Lest We Forget
Page 11
A split second before the bird touches down I hop from my position in the door of the Black Hawk. My feet welcome the embrace of the uneven soft dirt field. I know that Allen and Josh will be racing me for this one. Getting to be the guy to pull the trigger on this particular shit head will be huge bragging rights. The people inside already know that we are here. There is no way for them not to. Four UH60 Black Hawks just landed in their front yard. Tonight speed is security. The faster we can get to the front door, the less time our enemy will have to prepare for the inevitable assault. Not that there is much you can do to prepare when thirty Rangers are running at your front door in the middle of the night. I get to the door a split second ahead of Allen, Josh and SFC Bent. Somehow I end up as the third man in the stack.
We don't sit on the door, we flow instantly. We have rehearsed this hundreds if not thousands of times. Allen breaks left and controls the first corner; Josh enters the room and heads right. I follow Allen to the left and SFC Bent follows Josh to the right. Allen and I have a door directly in front of us. Without so much as a blink of hesitation we enter the interior door. A figure in the far corner is holding an AK47 oriented on the door that we just entered with every intention on spraying us with 7.62mm rounds. As if it occurs in slow motion his rifle jams giving Allen the opportunity to acquire his target. The man fluidly transitions from his AK47 to a frag grenade. As his finger embraces the pin he receives two perfectly placed rounds to the face, carrying the contents of his skull out the back of his head. He drops atop the grenade and we brace for impact. It doesn't explode. This mule’s seen his end in love and war.
We hear two more shots from outside of the room. Someone just engaged a target running toward the room that we were in. Flash bangs are going off all over the place. This is the definition of controlled chaos.
Shots are ringing out from outside the target house and I can’t help but think that this must be what war feels like.
The following excerpt is the account of the Ranger sniper team on the roof that was with us that night...
Flying into the target area, we could see the house. We came in low and fast as we landed on the X. When we flared and came in to land near the red/black corner, I put my laser with the flood on to help illuminate the darker areas and windows of the building in hopes of putting down potential threats to the UH-60 Blackhawks we rode in. We landed a mere 50 meters from the house to serve as the containment and isolation element. There's an unspoken competitiveness among us Rangers concerning where you sit in the bird. We don't really talk too much about it, but the ones who have enough rides in a 60 know their chances of getting a kill drastically increase when you sit in the door. They're even better when your door is facing the target building. The isolation element was a two helo package. We had two sniper teams on this mission, my partner Myles was with me, and Isaiah and Jake were on the other Isolation helicopter. The pilots were precise and efficient with our infill. Before the dust settled and the beat of the helo's rotors were gone we heard shots fired inside of the house. We hadn’t even had a chance to get in position and the fight had already begun. As the first shots rang out, I witnessed a shadowy figure clumsily leap out of a window on the red side of the target and begin to trot in our direction. In true Ranger fashion, I witnessed ten lasers converge on this man. He obviously had no idea we were out there because he was running directly at us while toting an AK by the receiver with one hand. Out of fear and cowardice, he took the path of least resistance and fled the ensuing controlled, chaotic, and methodical violence that was overwhelming his fellow terrorists inside the house. Either way he was met with a wall of lead and his body function was turned off like a light switch. The other bird landed slightly closer than ours and I had the pleasure of watching my best friend Isaiah, sprint up to the mangled body of this squirter and put two more M118LR in him, just to make sure he wouldn't have any life left to squeeze the trigger. Myles ran right beside me as we headed for the house to gain access to the roof. I remember jumping over his lifeless body as we headed for the roof and getting a good long look at him. He was tall and fat. A terrified look of fear was permanently frozen on his face. It was him. Hamadi Tahki. I recognized him from the pictures in our pre-mission brief.
As quickly as it began it was over. One man lay dead in the kitchen and another in the room that Allen and I entered just moments before. We begin searching the men, both living and dead. I kneel down over the man's body and find another weapon system. It was a police issue Glock 19. We had been finding these on objectives with greater frequency these days. The pistol was covered in human brains and little pieces of the man's skull that Allen had just moments prior fragmented. I put the pistol in a Ziploc bag and placed it in my pocket. The spoon was still in the grenade so we carefully replaced the pin and added it to a pile of weapons that were collected throughout the house.
Only once before have I seen a human head look this way. There was no actual structure to the man’s skull. The face was still in tact for the most part but it more closely resembled a flaccid mask than a human head. When I was 19 and working as a firefighter in central Arizona I was dispatched to a call where a gentlemen had been struck by a large pickup truck while walking down the freeway at night. It was the first time I ever saw a body mangled to such an extent and it stuck with me. Here in this tiny dust filled bedroom in Iraq I am transported back to that cold, rainy highway outside of Mayer, Arizona. It is a sight that I am much more capable of coping with this time around, however.
The evening becomes quite routine at this point. We go through the home looking for any material that can potentially lead us to the next objective. We question some of the young men and women that were in the house, take pictures and package what we think can be valuable. By this point I was thinking that if we hurry up we could get back to post in time for midrats. I know I’ve mentioned midnight rations before but honestly it really is the best meal of the day. You can get spaghetti and cereal in the same sitting, waffles and steak with a side of eggs and mashed potatoes. Glorious. Years later an ad genius at Taco Bell coined it “Fourth Meal.” He must have been a Ranger!
It was common for there to be a shit hole outside of these little mud houses and this one was no exception. As we began to make our short foot movement to our exfil point where the Black Hawks are set to pick us up we notice a large hole in the ground several feet deep filled with human excrement. Now if you've never walked around in the dark on uneven terrain wearing night vision goggles (NVGs) it isn't easy. The one's that we were using at the time did not provide depth perception so rolling your ankle in a hole was somewhat common. The headquarters element including the company commander and my good friend Nathan were the last to make the movement to the exfil point. By the time that they were leaving the house our chalk had already set a perimeter around where the helos would be picking us up. I could see the writing on the wall as the Company commander walked out of the target house.
He was easy to identify due to the two large antennas towering over his shoulders from the multiple radios that he carried. I watched in anticipation as he approached that deep hole full of human shit. Elbowing my Ranger buddy to my right and pointing toward the house, he looked just in time to see the Captain disappear into the cavernous shit abyss. There was a collective attempt at controlling laughter from the entire squad as it would appear that we were not the only two privileged enough to see the boss take the plunge. With all the strut that a Ranger Sergeant possesses, my buddy Nathan calmly side steps the pit fall and continues to the extraction point. The joke would eventually be on us, however, as rather than throwing away the soiled uniform the CO decided to wash it communally with the rest of the platoon. For weeks our entire element smelled like human waste. Still owe you one for that move, sir.
By the time that we get back and download all of what we seized and conduct our after action review, the sun is cresting over the desert landscape and the chow hall is just opening for breakfast. A half dozen of us decide t
o forego showering immediately for the lure of a hot meal. Outside of the chow hall on most forward operating bases are giant barrels, half buried in the sand with a baseball sized hole cut in the top of them. They are referred to as clearing barrels and are intended to be used to safely unload your weapon before entering the chow hall. The thing is, most people on a forward operating base never actually have a round in the chamber because they act in a support capacity and seldom, if ever, leave the front gate.
Being a medic I carry an M9 pistol as well as an M4 assault rifle. This is in the event that I have to engage an enemy target while simultaneously working on a wounded individual. It is also highly convenient when traveling around base because it means I don't have to carry that bulky ass rifle.
I feel a tap on my shoulder as I go to take my first bite of runny scrambled eggs. It was a Sergeant from another unit that I did not recognize. He said to me in a nervous voice, "Sergeant, your weapon is condition orange." Now I have no fucking clue what that means. All I know is that I am hungry. I know that we just got done laying hate on a bunch of shit head terrorists. I am covered in dirt and I still have the remains of that man's brains on my right sleeve. So I replied the only way I knew how. "Cool bro." I then turned to take a bite of my breakfast and received a second tap on the shoulder. The man persisted,
"You have a magazine in your weapon, Sergeant."
"You're Goddamn right I do, homeboy. This is Iraq, not Disneyland."
"You can't have a mag in your weapon in the chow hall, Sergeant."
I'm not proud of it but I lost my cool at this point. I'm not sure if the compounding stress had got to me or I was just that hungry. I did not maintain my professionalism. I stood up and looked that man of equal rank in the eyes, drew my side arm from the holster, dropped the mag on the table and cleared the round from the chamber. His eyes got fucking huge. The man was just doing his job but at the time I didn't care. He had just woke up from a full nights sleep in a comfortable bed.
I feel my right eye tick a little. It's the first time that I can recall this happening. It still does it to this day in certain situations when I become irritated or feel threatened. I ask him if he wouldn't mind leaving me the fuck alone so I can eat my fucking breakfast. He didn't know what to do. He started to say something about the clearing barrels outside being the proper something or other. I simply sat down and continued eating. I imagine that he just turned and walked away. One of the young privates just said, “Jesus Doc!” and continued with his soggy waffle.
……
Chapter 12 - Delirium Trigger
After several weeks the days and nights begin to blur together. I’m not sure what day of the week it is anymore. This is, hands down, the most pain I have ever been in. I haven't slept in over a week at this point and I think I can officially self diagnose that I have insomnia. We've been on mission every night for as many nights as I can remember. Everyone in the entire platoon has been fed a constant stream of adrenaline since we landed in Mesopotamia and I think it's catching up to several of us at this point. I've handed out my entire supply of Ambien to the guys that I feel need it more than I do so I lay in my bunk staring at the ceiling. It's Iraq in the summer and since we work at night, our down time is midday, and it's fucking hot here! Growing up in Phoenix was hot but Iraq in the summer is fucking hot! As my eyes close and I attempt to find my first moments of sleep there is a tap on my door.
"Hey Doc, sorry to wake you but the compound is flooded."
"What?"
"Yeah, ummm I think the Euphrates overflowed or some shit."
Of course it did. This deployment hasn't been eventful enough we should add a flood, maybe a plague too. Our compound was tucked right between where the Euphrates and the Tigris met. It was surrounded by 20-foot tall concrete barriers that apparently were not set with any sort of foundation. When the water pushed under them it eroded the parched dirt beneath causing them to topple over. As if having helicopters crash, people blow themselves up and getting shot at wasn't enough now the walls of our own fortress were trying to kill us! These things had to weigh at least a few tons and were toppling over like dominoes all around us. Command made the decision to move our entire platoon to some tents that were on the other side of the forward operating base.
Now I'm not the type that needs any serious degree of luxury, hell I've passed out on the floor of a Motel 6 in at least a dozen different states but these new living conditions fucking sucked! They each had about a dozen old cots in them and had apparently been standing in the desert heat since the initial invasion three years prior. The constant exposure had left them literally see through. It was 120 outside the tents and 130 degrees inside. This should definitely help the guys get some much-needed sleep! At this point we all just laugh.
"Fuck it! We're all gonna die out here anyway, we can sleep then," jokes one of the team leaders.
The jokes would be short-lived. Our platoon Sergeant pokes his head in our shitty excuse for living quarters and tells us that we just pulled a mission.
I am borderline delirious during the mission brief. It feels like Groundhog Day and these Red Bull knock offs have no more effect than a little can of water. I can only imagine what drinking 10 of these "Rip It's" a day has done to my kidneys. Nephron, cortex, loop of Henle. FOCUS! You're in a mission brief for fuck's sake!
Okay I'm on chalk 2, we are assaulting a target house containing known bomb makers. We go through the motions of jocking up as the sun falls over the desert. Our flying chariots touch down in an empty field a few hundred meters from our shitty tent village and we disappear into the night once again.
I don't even remember the flight or the infill. The first shots that rang out on the objective startled me awake. Ah, there is my nightly adrenaline fix! I've got my feet under me know and me and my boys from second squad are chasing a couple of guys through a fig orchard. The UH6 "little bird" helicopters are circling above giving us a play by play on the direction that the two squirters were headed. They started doing gun runs on those poor bastards. There really isn't much that you can do when those guns open up, the 160th pilots are the most accurate in the world. They are the reason why a lot of special operations guys that I know are still on this earth.
For all you would be terrorists out there, just a heads up, hiding in the dark is easier when you're not wearing a body length white tunic. We spot one guy laying on the ground to our right. Nick's fire team goes straight for him, pouncing like a pride of lions on a fucking zebra. Joe and I advance past toward the second target. His hands are up and both of our rifle barrels are locked on his center mass. We are both at a full sprint at this point, moving toward him with the knowledge that the violence of action is the only thing that can keep us alive. I knew that Joe had him covered. In a full sprint, I dropped my rifle down to my side by way of the sling and struck that man with such force that he literally went feet over head nearly completing a full back flip. The best part was thanks to the technique that I had recently learned at that tactical fighting school in Chicago it didn't hurt my hand one bit. Thanks again Vanguard!
Joe covers me while I zip tie the man. Meanwhile one of Nick's guys who was securing the first squirter tells him, "Sergeant, my hands are all wet." We avoided using white lights on missions because they have a tendency to make a quick target out of the person holding it. A quick check would reveal that the gun runs being made by the little bird pilots were effective. The man had a softball size exit wound on his inner left thigh. That gaping hole made it tough for him to walk all the way back to the initial target house but that was his fucking problem. None of our guys were going to carry him. Not after the reports came in from the other squads that were clearing the house letting us know that the house that they had just fled from was full of bomb making materials and pictures of high value U.S. targets. No, this shit head gets to walk. You may think that is inhumane but then again, you've probably never been blown up by a suicide bomber or watched as a group of your friends are erased
by one.
When we got into the house I was able to see the extent of his injuries. That man's scrotum was torn open and his left testicle had completely unraveled as a result of that helicopter raining down hate from the sky. All I could think at that moment was, holy shit that was a good shot! The man was screaming in agony by this point as I stood over him. Empathy? What the fuck is that? I had none at this point. I was perfectly content to watch that man roll around in agony until we ex-filled. He had a tourniquet on to stop any major hemorrhage but I hadn't made any effort to pack the wound or help with pain management.
The company commander must have heard the screams from the other room. He came in and asked what the situation was. He was former Special Forces so he frequently considered the "hearts and minds" as being an important part of every mission. I’m not going to get into the dynamic of how each faction of special operations works but I will say that the Green Berets in special forces typically have a slightly lighter touch than their Ranger counterparts. He told me to administer morphine to the man and pack his wounds. Now this man outranked me by a lot but not when it comes to patient treatment. On the ground the medic is the authority on all things medical. He was right though, I couldn't just leave the guys nut dangling out and someone might trip over it. I calmly explained to the CO that I don't carry enough morphine for him and you both so maybe I should hold on to the narcotics that I have in case one of our guys get laced open tonight.
As I knelt down over the man I wasn't quite sure how to treat an uncoiled testicle. For all of the crazy scenarios that were drilled into us in SOMC, oddly enough, this one never came up. I decided that I would use it to help pack the wound in his leg. I can't imagine how that must have felt packing that thing into his open wound with Kerlix then wrapping it with a trauma dressing without any morphine. A testicle when uncoiled is actually quite long. It took almost a minute to pack the entire thing into his open wound.