high pitch buzzing and then, silence. There is nothing. Time stops. I wait to hear someone scream out for the medic. I wait for something, anything. Every ounce of air has been drawn from me as I wait, a lifetime in that single breath, I wait. As my eyes regained focus I realize that the blast came from the exact position that second squad was just in. The predator drone feed would later show the blast's heat pattern completely white out the screen and erase the six Rangers that stood within a couple of meters of the suicide bomber's position.
Air rapidly enters my lungs the way it does after you've been held under water a little too long. I look immediately to my platoon Sergeant and we run. Not to cover, not to safety but directly at that shack of a house, in the middle of that field, in the middle of nowhere. Josh's fire team reaches the front door just in time to receive a volley of 7.62 slung at them from a PRK set up on the other side of the shacks mud wall.
They do not hesitate. They act. They run into the throat of that monster, directly through the door that has the business end of a very large automatic weapon pointed at it, at the helm of that weapon is a man hell bent on their demise. They do not hesitate. They act. At this moment I notice someone running from the objective directly toward weapon squads position. The only thought in my mind was watching second squad disappear at the hand of a suicide bomber just seconds earlier.
I raise my rifle. It's dark and he's 75 meters away but the green beam illuminating from my PEC2, only visible by night vision goggles, locks on his chest. Go on and pull that trigger. Squeeze. Squeeze. I didn't even realize it but I instinctively come to a complete stop to take those two shots. As the figure dropped I continue to run. I'm not entirely sure why but I change directions. Instead of running toward the front door, I begin to run to the motionless body that just a breath ago was standing. I'm within 15 meters. BOOM! I feel it. A second blast. This one was much closer. My exposed face is peppered by what feels like tiny ball bearings. I stay on my feet; my eyes never lose focus of the white tunic laying 45 feet in front of me. I will later learn that this blast came from a frag grenade thrown by my good friend Allen in an effort to clear the back room of the shack. The sound of controlled pairs being squeezed off hasn't stopped by the time I reach him. For the second time in the longest minute of my life my breath is stolen from me. He's a boy and he's still breathing.
I am going to be completely honest. I don't remember the next few minutes. The world kept moving and I am assuming that I did too because the next thing I know I am kneeling over one of the members of second squad talking with another medic, John. He was okay. This guy just had a suicide vest detonate within spitting distance, how the hell is he alive? As I look up I see Thomas, second squad leader. He is directing the rest of his guys. They are alive. They are all alive! How? I am at a total loss for words in this moment. I am not a pious man but in this moment I would bet you a hand full of Chili's coupons that those men were recipients of a little divine intervention.
I begin to tend to some of their minor wounds as I realize that first squad took heavy fire upon entering the building. I hand over care to John and quickly make my way to the front door. The mangled flatbed truck where the suicide bomber sat up and proclaimed "allahu akbar" is etched in my mind. I see what looks like his legs and mos
t of his body. His head is completely gone. My best guess is the vest was poorly constructed and the brunt of the blast traveled up rather than out. His head is found, in tact, 30 meters away; popped off like a cork on a cheap bottle of Champagne. He should have paid more attention in shit head school. I reach the front door. The small room had already been cleared and the guys from first squad are in search mode by the time I enter. I ask if everyone is okay. All I get is a couple of uneasy laughs.
Apparently one of the 7.62 rounds grazed one of the younger guy's helmets.
The room is small and filled with smoke from the gunfight. There is a hole just big enough for a man to crawl through in the back corner of the room. Apparently several men crawled through the hole to another room as first squad made entry to the first room. After eliminating the threat on the PRK, Allen tossed that frag grenade into the back room rather than chase the men on his hands and knees. I joke with him that nearly blowing me up in the process will cost him a beer when we get stateside, he just shrugs his shoulders as if to say welcome to the “I just got blown up club.”
There are a couple of lifeless bodies on the floor in the front room. One was slumped over the machine gun; the other must have drawn the short straw. He got to be the last guy to get to crawl through the room's only egress. Just as my desire to poke them with a stick draws me one step into the room I hear my call signal called on the radio. It's my platoon sergeant. Second squad is chasing someone that our eye in the sky spotted fleeing the target house. I immediately run to their location. By the time I get there the company commander is giving an order to a good friend of mine named, Nick.
Nick and I had recently been promoted to Sergeant at the same time. Now Nick has always been a very good Ranger. In addition to saving my life with that disgusting strawberry Harvest bar in Afghanistan he was smart, well spoken and well liked among the guys. Several factors that influenced him being promoted so quickly. Nick was also very good at taking orders, normally.
They had one of the men pinned down in a sort of a reservoir. The Company commander wanted Nick to send one of the guys on his team down into the reservoir to grab the guy and try to pull him up the side of the reservoir that was about eight feet high.
In the kind of tone you would expect a Ranger Sergeant to address a superior officer, Nick asked, "Sir, you want me to send one of my guys that just got blown up by a suicide bomber into that hole and grab another potential suicide bomber, throw him on his shoulder and carry him up that eight foot mud wall?"
"Roger," replied the Captain.
That's not exactly what happened. Nick responds in a way that I will never forget and in a way that I will not repeat here.
Just about the time that incident is resolved another call comes over the radio requesting my presence on the north side of the target house. As I approach I see Eric, Nathan and our interpreter standing over the boy who I shot earlier. He is still breathing, in fact he is talking. As I kneel down to assess his wounds I ask the interpreter what he is saying. I notice that he has more than just two holes in him. He was hit from multiple shooters. For some reason I now feel less responsible for his situation. The interpreter says that the kid is 14 and came to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. I asked him what he is doing in Iraq. As long as I live I will never forget his response.
"I have come here to kill Americans!"
"Then why did you run?"
"There are too many."
"How did you get here?"
"They paid me to come."
"What would your parents think if they knew that you were here?"
"They would be proud."
Without hesitation I turn and walk away. I have the power to help and do nothing. To this day I have yet to fully process this decision. Guilt? Shame? Ambivalence? I don't know how to feel about it. I am not sure what emotion to affix to such an event. I know that he lived because of the efforts of one of our other medics but I did nothing - a fact that keeps me up some nights still.
As I walk back to the target house I see the severed head of the suicide bomber, fully in tact. It doesn't even faze me, I just walk by it. Once back in the house I link up with my friends from first squad. They have just finished searching the house for any possible links to other cells in the area. The place is an absolute mess. I notice something that I can't help but laugh about. At the feet of one of the dead terrorist lay a couple of bottles of a 7UP knock off drink called CHEER UP. I pick it up and Matt takes a quick picture. Someone cracks a joke, "Feeling down about getting blown the fuck up? Have a refreshing glass of CHEER UP!"
Josh takes a bottle back home to the states and uses it's contents to make mix drinks in his barrack room. Those drinks were amazing too. Tasted like liberty!
Just as we are calling for exfil a call comes over the radio. We are getting an add-on mission. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has just been seen less than a hundred miles away. For those who are unaware, at the time Zarqawi was the Iraqi equivalent of Osama Bin Laden; he was high value target number one. We make our way back to the exfil point and wait for the Black Hawks to return. As we wait, a thermo baric bomb is dropped on the house, which on that night served as a crucible for 1st platoon, erasing it from existence but never from our memory.
Not a word is spoken on the short helicopter ride to Balad. Call it exhaustion, or quiet reflection on what just occurred but no one uttered a word. Each member of the platoon stepped off the bird and onto the tarmac at least 2 inches taller than they had when they had woken up that morning. We walked through the doors of the hanger in the middle of the night as if we were one single organism.
There was a contingent of Rangers that had just watched our entire mission from the drone feed. We were caked in dirt and blood and possessed a certain saltiness that we didn’t previously carry. As the adrenaline slowly wore off I looked to my left and right and saw a certain grit in even the newest private in our platoon’s eyes. One of those men was a Ranger named Nicholas Irving. Irving would go on to be one of the most deadly snipers in Ranger history and write a book on his accounts as a Ranger sniper. Knowing that this would be my final deployment as a Ranger it felt like a sort of passing of the torch. The things that these young Rangers would learn on their first deployment would serve them well in the years to come.
There were at least a dozen old green cots set up in that hangar where men sat as they reloaded the black 30 round magazines that had just been emptied. Batteries were replaced in NVGs and camelbacks were topped off. As exhausted as we all were at this point, we knew the night was just getting started. I am amazed as I check over the members of Second squad that had just had the closest encounter with a suicide bomber possible. A few minor burns and scratches but nothing beyond that.
As I finish treating some of the men with some simple dressings my Platoon Sergeant calls me into a small room in the back of the hanger. He hands me a box filled with atropine auto injector. (The AtroPen® Auto-Injector is indicated for the treatment of poisoning by nerve agents.) He asks me if I can give the platoon a short refresher on the use of the AtroPen and tells me that Zarqawi is believed to be held up in a chemical warehouse and is likely to use chemical weapons on our platoon as we enter.
It probably came off as a pretty smartass comment but I had to ask, “Sergeant, you want me to go out there and tell that group of guys that there is a chance that after all they have just been through that they may need to stab themself in the leg to keep from having their insides melt?”
He understood that I was being sincere, that I didn’t want to see those men be put in harms way again but we both knew that that was our job. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t have to. I walked out and started handing out the little handheld injectors as though they were pieces of Halloween candy. I get a few confused looks, a lot of shoulder drops and headshakes and one big fat grin. He knew that I wasn’t handing these fuckers out as a joke and I think that he truly reveled in the idea of getting his hands a little dirtier.
The men stand with profession
alism as I give the quick tutorial on how to self-administer the drug into the outside part of the thigh. At the end of the instruction I ask if anyone has any questions, only one man speaks up.
“So Doc, our faces might get melted off tonight?”
“It’s a possibility,” I respond.
“Cool.”
We once again climb aboard the Black Hawk helicopters en route to uncertainty. As we take flight we are informed that the mission is being called off. Some of the men are disappointed, the ones with families are relieved and the rest are indifferent. We all know the acts that this man has committed warrant his absolute demise and would love the opportunity to be the hand of vengeance. None in the group would hesitate to do so but at the same time none of these men carry a death wish. Be smart in the way that you hunt and you will live to hunt another day, become overzealous and you get replaced by a folded flag handed to your next of kin. Ironically enough this would not be the platoons last shot at Zarqawi but for now it was time to call it a night.
Inside the foreign fighter safe house. Snagged myself a war trophy that would later be used to mix drinks with back home, “Cheer up.”
……
Chapter 11 - There Will be Justice in Murder
Each 24-hour period begins to look exactly like the one before it. Wake up at three in the afternoon, go to the gym, check on any missions that could be developing, eat “dinner” and wait.
By sundown we would be checking the batteries in our radios and ensuring that we have all the necessary supplies to get through another night raid. An hour or so after the sun sets we get picked up by a group of Black Hawks and are delivered to the doorstep of another Jihadist.
One of these hundred nights seems to stand out from the rest, however. We get Intel on an individual that our big brothers have been tracking for some time. He is a tier 1 target and has been evading capture for some time. The appropriate plans are made and once again we find ourselves with feet dangling from the open door, the hot summer desert air stinging our faces.