When we are doing these types of things we always get a few different reactions from the men and children. There is the look of shock and the stare without saying anything. It happens often. You can see the surprise on their face when they realize there are women out with the men in uniform. They stare as they are walking. Don’t say anything . . . just stare. I’m surprised sometimes they don’t hurt their necks. Then there is the man giggling. That’s what I like to call it. I’ll say “Salaam aleikum” and they will say it back but giggle as they do, because they can’t believe I’m a female. Or they will turn to whoever they are with and say something like “It’s a girl” and giggle and stare. The ANA and ANP are the same way. The Afghan men seem to be fascinated by us! The women, on the other hand, are very hard to read. They rarely show emotion or let their face show any expressions. You can never really tell what an Afghan woman is thinking.
• • •
“Happy Thanksgiving from Afghanistan,” posted November 26, 2011
I’m just getting back from what we call “reset.” Female Marines cannot be with an infantry unit for longer than forty-five days at a time. So the FET comes together and does additional training and classes every forty-five days or so. Each of the two women FET teams gave a brief on their projects, activities, and lessons learned from the past forty-five days. It was really good to hear all the different stories and experiences we are all having. Some of the FET Marines are in a more kinetic area, meaning there is more fighting and it’s more dangerous.
Others, like myself, aren’t.
It seemed like those of us in the less kinetic area are able to interact more with the children and the women. We are building relationships and hopefully “winning hearts and minds.” In the other areas it is harder to accomplish those things, so they are finding other ways to contribute. I guess one of the main things we learned this reset was that success is measured not by comparing one team to another but by the improvements we make in our own areas. I think we probably learned more at breakfast, lunch, and dinner sharing stories than during the classes, but it was overall a good experience.
We had our first visit to the base by Afghan women yesterday. It probably doesn’t seem that amazing, but this has never happened before. We met them on patrol a few days earlier. One of the women had a big cut over her eye and her mother (probably in her late fifties) came and asked us to help. So we cleaned it up and gave her some [Band-Aids]. Then they show up at the base because it wasn’t getting any better. We gave them hygiene classes on brushing teeth, washing hair, and other things along these lines. They were so thankful and sociable. It was so much fun. The older woman told us “May your dust turn into gold,” and said we were like daughters. AND . . . she let me take a picture with her, which again was a first. She touched the top of our heads as she was leaving . . . which doesn’t seem like much, but it was definitely a sign of affection. It’s little victories like this that make all of it worthwhile. Or walking down the street and hearing kids call out my name, “Aziza, Aziza” (that’s my Afghan name). I feel blessed to be here with the opportunity to make a difference.
The school we always visit is suffering from a lack of attendance. Last time we visited, four children were present out of eighty. . . . We have been tasked with finding ways to promote attendance at the schools in our area of operation. No small task considering all these kids are up against. Most of the kids we talk to say they are scared to go to school. Others say it’s because of the harvest . . . they have to help their families work in the fields. So it’s my mission to get the kids back to school and to show everyone the importance of education. Wish me luck!! We are going to the school soon and handing out new supplies, maybe motivate them to show up at least one day so we can convince them to keep showing up. We had a meeting with the principal and he is a great ally in this fight.
We have a new unit [of Marines] here now and we’re trying to win them over. The commanding officer has given us many new tasks. Who would have thought I would come to Afghanistan and be put in charge of assessing and identifying all the schools in the area we’re located [in]? It’s a good thing education happens to be one of my passions (thank you Madison School teachers for instilling in me the importance of education). They have never had a FET before or worked with females. It’s been a challenge to show them our worth, especially in the lower ranks. . . .
I just want to say thank you to all those who read my e-mails and have spread the word. We have already begun receiving hygiene gear to hand out to the women. I got nine packages yesterday . . . six from people I’ve never even spoken to. One woman told me about her granddaughter who sold pictures she drew for 25 cents, house to house, to buy toys for the Afghan kids. She raised four dollars . . . amazing. My linguist cried at the generosity of you all.
De Khodai Pu Amman (May you be in the safety of God).
Lori Imsdahl
(1982–)
U.S. Army
Lori Imsdahl, born and raised in Minnesota, attended West Point and spent five years in the United States Army. In 2012 she was runner-up for the Melanie Hook Rice Award in Creative Nonfiction at Hollins University, where she completed her MFA in 2013. Her work has appeared in Emerge Literary Journal, Green Briar Review, and Slow Trains Literary Journal. The following is excerpted from her essay “Freak Accidents,” originally published in the winter 2015 issue of O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project.
Sergeant First Class Rocky Herrera, Sergeant Cory Clark, and Sergeant Bryce Howard died in Jaji Province, Afghanistan, on the morning of August 28, 2007, beside a bridge that they were constructing over a dry streambed.
I was sitting in my Humvee, one hundred meters away from them, when it happened.
Moments later, I saw Sergeant First Class Herrera on the ground. Our medic, Specialist Gary Olund, knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. “He’s dead,” the medic announced. Then I helped heave Sergeant Clark from a ditch. There was a hole in Clark’s head and his body was still warm. And then I watched Corporal Howard gasp for breath and bleed out in the arms of Specialist Olund.
I felt nothing.
I woke up the next morning, expecting to feel something, but again I felt nothing. I felt nothing at the memorial service, either.
They died in Jaji Province, Afghanistan, a farming district on the Pakistani border.
In May 1987, Jaji Province was a place where Osama Bin Laden came to prominence by leading Afghani forces against the Soviet Army. Twenty years later, in August 2007, it was a place with no borders, a place where people trafficked opium and passed across the Pakistani border unimpeded.
I was Third Platoon Leader for 585th Engineer Company, 555th Engineer Brigade from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. In the summer of 2007, my company’s mission was to build a Forward Operating Base (FOB) on high ground near the Pakistani border. The Army believed that the soldiers who lived at that FOB could assert control and bring stability to Jaji Province.
In July 2007, we convoyed to the area from Logar Province where we had begun construction of FOB Shank in April. We drove over miles of rutted roads. The landscape of undulating woods and farmland was strangely idyllic. Our convoy passed streams, fields of flowers, mud buildings, and plots of wheat and corn. We observed forlorn goats tied to trees and wild dogs panting in the summer heat.
A few kilometers from the area where we would establish the base, we came over a hill and entered a field of marijuana. The field was larger than a football stadium and the plants were six feet tall. The musky smell of cannabis seeped into my vehicle through the gunner’s hatch. After the marijuana plot, we crossed a barren field, a dry streambed, and a local village. Then we crested another hill and arrived at the place we’d call home for the next four months.
The area was on the edge of a cliff, and Pakistan was the land-mass on the other side of it. The topography changed at that cliff, going from undulating woods and farmland to miles of mountains, desert, and desolation.
Afte
r we parked our vehicles, I stood in the dirt and stared out at Pakistan. One of my soldiers operated a grader, leveling the place where we’d live while constructing the outpost. The Army had attached an infantry platoon to 585th Engineer Company and the infantry had come just ahead of us and erected a perimeter. They were still living out of their vehicles.
I saw their platoon leader talking to First Sergeant Meyer and I walked over to introduce myself. I can’t recall this lieutenant’s name but I’ll never forget the look of anguish on his face, later, when the helicopters were landing to pick up the injured and the dead. His job was to provide security, but three soldiers had died on his watch.
After the lieutenant and I exchanged hellos, I continued to look at Pakistan.
This is the edge of the world, I thought. This is the furthest I can get from home. It was a feeling both profoundly thrilling and profoundly sad. Now that I’ve traveled more, I’m aware of how little I’ve seen. But I still wonder if I’ll ever stand at the edge of the world and feel that far from home again.
On the morning of August 28, 2007, I woke up at around six a.m. and coaxed myself out of my sleeping bag. That morning, I was running a logistical convoy to FOB Shank to drop off soldiers and supplies. Including myself, there would be nineteen soldiers in the convoy.
First I changed into a tan T-shirt and the top and bottom of an Army Combat Uniform. Then I sat on my cot and put on wool socks and combat boots. I wound the laces around the backside of the boot and tucked the ends inside the shoe as my squad leader had taught me to do six years ago, during Basic Training.
Then I put on a patrol cap. Afterwards, I gathered my Kevlar helmet, gloves, sunglasses, and flak vest. I stopped to ensure that my neck, groin, and shoulder protectors were attached to the vest. I also gathered my M16 rifle and an assault pack with a notebook, toothbrush, and a change of clothing. Then I walked outside.
A line of vehicles was staged in front of my tent in marching order: senior squad leader’s vehicle, platoon sergeant’s vehicle, my vehicle, and heavy vehicles interspersed with Humvees. The sun was starting to rise and I could see pink smears across the sky. I put my gear into the passenger seat of my Humvee, then walked to the mess hall for a cup of coffee. On the way inside, Sergeant Howard intercepted me. “Ma’am, this is for Staff Sergeant Jimenez,” he said, handing me a white, three-ring binder to give to my platoon sergeant. Sergeant Howard was a surveyor in Support Platoon and the binder was full of measurements he’d taken of the hill on which we were going to build the FOB.
“Thanks,” I said and took the binder. I gave Sergeant Howard a passing glance. He was young and there was a rugged attractiveness to his face. There were bags beneath his eyes. He looks tired, I thought. And four hours later, he was dead.
On the morning of August 28, 2007, our convoy was scheduled to leave at around seven or eight a.m. However, at the last minute, the company commander instructed me to bring along additional supplies to FOB Shank—several light sets and a generator. The light sets and generator were too heavy to be lifted manually, so a forklift operator would need to load them on the back of an M870 trailer. At first it seemed like a quick task, but then everything went wrong.
First, our supply sergeant couldn’t locate one of the light sets.
Then it was determined that our forklift had mechanical problems. A functional forklift was located, but before the operator could get to work, soldiers needed to shift around the equipment on the back of the M870 trailer to make room for the light sets and generator.
As a result, we departed for FOB Shank later than expected. I think about that a lot. About chance, luck, and fate. About freak accidents. About how we wouldn’t have been near the bridge if we’d left earlier. About how we were the first responders to the scene because we departed late.
Around nine or ten a.m. on August 28, 2007, our convoy drove out of the COP, past two soldiers with M240Bs manning the entry control point.
We wound around barriers that were arranged in a serpentine formation to slow incoming traffic. Then we headed downhill, the roads rutted and edged with weeds. We drove through the village, the streets lined with mud buildings. Barefoot men wearing salwar kameezes sat cross-legged outside of storefronts besides boxes of produce, bottles of soda, and trinkets. A few children frolicked in the streets.
Women were absent, as they usually were, in every village and encounter.
Through the village, we drove into the barren field and across the dry streambed that was prone to flooding in the winter. That was where we saw Support Platoon building the bridge. They’d erected a perimeter of up-armored vehicles around their job site and soldiers with automatic weapons were standing in turrets and pulling security. Other soldiers were building the bridge. Everyone was wearing a flak vest.
Sergeant First Class Herrera, Support Platoon Sergeant, was standing near the road, supervising soldiers. He was a stocky fellow with white hair and a rosy complexion. In the final moments of his life, Herrera turned to watch our convoy and raised his arm to wave. Some of the soldiers in my convoy waved back. But we kept driving.
I was looking straight ahead at the rutted road when I heard the explosion. It rocked the ground. The lead vehicle in our convoy came to a halt and the other vehicles followed suit. And then it was silent.
In the moment after the explosion, I thought, I don’t know what the hell that was. And then, I don’t want to deal with this right now. But I knew I had to deal with it, whatever it was, and I had to deal with it now. Seconds after this realization, my driver, Sergeant Adriel Moreno—who was on the bridge side of our vehicle—swiveled toward me. Wide-eyed, he picked up the hand microphone and said into the radio, “I see casualties.”
A moment later, we saw the medic running out of his vehicle and toward the bridge.
I took the hand microphone from Sergeant Moreno. “Gunners, stay with your vehicles,” I said. Then Sergeant Moreno and I got out of our vehicle and started running, too.
The first thing I saw when I stepped out of my Humvee was a foot. It was not one of my soldiers’. This foot was brown, dusty, calloused, and wedged inside a gray sandal.
The style of sandal was familiar. I’d seen other Afghan men wear it. The foot was severed at the ankle. As I ran toward the bridge, I noticed hundreds of shards of skin scattered across the ground like confetti. The entire job site was permeated with the smell of blood. It reminded me of tampons, but different. This smell was more than blood. It was damp, fishy, fecal.
The next thing I saw was Sergeant First Class Herrera. When I’d seen him a few seconds earlier from inside my Humvee he’d been supervising soldiers. The blast had thrown him twenty feet away, and he was lying on his back in the dirt.
Herrera, forty-three, was a gentle, soft-spoken leader from Salt Lake City. After he died, a soldier from Support Platoon characterized him as “that rare individual you meet and trust five minutes later.” Herrera had a wife named Traci, four children, and two grandchildren. Traci’s name was tattooed across his chest.
The medic was kneeling beside Herrera. First, he checked for responsiveness. “Can you hear me?” he yelled, shaking Herrera’s shoulder. Herrera was unresponsive. Next, the medic pushed on the back of Herrera’s neck, raising his chin and opening his airway. He checked for airflow by placing his ear close to Herrera’s nose and mouth. He couldn’t detect any breathing. He traced the contours of Herrera’s body, sliding his fingers beneath the man’s back and legs. There was no pulse and he felt dampness. He discovered that shrapnel had penetrated Herrera’s body. Brain matter was dripping into the dirt. The medic got to his feet and faced me. There were more pressing matters to attend to. “He’s dead,” he said. And he took off running, again.
Instinctively, I headed to the hub of activity: a ditch near the bridge. That’s when I encountered Staff Sergeant Jimenez. Jimenez was staring into the ditch and moaning. Another soldier, Sergeant Bubba Pickren, was doing the same. I stood next to them and peered down. The ditch was five fe
et deep, and Sergeant Clark was lying at the bottom of it.
For weeks before the incident, Sergeant Clark told members of Support Platoon about a recurring nightmare: he would be blown up by the enemy and die from a head wound. Sadly, on August 28, 2007, sometime after nine a.m., this is exactly what would happen. Twenty-five-year-old Clark had a wife named Monica and four children younger than six. He came from Plant City, Florida, where he’d joined the Army a few months before September 11th to escape his job in the freezer warehouse of a Food Lion. After his death, Clark’s mother, Wrenita Codrington, told the Military Times that Clark had told her he’d “rather get a little dirty than a lot cold all the time.” Clark’s dream was to go to culinary school and open a restaurant with Monica. He had last tried to contact her on August 26, 2007, but she had not been at home, and he had left a voice mail telling her that he loved her.
After I saw Clark’s body, I lowered myself into the ditch and knelt beside him. There was no need for me to run through the steps of evaluating a casualty as the medic had done with Sergeant First Class Herrera. There was a large hole in Clark’s temple and his brain was visible. It was clear he’d died on impact. “We need to get him out of here,” I yelled to Jimenez and Pickren. “Help me lift him.”
Jimenez slid into the ditch. I grabbed Clark’s legs and Jimenez grabbed his torso. Pickren reached down and took hold of Clark’s head and shoulders. “Lift,” I commanded. We lifted. Because of their strength, Jimenez and Pickren did the majority of the work. I may have lifted thirty pounds of Clark’s weight. I’d never touched a dead body before, and Clark’s legs were still soft and limp and warm.
We got him out of the ditch. Then I scrambled out of it, heard yelling, and turned to my left. The medic was kneeling next to Sergeant Howard.
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