Duty Recall
Scott A. Meehan
Copyright (C) 2016 Scott A. Meehan
Layout design and Copyright (C) 2018 by Creativia
Published 2018 by Creativia
Cover art by Judith Nicolas
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.
Table of Contents
Dedicated
Acknowledgments
1. Balad, Iraq
2. The trip home
3. Walter Reed
4. Homecoming Déjà vu
5. Back in the Saddle
6. The gift of intelligence
7. The Cold Past
8. Promotion and Advancement
9. Fort Polk, Louisiana
10. Oklahoma City
11. Historic day in America
12. Perennial Soldier
About the Author
Dedicated
To all who lost friends, family, and loved
ones in the Oklahoma City bombing
and the 9/11 events at the hands of evil.
Acknowledgments
American Soldiers and
Their Families
1. Balad, Iraq
2003
Major David Allan hugged the dry ground tightly as whistling bullets sliced the moonless night sky above his head. Pinging sounds from 7.62 mm rounds clinked off the armored vehicles next to him. Turning his Kevlar helmet-covered head slightly to one side, he could make out Captain Moran lying in the darkness next to him.
Moran was motionless while his eyes gazed back at David with haunting emptiness. His mouth was open, blood draining onto the parched farmland just outside the base camp in Iraq. David stared back at Moran who just moments ago was so full of vigor.
“Phil! Phil!” David raised his voice in a panic. It was that awkward moment of realizing the stark reality of death but not wanting to believe it could be possible. Soldiers from Moran's 4th Infantry Division (4ID) team unloaded with furry, returning fire from the mounted M249 automatic guns. Neglecting to put his earplugs in earlier caused David to react instinctively to the sudden outburst by placing his hands over his ears. It was too late for the high-pitch ringing piercing his eardrums.
Other soldiers began returning fire in earnest as they spread across the field and unloading return-fire from their individual M-16's automatic assault rifles. The sound of gunfire was deafening; muzzle flashes lit up the blackness. Somewhere down range, the barrage of ammo sought out the source of the rounds from the enemy's fire. Their AK- 47 assault rifles had come to a sudden halt. The acrid smell of gunpowder permeated the darkness.
* * *
In his twenty-third year as an Army veteran, Major David Allen thought for sure that his gung-ho days were behind him. His recent assignment as a contracting officer was not a “kick-in-the-door” type of duty. Rather, as contingency contracting officer, his responsibility focused on procuring services and supplies from local Iraqi's to provide the American frontline troops with anything and everything needed that was not in-country. Primarily, he sought much needed armor plating for the transportation vehicles that arrived to battle unprotected.
Captain Phillip Moran, the Headquarters (HHC) Company Commander from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Infantry Division (4ID), was a frequent customer who zealously looked after his soldiers and their needs. David and Phil struck up a business and a friend relationship and both identified closely with the enlisted soldiers since they had served in the enlisted ranks early in their careers. David set out an undertaking of finding and procuring the best protective armor available in an effort to provide the soldiers their safe ticket home and in one piece.
“Hey sir, when are you going to come outside the wire with me and my boys so you can see what the real war is like?” CPT Moran had asked him one day at the office.
“I don't know, maybe one of these nights, I suppose,” David answered quickly and returned to administering another contract.
“Aw, come on sir, I won't let anything happen to you. I'll even sign you out an M-16 just in case.”
With Moran's persistence, David had finally been coerced into joining him on the night of December 13, 2003.
* * *
The shooting and yelling stopped. David heard a distant voice yell, “All's clear! We got two of 'em!”
Moran's driver, a young 21-year-old private first class, came out of nowhere and fell to his knees beside his motionless Captain. “Medic! Medic! Oh God, sir, oh God!”
David reached over and placed his hand on the young man's shoulder. “He's gone,” David said, numbly, and with a tinge of sadness in his voice.
“No sir! No, he can't be!” he answered back before sobbing uncontrollably.
Four other soldiers rushed to the scene, the medic dropping hard next to Moran. David knew that any attempt to save Moran's life was futile. The rest of the others, ever vigilant, continued to scope the landscape with their weapons ready.
The men were equipped with night observation devices (NODs), goggles, which were attached to the front of their helmets. The silhouette of each appeared alien-like with an eerie green-glow leaking out around their eyes from the protruding black scope. There was no illumination, as the moon would not rise for a few more hours.
Since the American GI was fitted with state of the art night vision, he could maneuver across the Iraqi battlefield as if it were day. The platoon sergeant, SFC Rucker walked up to the medic who looked up at him and shook his head slowly.
“Let's go! Keep your focus! There may be more!”
Flipping down his own NODs, the ones loaned to him by Captain Moran, David watched the slow-moving, crouching squad inch their way forward through the patches of grass and followed. The troops stopped and formed a circle around an area next to a dirt hill.
David pulled himself up and walked towards the group of warriors. Arriving at the circle of men, David flipped his NODs up and away from his eyes as the others had already done and first noticed a small white pick-up truck parked by a clump of date palm trees.
Sitting in the bed of the truck was a makeshift metal tube mounted on a steel plate. On the ground next to the rear left tire were two-miniature football shaped pieces of metal with fins attached at the end.
“Mortar rounds,” David uttered.
“Sir, are you alright?” SFC Rucker asked him.
“Physically, yes,” David answered.
“Take a look at this, sir.”
David sauntered over to the two bodies spaced twenty meters or so apart and each still surrounded by a group of soldiers standing over them. Walking up to one of the bodies, he stared at the gruesome sight for a brief moment. Then he continued over to the other one who was at least recognizable. He remained silent.
One of the Iraqi fighters did not look much older than his late teens or early twenties. It was impossible to distinguish his counterpart's age. The young lad had fallen victim to a few well-placed 5.56 rounds from an M-16. His partner had been shredded by a burst from the M249 gun.
The dead Iraqi's wore dirty tan shirts, black trousers, and beat up sandals on their feet. Lying next to each was their worn AK-47 assault rifles. The young distinguishable chap stared widely and lifelessly into the starry night sky with his mouth open as if he was still in the midst of shouting in hopeful desperation, Allah Akbar. A red disheveled scarf lay partially on his head. This macabre scene was made even more gruesome with puddles of blood oozing from the bodies and soaking into the dried mud and sand.
David was not so much repulsed by the brutal scene, as he was angry. “Senseless,” David mumbled.
>
“Sir?” SFC Rucker responded.
“Captain Moran's death! It was a senseless tragedy!”
“Yes sir. This whole…” Rucker began but did not finish. Then facing the soldiers, Rucker barked, “Alright, secure the area and let's tag 'em and bag 'em.” Looking at two NCO's standing next to him he added, “Get Doc and take care of our Captain.”
Reaching into his pocket, David gripped a smooth crystal rock. Pulling it out, he held it toward the starry sky to see if the emerald-color swirl inside was still visible. It was still shining. It had not stopped shining since the time it was given to him by a female private in Kuwait.
* * *
It had been three months prior to this fateful night of fire and death when David stood in a long line to use the phone. He was staying at the tent city of Camp Wolf in Kuwait, on his way to Balad, Iraq.
Deciding to use the phone later, David took a seat on a nearby wooden bench. Looking up, he noticed a soldier approach him and as she got closer, he saw that she was a pretty young woman with sandy-colored hair escaping beneath her desert boonie cap. As she sauntered over to sit next to him, she seemed surprised that he was a Major. “Oh, sorry sir. Was somebody sitting here?” she asked while preparing to make a hasty departure.
“No, you're fine. Please have a seat.”
There was a moment of silence. David could see that she was trying inconspicuously to see the various patches on his uniform. “Thank you, sir,” she muttered nervously as she sat down. After a few seconds of awkward silence, the girl asked, “Sir, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you ever get use to this?”
“You mean war?”
The young female soldier looked too young to be mixed up in this mess. David guessed that she must be nineteen, maybe twenty. “Yes, sir. War.”
“Umm, no. Nor should you.”
“I hope not, sir.”
David eyed her nametag. “Never get used to this…Private Gabriel.”
“No sir.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I just arrived last week, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you the way I count my days. I bought a few bags of marbles at Toys-R-Us before leaving home and counted out 365 of them. Then I bagged them up, brought them with me, and placed them all in a jar. Next, from the first day, no matter where I was, I would flick one of them out into the night sky. This signified a day gone by, and my jar will one day look empty.”
“That's pretty cool, sir!”
“I even found a glass vase at a market in Saudi that was able to contain most of the marbles so I could watch the stack get lower, ever so slowly. Eventually, I filled the vase with the remaining ones that did not initially fit. I should have taken a picture at the beginning when I had the jar full.”
“How long have you been in country, sir?”
“Five months now. I'm on my way to a new location.”
“Really? Where?”
“Balad. Camp Anaconda.”
“Ooh, I heard about that place. It's called 'Mortaritaville' because of all the mortars that land there.”
David smirked. “Oh yeah?”
“Sorry sir. I didn't mean to…”
“It's alright. No worries.”
There was a moment of silence. “How long have you been in the Army, sir?”
“This year will make it twenty-three.”
“Wow! I don't think I could be in that long.”
“You never know. I started out like you, a private enlisted soldier in 1980. Now look.”
“You did, really? That's a long time!”
“It's been a good journey overall.”
“If you could do it over, would you?”
“Yes, I would. There may be a couple of things I would have changed.”
“Like what, sir?”
“Well, if I had a crystal ball that could forecast events, I would have taken measures to stop the Oklahoma City bombing for one.”
“Yes, that was terrible. I was in the sixth grade when that happened.”
David chuckled. “I was a Captain.”
“I was so young.”
“And now I feel so old.”
They both laughed. “I would definitely have prevented the 9/11 events from happening if I could. We wouldn't be here today.”
“Hmm, maybe not sir, but one never knows.” The girl smiled and reached into her pocket, pulled out something tiny and held it towards David. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
David let it drop into his hand and saw immediately that it was a unique marble with a shining emerald swirl inside that appeared to be moving. Quickly, he held it up to one of the portable streetlights for a closer inspection. He was mesmerized by the immensity of the color and the fact that the inside was actually twirling around. “This is amazing! Where did you get this?”
“We have these where I come from.”
“Oh? Where might that be?”
The girl smiled. “I need to go now, sir. That one is yours; keep it please. I have more.”
David, still mesmerized by the marble tried to hand it back. “I couldn't possibly take this from you.”
She stood to go and without reaching for the marble, started to leave. “Sir, it's been a pleasure. My first name is Michel. I need to run. Good luck in Balad,” she called back, leaving the marble in his possession.
The young girl disappeared into the crowd of soldiers while David sat dumbfounded. She never did say where she was from, David thought.
* * *
As the area outside of Camp Anaconda was being cleared from one firefight, several miles to the north under the same stars, approximately 600 soldiers, also from the 4ID, began a raid in the small town of Ad Dawr. A typical power outage kept the whole area in darkness.
These soldiers, along with elements of the 5th Special Forces, were on the hunt. Their prey? A “High Valued Target” (HVT), who was hiding at a farm, according to the informant. They swept quickly through a farm compound near the banks of the Tigris River.
The choppers landed and the soldiers dismounted, rushing towards a couple of farmhouses. Bursting into a two-room hut inside a mud-walled area, they found two beds, strewn with clothing and a kitchen containing cans of spam, and boxes of rotting oranges.
Outside, between two farmhouses surrounded by sheep pens, an old, worn-out rug covered in dirt laid flat on the ground. One of the soldiers called for backup and after knocking the dirt off the rug slowly pulled it back revealing a thick piece of Styrofoam. Beneath the Styrofoam appeared to be a small hole. Sounds emitted from the hole.
“Someone's in here!” the soldier yelled. Yanking a grenade off his vest he was about to drop it “down the hatch.” Suddenly, uplifted hands appeared from the hole, one of them holding a pistol.
Kicking the weapon away from the hand, the soldier quickly seized the man beginning to crawl out of the hole and yanked him up from the ground revealing a beleaguered old man with a scraggly gray and white beard.
“I am Saddam Hussein. I am the President of Iraq. I want to negotiate,” the man said in English.
2. The trip home
Two weeks after David's mission with CPT Moran ended, he was ready for some Leave time. Casually sitting on the splintered bench, his legs stretched out in front of him, suede desert boots resting on the loosely, gravel covered dusty ground. The wooden benches formed irregular lines beneath the makeshift tin rooftop, which was held in place by several wooden beams scattered throughout the open waiting area.
Like the soldiers around him, male, female, young, old, sergeants, lieutenants, and even a few civilians, he waited. He waited for the flight status, whether or not he would be able to fly out of this God-forsaken country on this particular night and return home to Orlando, Florida in time for Christmas.
Looking at his watch, David read the digits, 1441. David reached down and pulled out a folded greeting card from his carry-on bag. He tried to keep it clean
but it was useless since he read it every night. The words written in the card echoed in his mind:
My darling girl, when God created you, he had you distinctly in mind; adding a brilliant shade of green to your eyes that glowed like emeralds; a ray of sunlight emitting from your face whenever you parted your lips and displayed your sparkling smile; your heart of gold, warmed by the fires from heaven. He also thought of me; how could he not have? He waited for the perfect time, three years beyond your birth, before deciding to form my existence; a life designed to become the man for you, one who would love you with all of his heart and soul until the day he died.
He had written those words to his wife, Sherry, while deployed in 1991 to Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. She had placed it in his Bible before he departed for Iraq.
An Air Force Tech Sergeant walked towards them without a hat. He held a clipboard in his hand and sported the latest style of Oakley sunglasses. “All right, can I have your attention please? The flight has been delayed due to mechanical upgrades. You can be released from the area but please be back by 1800. We will conduct a manifest roll call at that time.”
There were moans and groans, just like before when the announcement was made earlier in the morning. David grabbed his rucksack, slung it over his shoulder and looked for a way back to the office. Why waste time, he thought, with all of the procurements and business-taking place. The rest of his gear, a large duffle bag, was already secured onto a pallet along with everybody else's gear. The complaining in the background grew hostile strewn with curses.
* * *
David had arrived to Balad four months before his allotted time off for Christmas Leave, after a brief stopover in Kuwait. The weather was in the process of changing from the 130-degree summer heat to the rainy season. His arrival to Iraq was etched in his memory forever. Once that rear door of the C-130 aircraft opened like a mouth to a hydraulic drone and high pitch, the blast of arid furnace-style heat hurried inside the fuselage to spread its overly warm welcome to the waiting soldiers, still strapped in the canvass seats.
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