I knew that SimMan added a powerful and realistic dimension to training. He gave us a tactical medical advantage that no soldiers, whether combat docs or patients, had possessed in wars prior to our war. But I also knew what he didn’t give us, live soldiers who bleed from irregularly shaped holes as they gulped their final breaths, their bodies trashed from the violent inertia of war. We didn’t get the smell of blood or charred flesh or shit from eviscerations. SimMan didn’t stun our minds with images so horrific that we lost critical momentum and put our patients at risk of dying. That was the kind of combat experience that simulators failed to teach, however modern or computerized.
When I thought about SimMan, I was impressed with our scope of training, but I was also apprehensive because I knew that it was not the same as real war. A patient simulation was always a simulation, a war game, always a game. But we would not be playing games in combat or have the opportunity to hit a reset button.
—
The weekend before our departure, the battalion commander issued a forty-eight-hour weekend pass for one last family goodbye. Soldiers’ families drove to Fort McCoy from their homes across the Midwest. The spouses who did not come were either working or simply could not endure another painful goodbye. For the spouses of a couple of soldiers I knew, the deployment served as the breaking point in their marriage. I phoned Collin and asked her to drive up for the weekend. She initially resisted, saying another goodbye was just too hard, but then she offered to come if I really needed her. I did.
Soldiers and their families flooded the local hotels around nearby Sparta, Wisconsin. The hotels were of the “small but clean” variety. Families crammed into rooms that held only a single queen-size bed or two doubles. Some soldiers rented two rooms, one for their children and one for their spouses. On Saturday, the last day for shopping, many families hit the local retail discount stores. Everybody splurged on presents and snacks. The overflow lunch and dinner crowds at restaurants frazzled many of the soldiers and their spouses. Crowds and lines, waiting and frustration, seemed to predominate the weekend. Many soldiers made last-minute reviews of their Army-prepared wills and powers of attorney. Insurance documents, ongoing bills, and written instructions for what to do in case of emergencies stole valuable family time.
Despite all the last-minute details that needed finalizing, soldiers found time for their families. They found time for love—made time for love. One soldier’s son brought a bike with a flat tire. The soldier fixed it in the hotel parking lot, and when he finished, his son rode it up and down the parking lot, his dad chasing behind. His kid grinned so wide that anybody watching could have counted all his teeth. Another soldier with a seven-year-old daughter made fifty-two smiley-faced crayon greeting cards that she could open, one each week while her mom was deployed. My wife brought a computer that needed fixing. I replaced a power supply—one hour and a few scraped knuckles. Families brought dozens of cookies and baked treats—enough to share with the entire battalion. Many soldiers wrote final love letters to their spouses, for opening after the send-off weekend—at home, in private.
After shopping and dining, it was back to the hotel. Collin and I reviewed some last-minute paperwork and some Red Cross information about emergencies. And we debated if we should watch a movie to kill time. We could hear movies blaring through the wall of the hotel rooms. I turned on the television and flicked through a list of movies. None seemed interesting, but we decided on one and watched it from the edge of the bed. And we didn’t really watch it at all. We turned the volume down so we could talk. But we didn’t talk much either, just some small talk and chitchat. We held hands and hugged and at some point Collin just started to cry and said how she loved me and how the kids would miss me. I cried with her, then we held each other and eventually made love like we did on our honeymoon. At one point during the night we managed to laugh about our marriage and our kids, and then we cried about the war and Collin said she never imagined being left alone during a deployment just as her mother had been during the Vietnam War. And I wanted to know how to comfort her and make the night less painful, but I didn’t know how, so I just held her until we fell asleep.
The next morning in the parking lot, Collin gave me a wallet-size family photo. I promised to keep it on me at all times. I gave her one of my extra dog tags and a note that said I loved her and would pray for her every day. I told her I would e-mail her when I got to Iraq. Our chins quivered as we said goodbye. I didn’t want to prolong the goodbye, so I kissed her quickly and walked away from her car. I met up with Gibbons in the parking lot and we drove back to Fort McCoy to load our duffel bags.
First Combat Tour, 2003
Our battalion arrived at Kuwait International Airport, midday, the first week of April 2003. In less than twenty-four hours we had traveled from Fort McCoy with its freezing rain to Camp Wolverine, Kuwait, where the outside air temperature hovered in excess of 100 degrees. When the aircrew opened the door of our leased DC-10, the Middle East heat infiltrated the cabin within seconds. Soldiers filed out of the aircraft and down the portable ramp. When I reached the door, I could see the heat waves rising off the hot tarmac. I uttered a drawn-out “Holy shit…” Everybody behind me wanted to get off and kept yelling at me to move it.
Brown, Gibbons, and I gathered near the bottom of the stairs. We slung our rucks on our backs and walked to the assembly point about a hundred yards off the flight line. With just that short exertion, I felt trickles of sweat running down my neck.
“Just shoot me now and get it over with,” I said with sarcasm.
“I thought you were tough, Kerstetter,” Brown poked. “It’s called desert warfare. What’d you expect?”
Cold weather was one thing. At Fort McCoy, I dealt with it like all the other soldiers by using layers of thermal underwear and by limiting my exposure. But heat was impossible to escape. The air blowing on my face and hands felt like I was standing in front of a pizza oven. We had to keep our uniform sleeves down because that was protocol. I could already feel the wet tracks of sweat in my armpits. I commiserated with the other docs about the stinking heat as I dragged my equipment through loading areas and checkpoints. I was not alone in my complaining. Soldiers blamed the weather for their misery, and it seemed somehow appropriate, even cathartic. It wasn’t so much that war was to blame for our troubles; no, it was the desert and its miserable heat. After fifteen minutes or so, Gibbons finally said, “Let’s just power through it, Doc.”
That was Gibbons’s style, former champion collegiate wrestler—head down and power through it. No use complaining. And he was right. We needed to face the weather as we would any other uncontrollable variable. Deal with it head-on.
The battalion attended a mandatory briefing held by the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) staff, the equivalent of a corporate administrative headquarters remotely located from the front lines of battle. After a general’s welcome speech, we heard briefings about force protection, the law of war, sexual assault, and fraternization—the exact same briefings that we had heard at Fort McCoy. It was a prime example of Army redundancy; hurry up and wait—do it again just to make sure it was done right. Army staffers emphasized personal safety and the proper escalation of military force. The idea of “proper” was that lethal force should come into play only when absolutely necessary in order to avoid collateral damage. If a soldier could shout or shove instead of shoot to enforce compliance, then the lesser force took priority. Gibbons and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Later, we discussed an unspoken soldier rule: when under attack or threat, shoot first, ask questions later. Escalation of force was one of those rules of engagement that many soldiers viewed as a quagmire of war ethics. Yes, there was a need to recognize different threat levels and respond accordingly, but there was also a need to avoid becoming a casualty.
After the briefings, we waited in more lines to double-check our next of kin, insurance beneficiaries, and payroll forms. As CFLCC admin specialists verified ou
r identification, they logged us into a computer as having arrived in a combat zone. That registration set off a chain of personnel tracking files and the start of combat pay, an extra $225 per month, non-taxable. The official DOD combat pay start date meant this was it, the real thing—war, no turning back, no more rehearsals, no more simulated patients. The next patient would have real injuries, real blood, and real death.
The seriousness of what our medical battalion was about to engage in made me look forward to our mission. At the same time, it made me feel a bit apprehensive. Like Gibbons and Brown, I was eager to use my skills in combat, but I also felt the weight of those skills. Soldiers depended on us to save their lives and limbs—to use our experience, training, and judgment to alter combat outcomes. And that was unnerving. I felt prepared, yet an element of the unknown loomed against the tangible elements of training. When I looked around, I wondered if any of my colleagues or fellow soldiers would become my patients. I wished I could have had more time to prepare, gained more experience, developed greater insight into combat. As it turned out, feeling prepared involved more than confidence in the fact that one had trained well. It involved more of a gut sense of readiness not easy to come by.
We spent hours moving our gear to large canvas tents set up in rows and blocked off into hundreds of numbered sections. The billeting area took on the look of faceless prefab tenements held erect by taut ropes and metal stakes driven deep in the sand. The chemical treatment applied to the tents to prevent rot smelled vaguely like blue cheese. Despite the treatment, mildew and mold grew in the corners and seams. Soldiers shouted to hear each other over the constant rumble of nearby aircraft and diesel generators. A haze of fine dust settled on duffel bags and weapons.
When we weren’t slinging duffel bags or settling in, we milled around the DFAC (Dining Facility) and the main intersections between tent rows. We traded opinions about the briefings and the rumors that began to swirl about our mission assignment. We were all going home within a week—no assignments. We were pegged for a mission at Camp Doha in Kuwait for a year pulling of “sick call” for soldiers transitioning in and out of theater. We might deploy to a camp in the northern sector of Kuwait to run a series of battalion medical aid stations. Nobody was going into Iraq. We were all on standby for further orders. One rumor circulated repeatedly that the war was over and we were heading home. That one bothered the docs the most, because, if true, it meant we had spent all our time in pre-deployment train-up for nothing.
Our battalion docs and medics mingled with soldiers from other units. We heard about the threat of chemical attacks and about equipment shortages.
“Don’t expect a full resupply of meds or equipment,” one British doctor warned. “The supply routes aren’t even properly guarded.”
Some medics described the kinds of injuries some of them had already seen in theater, soldiers with arms and legs traumatically amputated or ones who had their faces burned off. By far, the harshness of the desert predominated the talk.
“The sand is like moon dust in certain areas,” several medics told us. “It comes through the cracks and seams of the tents.”
Just after midnight, I walked to the DFAC with Brown and Gibbons to have coffee and just get away from the chaos of the tent village for a while. It seemed like an oasis of relative quiet and normalcy. The décor reminded me of a hometown café. To me, it conveyed that the Army wanted our last meal before combat and MREs to invoke memories of tranquility. Tired and worn from the trip and the unloading, we took a table in a corner and got our coffee. The breakfast bar looked so appealing, we decided to eat and kick back for a while. I served myself three single-serving boxes of Frosted Flakes and a cup of raisins. Gibbons ordered bacon, eggs, and toast. Brown had the granola and yogurt. He mocked Gibbons and me about the healthiness of our choices. We settled down into a back-and-forth about our families and our mealtimes at home. We all had several children each, so we started talking about them and their adjustments to our deployment. “Jordan thinks I’ll get shot and wants to know why we have to fight a war,” I said. “I told her I didn’t have a good answer.”
“My kids are too young to understand everything. They think I’m going to fight bad guys with a gun,” said Gibbons.
Brown’s children were young too, but he said he had tried to explain that Daddy had some important work to do for soldiers and that he would be home as soon as he could. In all our conversations, we found that much of the burden of explaining what we were doing and why we did it fell to our wives. That conversation was not easy. It invoked too many memories of good things at home, but also of strained relationships over our military careers. In a strange way, the conversations about our families gave us a resolve to do our missions well so we could return home quickly. It was striking how we had reacted to war, as if we had like-minded personalities or the same soldier-doctor DNA.
Thirty minutes after we sat down, a lieutenant from the headquarters company rushed in and banged a spoon on a metal tray. “One Hundred and Ninth, listen up,” he said. “Finish your coffee and get your gear. We’re heading north in one hour.” He left us instructions to muster at a specified holding area, duffels in hand.
I chuckled and shook my head. “More hurry-up-and-wait bullshit.”
Gibbons simply said, “Yup.”
Brown asked the lieutenant where we were going. The answer was generic.
“Up north. We got orders.”
Word from the battalion leadership soon circulated among the troops, confirming the lieutenant’s news. We were heading north. North was good news. It meant leaving Camp Wolverine for a real mission. There was widespread excitement in the battalion that the rumors of going home or staying put were unfounded. Despite that excitement, questions continued about what exactly “north” meant. North, to northern Kuwait, near the border of Iraq? North, as in northern Iraq with the 101st Airborne? North to Baghdad? North to Kurdistan? Docs, medics, and support staff all asked questions aimed at verifying our mission parameters. Who were we supporting? Nobody knew. Was our assignment to a field hospital, to medical aid stations, or as replacements for medical staff in armor or infantry units already on station? Nothing. The scant information from the chain of command was laced with the uncertainty of words like “possibility,” “depending on,” and “it appears.” The unsettling feelings of not knowing mission details only drove more questions. We had “north.” We wanted more. “Don’t worry,” the leadership told us. “You’ll get what you need when you need it.”
During the short ride to the holding area, I contemplated our battalion’s arrival in Kuwait, how it reminded me of the jerky movement of broken gears on a faulty machine rather than the precise movement of a well-oiled army. I still wore evidence of that jerkiness. My desert combat boots did not fit and I kept turning my ankle. Deal with it. Wear extra socks. My ankle still turned, constantly reminding me of inefficient movement, first a boot, then a battalion.
—
At 0200 hours the entire battalion loaded into a convoy of rented minibuses that looked suspiciously like tourist buses. They held about thirty soldiers each. One of the medics started clowning around and pretended to be a tour guide. “Tickets—please have your tickets ready,” he announced. He made his voice sound like a circus barker. Soldiers laughed with a sort of nervous laughter until one of the lieutenants finally told him to knock it off.
The image of riding into war in a rent-a-convoy was not what I had imagined about riding into war. In one sense, it seemed to ridicule the notion of a powerful army on the move. It gave the impression of something patched together and miscalculated. In another sense, it showed the leadership’s ability to adapt. I remembered the words of Lieutenant Colonel Fix: “Adapt and overcome.” I wanted to be flexible and recognized the absolute need for it, yet I felt that riding north into war on a tour bus seemed like a symptom of a deeper problem. The Army was a machine. I was merely a single cog or less.
The sides of the buses sported large
, tinted sliding windows that maintenance workers had covered with cheap black curtains in the interest of security. They also disabled the overhead lights, presumably to prevent enemy lookouts from seeing our silhouettes. Sculpted seats covered with purple-striped velour held about one and a half soldiers per row. The rows were supposed to hold four passengers. Soldiers carried their weapons, ammo clips, tactical vests, and one small personal bag. Some of the gear snagged the seat corners and tore the fabric. Straps and cords tangled in weapons. We were tired and pissed, hot and sweaty. A soldier near me punched a seatback with his fist while cursing Saddam. A few soldiers bitched about the buses, some about the Army in general. Others were speechless and subdued, as if some learned helplessness from a psychology rat experiment had overcome them and they had lost the will to fight back. They just moved unemotionally along, plopped down in their seats, and wiped the sweat from their expressionless faces. I grabbed an aisle seat in the middle of the bus. I kept telling myself to relax. Gibbons and I exchanged exasperated looks as he dropped into the seat directly across from me.
After an hour of loading, the drivers started the engines. Black exhaust blew from the tailpipes of the bus in front of us and into our bus. The air conditioner circulated hot, dusty air that covered our skin, noses, uniforms, and weapons. The ranking sergeant in the bus told the driver to turn off the blower. The driver, a foreign national, kept nodding in agreement, but did nothing. The sergeant finally reached over and turned off the air while repeating to the driver: off—on, off—on. The driver smiled and nodded.
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