What Was Asked of Us

by Trish Wood

  I was responsible for changing IV bags. I kept constantly trying to stop the bleeding and assessing his vital signs. Every so often, you go through a cycle: What’s the patient’s respiration? What’s their pulse? What’s the—if you have the capabilities—temperature, heartbeat, and that stuff. He didn’t have much of a mouth to take a temperature. He’s quiet for most of the time, and I’m just talking to him. And we’re using the tools to try and break apart the cab so we can get him out. He’s starting to shake a little, I’m assuming because of shock from all the blood loss.

  They’re using the pry bars and the Jaws of Life, which are designed for civilian vehicles, so basically the Hemmet is laughing at them, so to speak. And so when they’re pulling on the metal, even with these tools, they’re pulling on his foot that is trapped in the wreckage. I remember he’s still managing a coherent scream even with that little of a mouth. And he was saying, he managed to say, “Just get me out. Just get me out.”

  So they moved the Hemmet fuel truck, and they backed up another Hemmet, and they chained it to the front end of the Hemmet that I was in with Brad. And they tried to pull the cab apart because the tools they had weren’t working. And they pulled the whole truck. But worse than that, because his foot was trapped between the pieces of metal, if you can imagine—they’ve got the chain wrapped around more or less the door-jamb, so to pull the metal off, you actually have to come across the foot.

  That’s when he screamed, and he really just wanted out. And at that point, I remember he started shaking his head, and I just remember seeing all the flesh just go side to side. And he’s starting to say, “No.” And he was saying . . . He more or less was saying that he wasn’t going to make it. And I was like, you can’t fucking die; I’ve been through too much shit for you to quit now.

  And at that point, they made the call. We’ve got to do something. So they chained the marine truck to the back end of the Hemmet I was in, and they chained the other truck to the front using giant half-inch ball chains. And on the count of three—they just got on the radios; they counted “One, two, three,” and then they went in opposite directions. I remember I was covering his eyes, and I didn’t want him to see anything that was going on, or anything that could happen, or figure out what was going to happen. And I didn’t know if, in another second, I was just going to watch this guy’s legs get ripped off. So I’m kind of a little freaked out myself. But we got to do this.

  So I’m covering his eyes and trying to stop the bleeding, and with a sickening crunch and maybe a yell from him, it was over. They pulled the cab apart and it popped over his foot and I could see everything. I immediately cut off his pants. I could see that one kneecap was completely exposed. I could see the patella. I could see some of the ligaments. I could see the tibia and fibula.

  And we still had to get him out of there. You just don’t grab a patient and pull them out. So for the first time in hours, I got out of the cab, and I came around to a side, and we had to get a short board to put behind him and strap him in.

  We kind of pulled him out in the seating position. We got down to the ground and another medic was there. And we were almost home free. The Black Hawk was about thirty feet away. I promised him I wouldn’t leave his side until he was on the chopper and they started to pick him up. I grabbed one of the boards, and I walked him over to the waiting Black Hawk and put him on. And he took off.

  After that, we still had the wreckage to clean up. We had to tow what was left. The Hemmet cargo truck had all kinds of porcelain things in the back. I don’t remember if they were toilets or what they were, but there were shattered white pieces of porcelain all over the road and back.

  And we towed everything to BIAP, and I remember we got to BIAP and it all sunk in. And people were coming up to me, giving me credit for him being saved, and I remember just being in shock because there were so many people there.

  Sometimes I think I didn’t do enough. I wish I knew more. I wish I had gotten there sooner. I wish I hadn’t hesitated. Had I been better or more confident, maybe I could have gotten a second IV in his left arm. Maybe I should have kept the teeth that I just kind of threw away. I try not to dwell on it. I just think that I did my best. I did what I could. He’s alive. I’m grateful for it. And I’m glad that we all got him out of there. And that’s going to have to be—it’s got to be good enough for me to go on with my life. Otherwise, I’ll spend the rest of my time analyzing it, and I just try to get past it.

  “I didn’t pray for the Iraqis”

  KEN DAVIS

  372ND MILITARY POLICE COMPANY

  SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2003

  ABU GHRAIB PRISON

  The day 9/11 happened, I was on the phone with recruiters, knowing that I had to do something to help defend my country. The army was the first one to call me back, so I was in the army, all signed up by the twenty-fourth of September. I had been active-duty air force and had gotten out in ’92, did some reserve time, got out of that in ’95. After 9/11 happened, I decided I needed to re-enlist, and I was totally committed because 9/11 suggested to me that the enemy had decided to attack us on our home front, and being American, I wanted to defend my country, my family, and my beliefs.

  I am a born-again Christian and a born-again believer. I believe in all the gifts of the spirit and all the functions of the church. I believe the Bible is the emphatic word of God. I come from a very rapture-based family, but, personally, I think there is a lot of good that can still be done for people, so I would hope that God would wait a little while, because I still have hope. If you read the Bible close enough, especially in Revelations, Armageddon is supposed to happen—the war to end all wars. That’s end of mankind as we know it. So, I would think with wisdom and knowledge, you would try to keep that from happening, because, honestly, I enjoy living. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy protecting people. I don’t enjoy hurting people.

  A lot of people have said I’m just like Forrest Gump, because things happen to me. For instance, in October of 1994, a friend of mine talked me into going sightseeing in Washington, DC, for the first time. I had never been to DC. I was a small-town Texas boy moved to Maryland, and now I’m going to see the nation’s capital. I felt like the Beverly Hillbillies. Anyway, we are on the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the White House, and as soon as my friend started taking pictures, a guy started shooting at the White House. I looked to my right, and here’s a man in a trench coat, firing off rounds, and I was kind of floored, thinking, This has got to be a training scenario for Secret Service or park police. There is no way anybody in their right mind would be doing this.

  But it wasn’t. As soon as I seen rounds hitting the fencing, I knew it was real. Just as he was about to reload, another man ran up and hit him and brought him to the ground. I ran up and grabbed his legs, and we all held him until the Secret Service got there. The perpetrator said that he had been shooting at a blue mist trying to possess the White House, but later on they charged him with attempted assassination of the president because of notes and correspondence he had with his family and friends. So, that’s one of the reasons they say I’m like Forrest Gump. My grandmother always says I had to do things the hard way.

  In Iraq, I ended up at Abu Ghraib, even though I was an MP, and they told us our job would be combat support. The prison had been mortared many times. They needed a quick-reaction-force team to go after the people attacking the prison with mortars. My lieutenant—he was a clerk in a convenience store and lived at home with his parents, sharing a room with his brother. He was in his thirties. Our commander—he was a salesman for window blinds. Our first sergeant works in a chicken factory. We were supposed to, for lack of a better term, kick in doors, make arrests, and go after criminals. We were going to be the police force and go in to keep the peace, be peacekeepers, but instead we ended up at Abu Ghraib.

  It was very clear that the insurgency was growing. After Baghdad fell, the president suggested the war was essentially over, but there were still IEDs and bombs goi
ng off all the time, killing American soldiers. Mortars were killing soldiers. It was a whole other war within a war, and so there was a lot of talk about getting a handle on it. They were afraid the insurgency would get out of hand. We understood that they had to gain actionable intelligence to make sure that we could contain the insurgency.

  My thinking on the way to Abu Ghraib was that I need to make a difference here. We’ve got to show these people that we’re different. We’ve got to show these people, even those in the insurgency, that we’re here to help. That was my biggest thing, and a lot of my soldiers heard me say, time and time again, that we only have one shot at making an impression, at showing them we are not like Saddam. We are not these infidels; we’re not these rapists; we are not murderers. We are American soldiers, and we have integrity and honor.

  The easiest way I can describe Abu Ghraib is that it has big walls with guard towers around it. It looks like the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Rolling into the place, you’re waiting for gladiators and stuff like that. It’s just a desolate place. Saddam had his killing chambers at Abu Ghraib, and you know that the sand there wasn’t like normal sand. It was like dust, ashes, and it would just puff when you stepped in it. It was unlike any kind of sand I’ve ever seen, and I was raised on the Gulf Coast. I didn’t like to breathe it in, and I wondered, Did Saddam cremate people here?

  We were told that military intelligence was in charge of the compound. They were the ones calling the shots. So they’ve taken away our authority to do what we’ve been trained to do. So already there’s some confusion. Are the MPs in charge of the MPs, or is MI in charge of the MPs? And no one could give a definitive answer.

  Right away, I’m starting to see things that I don’t agree with. I’m starting to see things that are going against everything I’ve ever believed in, my whole core value, my whole belief in humanity, and it hurt. You know there’s a line coming up, and you never want to cross it, because then you might not ever get right again.

  I remember one night in particular, my senses really came to a head when I was walking to the MWR site, where we could use telephones, and I was walking by a totally darkened building. There were no lights on, and I had my M4 and my 9mm, totally suited up—weapons, ammo, my battle rattle. Any enemy that would present itself I would be able to take care of. Well, all of a sudden, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, fear enveloped me, and I started getting goose bumps, and it was all emanating from the building to my right. I just looked into the darkness, and nothing was there. It was just the eeriest feeling in the world. It was ghostly. It just felt evil.

  We lived in prison cells, and Specialist Charles Graner lived across the hall from me. He was my next-door neighbor. One time he walked in, and he was hoarse, and I said, “What’s the matter, are you sick?” And he says, “No, I’m hoarse because they are making us yell at detainees.” And he says, “I’ve got a question for you. They’re making me do things that I feel are morally and ethically wrong. What should I do?” And I said, “Don’t do them.” He says, “I don’t have a choice.” And I said, “Well, yes, you do. What do you mean you don’t have a choice?” Graner says, “Every time a bomb goes off outside of the wire”—which is outside the walls of Abu Ghraib—“one of the OGA members would come in to say, That’s another American losing their life, and unless you help us get this information, their blood is on your hands as well.”

  You learn to not ask too many questions because apparently it’s condoned, and especially when they took us on a tour when we first got there, there was an interrogation going on—a guy handcuffed from behind his back, kneeling down, crying. I wasn’t supposed to see it, but I’m nosy, so I walk down the tier instead of sticking with my group, and I looked over, and there was a guy in civilian clothes interrogating a person, and he had a picture of the guy’s family in front of him and said, “If you ever want to see your family again, you’ll give us the information we want.” It was being interpreted through an interpreter. Later, other soldiers were talking about a guy being in a “stress position.” They told me that’s when they’re handcuffed and their feet are barely touching the floor. Then they are hanged by the handcuffs from bars above. I heard this from different soldiers, not just Graner.

  October 25th rolls around, and it’s the date of the Abu Ghraib photograph that I’m in. I had to go get the guy who was my gunner and my driver so I could brief him on a mission. He was Graner’s cell mate, and he was over on the tier at the hard site that day. There’s a central door that you go through to get in, and it’s unlocked, and it leads to the breezeway, and as you are walking down, there is the NCOIC of the prison. That is where you turn in your weapons. I said I was there to find my driver, Smitty.

  As I’m walking down, I heard yelling and stuff coming from the other tiers. There are a few people in stress positions, handcuffed and on their knees, and that kind of stuff. As I’m walking, I see some military intelligence guys, at least they appeared to be that because they were wearing shorts and T-shirts, not uniforms, and that is not how we were told to dress: we are supposed to stay in uniform. I get to the tier, and it smells like a sewer in there. It’s hot and muggy. It doesn’t really register at first that I am seeing naked detainees being handcuffed. Then Graner comes to the door to let me in, and that’s when Armin Cruz sees me and walks down and asks if I think they have “crossed a line.” It is interesting that they let me in, because Graner knows me as a sergeant, and I believe that if he had actually thought he was doing something wrong, that he wouldn’t have let me in, because these guys knew me as the preacher man, the straight guy.

  And then it just escalated that evening into handcuffing them together, bringing in a third detainee, making him get undressed and then low crawling on the floor, and the whole time they’re saying, “Confess, confess, confess.” The prisoners said through the interpreter that they’re not going to confess to something they didn’t do. The interrogators seemed indifferent to the suffering. Every time one of them would touch a detainee, he’d say, “These people are dirty. They’re dogs. They’re dirty.” He would kind of shake his hand, like his hands were dirty. I thought that was interesting that he would do that.

  We were told that the only people in Tier 1A were high-profile detainees, ghost detainees, security holds, so it all made sense that, OK, if these guys are being interrogated, maybe it’s legit; I have no idea. But I also thought it was wrong. I don’t care if these guys have actionable intelligence. Where do we draw the line? If we are the ones that are the law-abiding peacekeeping ones, where do we draw a line? I was confused, thinking, OK, I’ve only been in country three and a half weeks. Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe they’ve gone through some specialized training that I know I don’t have. Because I had never been taught any rules of interrogation, never been taught what an interrogation looks like, so I figured I had missed something, but I was going to find out.

  I think it was Pfc. England who was there taking pictures on the upper deck of the tier. The photograph I’m in is well after they had already brought the third detainee in and they handcuffed them all together in a pile. From my perception, they were trying to put him in a sexually humiliating position. Apparently these guys were accused of raping a fifteen-year-old boy, and my question to them, to one of the interrogators was, “Did you ever take into consideration these guys are innocent?” Two weeks later, the boy recanted and said that they never did it.

  After about forty minutes or so, I had had enough. I’m not going to sit here and watch this anymore, and I decided to report it.

  When I got back to my living quarters, it was late, and everybody was in bed or going to bed, and my chain of command was already in bed, so I lay down and all I could remember was hearing screams, the screams of grown men, and I determined that I would never do those things I saw. The day after that, we were on missions again, and I was wondering, Who do I talk to? What do I say? After we rolled back in, I said to my lieutenant, “Sir, I need to talk to you. Mil
itary intelligence is doing some pretty weird things to naked detainees over at the hard site.” He said, “What?” I said, “Military intelligence is interrogating naked detainees.” And he said, “Sorry, you’re not even supposed to be over there. Just stay out of their way and let them do their job.” And I remember asking him who was in charge. Who is in charge of us? Who is in charge of this place? He said, “Military intel is in charge of the entire compound.” I said, “Well, sir, don’t ever order me to go over there and do that, because I won’t do it.” And he said, “You’ll do whatever you’re ordered to do, Sergeant.” I said, “Yeah, I might do whatever I’m ordered to do, except that.” And he goes, “Sergeant,” and he got really agitated with me because I was standing my ground, and I wasn’t showing the proper respect, I guess he felt.

  This one morning, November 8th, there was a lot of chaos going on around our mission of driving fourteen Abu Ghraib prisoners in to court. I was going in an up-armored Humvee, and my driver, Smitty, was in a bad mood because he was passed over for a promotion and my gunner, Specialist Dean, was going to be flying out the next day to go home for two weeks. So I had a quandary about who I put where. I ended up putting Smitty up in the gun so he can clear his mind a bit, and I’m going to drive, because I didn’t like Dean’s driving, and so Dean’s going to sit in my seat.

  Every morning I would go up on the roof and pray before a mission, to put my request before God to make sure we made it home safely, and that morning I forgot, with all the chaos. I just didn’t do it. I didn’t pray.

  We had fourteen prisoners in the back of the Deuce, which is a two- and-a-half-ton truck with benches in the back. It’s a troop transport, and normally we ran with the cover off because we wanted the insurgents to see that these were Iraqis in back there, so they might not attack us. For some reason, we left the cover on the back of the truck this day. We were on the main supply route Sword, and we were ten minutes into the mission, where normally we’d be getting into the right lane of the three-lane highway because our exit is coming up. Pretty soon, cars are starting to flash their lights behind us and zip past us through this stretch of road, which suggested there could be trouble coming. At the same time, it hit me that I didn’t pray this morning. Oh, man. So I started praying with my eyes open, driving, saying, “God, I’m sorry I forgot to pray. Please keep us safe.”