The Fighters
Page 8
Kryszewski’s team was scheduled to rotate back to the States, too. In its last weeks in Iraq, its soldiers still drove confidently through the capital. But they were anticipating violence in ways they had not been expecting before. The troops replacing them were entering a changed war. Iraq, the departing soldiers knew, was not going to be a quick job.
* * *
When Kryszewski moved to the Fifth Group staff, his aperture widened. Instead of focusing on the needs of a small team, he was helping guide operations for a large force in countries across the Middle East. But as his community was being drawn ever deeper into Iraq, soon he began the process of heading back, this time to set up the intelligence section’s office spaces at Anaconda. He left in June expecting a deployment of six to nine months.
On the bus ride to the C-17 that would fly them overseas, he sat beside Master Sergeant Darrin Crowder. Like Kryszewski, Crowder was a Special Forces communications and intelligence specialist; they were part of a clique within a clique. Crowder had arrived at Fifth Group a few years before Kryszewski and mentored him. He liked Kryszewski and saw him as a quiet, detail-oriented soldier who was quick to pick up new technology and kept his calm in situations when many other soldiers could become overbearing. Crowder, too, was adjusting to career changes. He had been a team sergeant for four years but now was too senior for the job. He’d moved to the staff. His years in the Special Forces had come with costs. Twice divorced and without children, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, he had given himself so completely to the Army that he was feeling empty, spiritually drained. He had recently committed to his Christian faith. But, like Kryszewski, he was also feeling lonely, and missed being in the company of a team. It was a morose ride.
“You know, Leo,” he said as the bus neared the plane, “this is the first trip I have ever been on without being on an ODA.”
Kryszewski had been sorting through the same sentiments. “Me, too,” he said. “And I have a bad feeling about it.”
He remembered the confidence and sense of security he had felt on previous deployments. I knew as long as I was with my team that I’d never be hurt.
He did not have that same feeling now.
“I don’t have my team,” he added.
Crowder knew what he meant.
* * *
The new Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force headquarters at Anaconda was almost completed when Fifth Group’s advance party landed in June. It occupied a large clamshell structure surrounded by its own blast walls, and operated as a compound within a compound—a partially independent universe. Inside its walls, Special Forces soldiers and their support staff and contractors kept their own hours and lived by more permissive rules. Crowder rarely wore a uniform. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, like a carpenter on contract. Kryszewski was setting up his section’s space, hooking up Internet cables, getting communications equipment running, and creating the sensitive work areas they would need to protect their transmissions and conversations. He and Crowder rarely left their offices. Their sleeping spaces were within their compound. Warm food was brought to them from the main chow hall. The rest of the base was not their concern.
During lunch on June 16 they made an exception. Crowder and Major Paul Syverson stopped by Kryszewski’s office to say they were headed to the post exchange, the convenience store that served the base. Crowder needed shaving cream. Syverson wanted to buy a toothbrush. Kryszewski was at first not interested. He did not want to put on his uniform, but the others convinced him to go. They planned to stop at the chow hall. This was a chance for a meal fresher than the soggy, steamed entrées served at their compound.
Kryszewski and Syverson had been in different companies at Fifth Group. But Kryszewski knew the major by reputation. Syverson had fought in Afghanistan in 2001, too, in the north around Mazar-i-Sharif. Like Sergeant Bennett, who had been killed in Iraq the previous fall, he had been present at the prison uprising in Qala-i-Jangi, where he was among the soldiers who recovered the body of Johnny Micheal Spann, the CIA officer killed in the riot. Syverson had been wounded by an American air strike during that battle. He’d received a Purple Heart, recovered, and returned to duty. Kryszewski heard good things about him. Though Syverson was not scheduled for the group’s deployment to Iraq, he had volunteered to fly with the advance party to Anaconda and help with the new headquarters, lending a hand for a few weeks before returning to the States. He had two children at home, one of them newborn. Kryszewski saw him as a credit to the organization.
The three men left in a sport utility vehicle a little after noon. Time was short. Crowder had to be back by 2:00 P.M. for a meeting. They ate quickly and drove to the exchange.
The PX was an older single-story tan brick structure that Iraq’s military had used for offices. The Americans had converted it into a retail store. A few shrub-sized palms grew outside. It opened that spring, another sign that the American military expected a long stay, but had not yet been protected with blast walls. The approaches to its entrance were open and flat.
Kryszewski parked the truck. Crowder and Syverson stepped out and walked toward the store. Kryszewski caught up as they neared the front stoop but then stopped. He had never held a staff job before. He had always worked in the field. He was still following old habits. His professional practice—never go anywhere without being ready for a sustained fight—had not left him. Even on this short errand he brought a loaded M4 rifle, a pistol, a utility belt, and hand grenades. Other soldiers had been teasing him. They joked that he often looked like a military policeman, a dreaded MP. Kryszewski did not care. He did not intend ever to be caught unable to fight.
Now he had to tone it down. He did not know the rules of this place. Soldiers were loitering casually on the steps out front. Entering the store with loaded weapons might be forbidden. Just short of the entrance he paused, removed his chambered rounds, holstered his pistol, and slung his rifle behind his back. He had almost pulled even to his friends. He held his rifle magazine in his left hand and was about to follow Crowder up the steps.
A rocket landed a few yards to their left.
In the instant it exploded Kryszewski felt as if he had been hit by a huge linebacker, who was crushing him in his arms. He became weightless as the pressure tightened. He was moving somehow.
The scene turned black-and-white, then dimmed.
He lost his sense of space and time. He recognized a familiar smell. Explosives. The odor pulled him back. His attention snapped into focus.
He woke on the floor just inside the entrance, atop a mat of broken glass. He was flushed with adrenaline and instantly alert. He took stock. He saw that the shattered glass was what remained of the plate-glass doors. He looked at his hands. One still held the rifle magazine. The other was just starting to bleed. It meant he had not blacked out long. At most a few seconds of his memory were missing—just enough to leave him unsure whether he had staggered inside or been thrown by the blast.
Panic rose around him. The shop was crowded. People were screaming and yelling. The noise angered him. There must be wounded to treat.
He kicked into action.
He saw Crowder beside him, in his carpenter shorts. He was near the entrance, on the top of the stairs. Crowder needed help. His left leg was torn open. Blood streamed down his face. Another man leaned down to tend to him and pulled the T-shirt over his head, using it to apply pressure on his cuts. Kryszewski pushed the man’s hand away and looked into his friend’s face—he’s conscious—and started to give instructions for treatment. The bleeding in his leg needed to be stopped.
Blood gushed into Crowder’s eyes. He could not see. “Leo, is that you?” he said.
“Yeah,” Kryszewski answered.
Crowder asked if he was okay.
“I’m fine,” Kryszewski said.
Kryszewski heard shouting outside and saw more wounded people out there. Other soldiers were coming to everyone’s aid. Syverson was at the bottom of the steps, down, but getting medical
attention. Kryszewski was methodical. He had to help Crowder. He put the rifle magazine into the pouch on his utility belt and ran through the aisles. He found bags of cotton balls, with which he might pack a wound, and a bandana, which he could use as a tourniquet.
He hurried back and tightened the bandana above Crowder’s leg wound.
“Are you good?” he asked.
“I’m good,” Crowder answered.
“I’ll be right back,” Kryszewski said.
He had to get to Syverson.
He stepped outside. He was having trouble staying conscious but had one goal: to bring the major inside. An attack might be coming, he thought. They needed to organize.
He tried assessing what he could see. The smoke had risen and drifted away. Wounded soldiers were spread on the steps and the sand near the entrance. There were many of them. Syverson was still on the steps. Other soldiers were helping him.
A huge soldier blocked the way. He outranked Kryszewski and was looking at him intently.
“You all right?” the man asked.
Kryszewski had no time for this.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Get all the people in.”
He tried to go around the soldier. The man stopped him with a firm grip. Kryszewski pulled back. Who is this guy grabbing me? he thought.
Kryszewski collapsed.
A group of soldiers closed around him. He noticed he was bleeding from more places than his hands. Blood ran down his back, legs, and face. After a while he recognized that he was being carried on a stretcher and he was not making the decisions. His weapons were gone. He was not sure where. It was not a feeling he liked.
He arrived at a medical tent, where the staff examined him. They said he had been hit with shrapnel in his back, his buttocks, and his face. One piece had passed through his left cheek and shattered teeth. He was covered with cuts from falling onto shattered glass. The staff began to sew up his wounds. He was woozy. His brain swelled. His confusion deepened.
Someone moved him to a holding area. He felt defenseless, alone. He was more scared than he ever could recall. He was without a weapon and unsure where Crowder and Syverson had gone. He had no communications equipment and no team. He hated being away from a team.
* * *
War can drive the wounded to all manner of conclusions. Elsewhere in the bedlam, as Crowder was carried from the blast site, he entered a spiritual journey. He was taken to a tent with more wounded soldiers, where someone told him that others were in worse condition and the doctors would get to him soon.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He watched as a soldier was wheeled past, under a blanket. His bare feet protruded from beneath the dark cloth. Silently Crowder asked the man to show signs of life. Please move your feet, he thought. Please just move your feet. The man was motionless. Crowder watched color leave his skin and the soles of his feet turn gray.
A chaplain came to check on him. Crowder remembered talking with Kryszewski; Leo had said he was okay. He asked for information about Syverson.
The chaplain said he would check.
At that moment Crowder understood—he thought he was being told by God—that Syverson was dead. He began questioning God, wanting to know why such an attack had happened and what good could come of it.
One of the people attending him removed the tourniquet on his leg. It was the bandana Kryszewski had tied above the wound. It was blotted with blood and had been stenciled with text. He unfolded it and began to read through the bloodstains.
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
Crowder read the first words and knew them. The bandana held Psalm 91. He saw it as a sign, and felt an epiphany he could neither ignore nor deny. On the hospital bed at Balad, having just seen another man die, unsure about the whereabouts of Kryszewski, grieving for Syverson, he redoubled his commitment to a life in the service of God.
* * *
Where some see God, others perceive randomness. Kryszewski, in another tent, was having a different experience. His sense of vulnerability had ceased. His Special Forces colleagues had rushed to the scene, looking for their own, and had been scouring the tents, checking for missing members of Fifth Group. They found him on the stretcher and moved him to a more thoroughly staffed hospital tent.
There Kryszewski was evaluated again. He had a concussion and more extensive shrapnel wounds than he had realized. An X-ray showed a piece of metal embedded in his lower back, less than an inch from his spine. Another had passed through his left buttock, caromed off his tailbone, and come to rest in his right buttock. He was filthy, riddled with wounds packed with sand propelled by the blast. He understood he had been lucky. His wounds were serious but not crippling.
He could not remember any warning of the rocket. He recalled what he had long heard: Those who have survived the experience of incoming fire say that they did not sense the ordnance until it was too late. Hearing a whistling shell, a screaming rocket, or a snapping bullet means that you have been missed. The projectile headed directly your way makes no announcement before it hits.
This was the case in front of the exchange. The attackers had fired from more than three miles to Anaconda’s west. Five of their rockets had landed on the base. The other four caused no casualties. But the weapon that struck beside the exchange entrance, the largest of the five, exploded in a human crowd. It was a 127-millimeter rocket, tipped with a warhead packed with more explosive power than a standard American 155-mm artillery shell. Nearly ten feet long and weighing more than 150 pounds, it landed within twenty feet of the three soldiers, just to their left. The impact caused its fuze to detonate the warhead’s main charge, more than fourteen pounds of TNT encased in a fragmenting metal sheath.
One moment Leo and his colleagues had been walking. The next they were encased in the blast.
The trauma was instantaneous.
Major Syverson had been to the left of Crowder and Kryszewski. He absorbed more of the weapon’s effects and blocked some of the shrapnel from striking them. Two other soldiers were killed: Specialist Jeremy Dimaranan, an Army reservist from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Staff Sergeant Arthur S. Mastrapa, a military policeman from Apopka, Florida. Mastrapa was due to leave for home. He was outside the exchange after using the Internet to research a hotel for a birthday reunion with his wife when the rocket hit. Twenty-five other soldiers and two civilians had been wounded.
As more details were shared with him, Kryszewski’s mind turned to reflections on chance. The sightII on Kryszewski’s rifle had been sheared off, hit by shrapnel. What if, he wondered, his rifle had been slung differently—so that its sight did not rest between his flesh and the hot metal it had stopped? Shrapnel might have passed through his torso or severed his spine. What if he had been a half step farther, or leaning slightly forward? Would the shrapnel that shattered his teeth instead have struck his temple or his throat? What if he had driven to the PX slower, or faster? They might not have been inside the blast. What if they had not stopped for chow, or had lingered longer over their meal? Crowder saw God in his survival. Kryszewski wondered about the combination of tiny choices and events, factors in or out of his control, that aligned to put them there. If I had not been frozen in that exact position, it would have been a lot worse.
They were in Germany a few days when they heard that a memorial service for Syverson was to be held at Fort Campbell. They were not yet scheduled to be discharged from the hospital and flown back to the States. A Special Forces medic who worked at Landstuhl intervened. He told the hospital staff that he was taking his two friends out of the hospital for a bit of sunshine and a restaurant meal. It would help them recuperate, he said.
He brought them civilian clothes and sedatives, helped them into a car, and headed to the airport. He had purchased tickets for an American Airlines flight.
He pushed Crowder in a wheelchair through the terminal as far as he could. Kryszewski hobbled along, his face covered in bandages. He was missing teeth and gum where the shrapnel hit.
There had been a brawl in the days before at a nearby football match. The hooliganism had been in the news. At the check-in line one of the attendants asked if they had been injured at the stadium.
“Were you at the football game?” she asked.