A few days later, I was restocking the drug containers in the RAP when another urgent call came from the American FSB. I was summoned to help out with an American CASEVAC of Dutch soldiers; a chopper extraction. I quickly threw on my body armour, grabbed my heater (another word for rifle) and jumped in the car, to be driven to the chopper. In the Black Hawk, Joe, the American chopper medic, explained the situation: a Dutch force was in heavy contact and had taken two casualties. Our job was to extract the injured soldiers, no matter how intense the contact, and drop them off at the Dutch hospital. Game on.
The Black Hawk rose vertically, very quickly. An Apache attack chopper was already in the air – our protection. Joe and I were strapped into our seats, listening for updates through the chopper’s radio system. The helicopters negotiated a tight valley before flaring right towards the contact. My mind raced – how would this situation look on the ground? Would I need to use my rifle or my med kit? I didn’t know. I just looked around the chopper cabin, trying to familiarise myself with the location of medical equipment. I wanted to distract my mind from situations that I had no control over and focus on the one-percenters that I could control.
Ten minutes later, we arrived at the scene. Luckily, the Dutch guys had established the landing zone (LZ) about 300 metres from the main contact front, which was dying down by the time we arrived. Joe and I stepped out of the chopper to receive the casualties. The Dutch guys tried to give us a handover, but I couldn’t hear a fucking word over the noise of the chopper blades. A few enemy rounds fizzed around nearby, within the general zip code of the chopper, but it wasn’t accurate fire – it was sporadic ‘hope and pray’ bullets, so it wasn’t all that worrying. We loaded the casualties onto the chopper, strapped them in and took off.
Joe and I put on our headsets.
‘Which one do you want, Tezz: wing or thigh?’ Joe asked.
One Dutch dude had been clipped in the leg; the other bloke had an unnatural hole in his shoulder. Both had blood-stained clothes, but they were swimming in a state of morphine euphoria, so they looked as stable and comfortable as they could be under the circumstances.
‘Gee, I don’t know, dude. You look like you love life below the belt. You take the leg,’ I replied.
‘Oh, funny fucker. How about rock, paper, scissors? The loser has to go downtown,’ Joe retorted.
We had a spud-off. I won with paper over rock, so I took the shoulder injury.
Joe gave me a playful arm punch as we unstrapped from our seats and tended to the casualties. Given that I hadn’t heard a single word of the handover, I launched into a full primary and secondary survey. Everything seemed to be in order. But as I inspected my casualty’s IV, I noticed that it didn’t look quite right. I injected a few millilitres of saline solution into the IV port, but the skin around the IV site ballooned out.
Fuck. The frontline medic tissued it – the IV isn’t sitting in the vein. Instead, the saline was being injected into the fascia, the space between muscle, bone and blood vessels. I guess I lost the spud-off, after all.
I removed the failed IV and prepared the kit for my own attempt. The vibrations from the chopper gave me double-vision as I aimed the needle at my casualty’s vein. I closed one eye, tongue sticking out as I zeroed in.
Boom. The IV went in like Flynn – harder than it sounds in a moving chopper.
A stream of blood trickled from the IV as I secured the injection site and cleaned up the bloody mess. Then, I connected the IV to a bag of fluids.
Minutes later, we landed at the Dutch hospital and raced our casualties into their respective emergency rooms. I handed over all the info about mine to this highly hostile androgynous-looking trauma nurse, who was either an extremely feminine man or an incredibly masculine woman. I had never felt so unappreciated under so much pressure.
I stepped back from the drama and let the Dutch resus team do their thing. But then the angry trauma nurse demanded that my IV be removed from the casualty’s hand.
‘I just put that IV in a few minutes ago. It’s patent,’ I said.
‘I don’t trust any treatment from the front line,’ the hostile nurse bluntly replied.
‘Normally I’d agree, but you can see the fluids are running – just flush it and . . .’ I started to say.
‘Why are you still in my emergency room?’ the nurse cut me off.
‘I’m waiting to get my stretcher back, when you’re done with it,’ I replied politely.
‘Get out. Get out of this room. I don’t want you here. You go now – wait in the hallway,’ the nurse barked.
What the fuck? It’s not like we just risked our bacon to rescue your Dutch comrades. No thanks necessary!
I stepped into the hallway, where Joe was already waiting, looking like he’d just been punished by a school headmaster.
‘Did you get kicked out too?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, dude. What’s with these weirdos?’ he replied. Both of our cultural navigation instruments had been disoriented in a Bermuda Triangle vortex of unfamiliar Dutch culture, hostility and situational pressure.
A few minutes later, an Australian attaché to the Dutch resus team brought the stretcher out into the hallway.
‘What was that all about?’ I asked.
‘Don’t take it personally; it’s just how these Dutch guys roll. Believe it or not, you caught her in a good mood – I think she actually liked you,’ he said. Wow, the nurse was female – I didn’t pick that one!
10
GOT SOME
Halfway through my deployment, our original commando crew was rotated home and replaced with a fresh company. The SAS and medical team still had a few months left, so we stayed put. But before the old crew rotated out, I’d engaged the services of one of their blokes who was a genius with a sewing needle to make me an insanely cool army-camouflage swag for a mates-rates half-hundred bucks. It was intense: functional and practical yet ridiculously cool-looking and entirely made from scraps and ingenuity. It was a true work of art, and was my new home away from home when I was out and about on patrol. While everyone else was chilling back at base, the medical team and I went out on the new commando crew’s ‘nursery patrol’.
NURSERY PATROL
A nursery patrol is designed to allow new soldiers in a warzone to safely practise their weapons handling and tactics in a relatively benign environment.
Despite what the term suggests, Goldilocks, Rapunzel and Snow White were strictly prohibited on this operation.
After a day or so of the typical brain-splitting boredom on patrol, I was lying around at the front of my Bushmaster, head resting on my new swag, one iPod bud in my ear. A looming, jagged mountain stood proud in the distance, as it always does in Afghanistan. Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ pumped through the earpiece, while my other ear was scanning the aural airwaves for signs of trouble. We were practising some dismount ops, with the majority of the foot-based crew working their way through the green belt below the rolling hills where I lay in overwatch. I was so relaxed; I’d been in a number of little contacts at this point and none of them had really bothered me. I knew that a straightforward nursery patrol was nothing to get excited about. I exhaled deeply, soaking in the serenity as my fingers tapped on my chest to the beat of the song.
Life was peachy.
‘Hello, hello, hello, how low,’ Cobain screamed into my off-duty ear. ‘Hello, hello, hello, how low. Hello, hello, h-gggrrt, how grrrt . . .’
What the fuck? How dare anyone interrupt my ‘me time’?
I took the bud out of my ear, looking around. The sound grew louder. Grrrt, grrrt, grrrt; a faint mechanical sound somewhere in the distance, followed by a momentary silence.
Hiss, whizz, fizz, ffftt, Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.
A frighteningly violent noise assaulted my ears as linear puffs of dust seemed to magically streak their way across the desert sand towards my legs, echoes reverberating around the valley and dissipating in magnitude as each split second
passed.
What the fu . . . I asked myself again, not even able to finish my train of thought.
My subconscious had clocked the source of the sound. An incoming torrent of bullets was slamming into the dust and rocks. There was literally only centimetres between the bullets’ splash and my legs. Sand and dust was kicking up everywhere. This whole mental-recognition process took only nanoseconds, but it felt like an eternity.
GUNFIRE
The sound of gunfire is featured in popular movies such as Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan. In these films, it’s portrayed as a high-pitched screech, as the bullets ricochet around the actors.
The movies are full of shit. Incoming fire doesn’t sound like that. The sound of incoming fire is so terrifyingly violent that you would dig a hole to hide in (with your eyelids) if you could.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I grabbed my body armour and gat which were lying right next to me, and made a beeline for the protected side of the Bushmaster, rounds violently fizzing and cracking around me, clouds of dust obscuring my feet from view as I ran.
I reached the relative safety of the reverse side of the vehicle, rounds still zipping in just a metre from my now more-or-less protected feet. I hastily strapped my body armour on, looking into the rear of the Bushmaster, mouth suddenly bone dry.
Paul, the commando medic front gunner, had a grin plastered from ear to ear. ‘Holy fuck, dude. We’re getting lit the fuck up!’ he beamed, eyes darting around wildly.
‘How fucking sick is this!’ I replied, adrenaline surging through every artery, vein, capillary and cell in my body. I couldn’t disguise the grin on my face either.
We were both, surprisingly, giddy with excitement.
I was the rear gunner on this car, but in the few milliseconds that it took to assess the situation, I realised that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t jump up on my gun yet; I still had something to do. All the other lads on the dasht were now firing back at full noise; the gunfire was deafening. They had it under control. The foot crew were still down in the green belt below, but they quickly made their way up the hill to the cars, dodging bullets and throwing up ‘Hail Mary’ return fire along the way.
I glanced down the exposed side of the Bushmaster, bursts of fire peppering the sand about five metres away. I’d left my new swag in the trenches, taking hits.
Fuuuuck. Okay, here we go.
I breathed deeply, steadying for my big hero moment.
Cue the slow-motion Baywatch music. I grew some balls and hot-stepped into the fray, fully exposed as I closed the ten-metre gap between the safety of the protected side of the car and my damsel-in-distress swag.
AUSTRALIAN COLOURS
Back in the day, Australian ‘unit colours’ were flags that represented the honour of individual military units. Soldiers were revered and given medals of valour for saving their unit colours from falling into enemy hands.
The swag is perhaps the most iconic emblem of the Australian bush, immortalised forever in the song ‘Waltzing Matilda’, but no kudos shall be given and no medals awarded to the modern-day fucktard who tries to save a non-mission-critical inanimate object under fire.
I grabbed a handful of the calico material in my left hand, quickly turning on a dime to run back to safety. All the suicide runs I’d ever done for basketball training as a kid were paying dividends now. I was exposed to the fire for no more than a few seconds, but, as I turned back, a volley of rounds exploded all around me.
Fizz, fizz, thud, Crack, crack, crack.
I felt the supersonic air ripples as bullets and ricocheting frag zipped past my head. My hearing was dulled by the extraordinarily loud gunfire all around me, but I got the gist: some fucker had me, Terry Ledgard, in his crosshairs. I still don’t know how I didn’t get zapped right there and then. I guess dumb luck was on my side this time. Going back for the swag was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve had plenty of brain-farts since then that could compete for the title.
I came to an abrupt halt at the back of the Bushmaster and threw the swag inside, quickly jumping up into the rear turret. My upper body and head were dangerously exposed to the incoming fire. I quickly rotated the turret so that the open upright hatch protected the left side of my body. The hatch wouldn’t stop a direct hit from the incoming heat, but it made me feel a little safer. I hunkered down as low as I could behind the Mag.58 machine gun, hoping that if bullets started zipping in they’d hit the gun before they fucked me in the face. Flicking the safety catch to ‘get some’ I unleashed the fury with a couple of quick panic bursts at the splash of the other lads’ rounds on the hillside.
After another short burst, I stopped. What was I even aiming at? My finger eased off the trigger as I scanned for targets. I peered into the scope aperture on top of the gun. It was a large Trijicon reflex scope with a blue perspex lens and bright-orange luminescent dot as the aiming point. It had barely any magnification so it was pretty much useless at this range. My weapon scope was dialled in for 300 metres; the mid-range of expected enemy contacts. 600–700 metres was well beyond my expectations for this scope. I peered over the top of the weapon system.
I could see the splash of my mates’ rounds all along the nearby mountainside but I couldn’t see what they were shooting at. My eyes were darting about wildly, hands shaking from the adrenaline. There was no hope of eyeballing a target in this state. I could feel the pressure of my heartbeat in my ears, hear the whooshing sound of blood pulsating through my veins.
Steady, steady. Calm the fuck down, Tezz. Breathe. Relax.
Every now and then, I caught a momentary glimpse of the briefest muzzle flash or darting shadow hiding behind a rocky outcrop some 600 to 700 metres away on the mountainside. The glimpses were so fleeting that if you weren’t in a warzone, and didn’t have a shower of bullets flying at you, you’d think your mind was playing tricks. But these incoming bullets weren’t just appearing by magic; they had to be coming from somewhere.
These were my targets.
Given that my weapon scope had the magnification of an opaque plastic bag, I had to fire a few bursts and watch the splash of my rounds on the mountainside with the naked eye. Once I saw where the rounds fell, I could slowly walk the next bursts up onto the target, increasing the intensity of my trigger-happiness as the rounds hit home. I alternated between my naked eye and the scope aim point to give a more accurate point of reference for adjustments. If I trusted the scope completely, I was aiming at sand or sky, dozens of metres above and to the right of where my rounds were actually falling. I was using wisps of cloud as a reference point to adjust my aim onto the target.
Sometimes, I’d walk my rounds onto a muzzle flash. Other times, I’d shoot at a shadow, or what I thought was a shadow; I couldn’t be sure. There was an overhanging rock just above where I thought I’d seen a muzzle flash, so I unleashed hell into the underside of that rocky outcrop, guessing that my bullets were ricocheting downwards and hopefully fragging the bad guys hiding below. Sometimes, the muzzle flashes and shadows that I was shooting at stopped, and didn’t start up again. Other times, they kept firing, so I arced up at them again. I repeated this process over and over, silently hoping the enemy’s numbers were by now dwindling to ‘retreat’ proportions. All concept of time had gone out the window. Even now, in retrospect, I couldn’t tell you if this gunfight lasted fifteen minutes or two hours. The reality is probably somewhere in between. But what I can tell you is that it was fucking intense.
A spray of gunfire loudly cracked against the Bushmaster, just inches away from me, peppering the spot where I was standing. The sound was deafening. If it hadn’t been for the outer-skin armour separating the rounds from my flesh, the two might have had an unfortunate meet and greet.
I must remember to invest in Bushmaster shares when I get home.
Occasionally, new muzzle flashes and shadows appeared elsewhere on the mountain.
Fuck. Are these new players
or is that the same cunt I thought I slotted thirty metres to the left?
Sweat dripped down my face. As clichéd as this might sound, I wasn’t scared at all. That’s not to say that I’m an especially staunch motherfucker – far from it. My brain had simply switched off and relinquished all powers of independent thought to the dark side – my army training had kicked in. My mind was on autopilot, completely blank except for the occasional ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ and the fragmented snippets of ‘Teen Spirit’ that were looping in my head.
By now I’d pumped hundreds of bullets down range, and the normally black colour of my weapon’s muzzle had changed to gun-metal grey from the heat. I picked a new target and pulled the trigger.
Click.
‘Stoppage!’ I yelled, carrying out the corresponding drill to identify the cause. I’d run out of ammo.
I ducked my head down into the Bushmaster, screaming out for a fresh ammo box. Vinny swiftly passed a new one up and I opened the ammo-tin lid, placing the bandolier of rounds onto the MAG 58 feed plate.
The bullets had been loaded into the ammo tin backwards, and upside down.
‘Vinny, I need a new box of 7.62. This one’s no good!’ I screamed. My shouting was half from adrenaline and half from the fact that my ears were now ringing from the noise of the gunfight. I was temporarily deaf.
I held the unusable box of ammo down in the turret, shaking it to emphasise that I needed a new one. I was expecting to feel the box being pulled away from my hand and a new one being thrust into it, but it didn’t happen. So, I ducked down to see what was happening. Vinny was busy helping the front gunner rectify his stoppage. I was on my own.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I popped back into the turret and wiggled the 58 on its swivel arm until I felt the familiar click of the weapon locking securely into a fixed position. Usually, once you hear the initial click, it takes an extra jiggle for the locking pin to fully engage, but this couldn’t have been further from my mind under the circumstances.
Bad Medicine Page 11