For the Love of a Marine

by Sharon Kimbra Walsh

  Sick parade occurred from 0700 to 0900 hours each morning with various personnel arriving with a variety of minor injuries or illnesses such as strains, rashes and, in one case, mild heat exhaustion. Katie performed blood tests if they were required with onward transmission to the laboratory for processing, checked blood pressures, temperatures and distributed medication prescribed by the doctors. There were enough patients to keep her busy and her mind fully occupied, enabling her to push wayward thoughts about a certain man from her mind.

  Sick parade over, her duties for that morning—with the exception of a break at 1030 hours—was to replenish the instruments in the trauma rooms, replace white sheets on the examination tables then check over the equipment and instruments in the theaters. She also had to check the drug cabinets and restock specific drugs, if needed.

  Lunchtime came and went slowly, with Katie ordering food from the mess and having it delivered to the CTH. After all the duty staff had eaten, Katie joined in a game of poker, the game set out on one of the theater operating tables. As the game progressed and became rowdier, Katie found herself relaxing slightly. She became completely embroiled in the good-humored arguments resulting from blatant cheating in the game until at 1700 hours a young female soldier hobbled into the CTH assisted by a fellow soldier.

  While out on a training run, the patient had fallen and twisted her knee. After having the injury examined by one of the doctors, the diagnosis was a minor strain but, to prevent further injury, it needed to be strapped up for support and the woman advised to rest for forty-eight hours. Katie reassured the young soldier that the joint and ligaments would heal and issued painkillers and a sick chit to provide to her section leader. Once treated, the woman left again, assisted by her fellow soldier, and the CTH fell quiet.

  At 1800 hours, Sergeant Webster approached Katie and advised her that she could go off duty. Thanking him and wishing him goodnight, Katie went off to the locker room to take a brief shower, change out of her scrubs into her T-shirt and combats, then collected her weapon and left the building. Once outside she stopped, breathing in the hot air.

  She glanced around, and when she realized she was looking for a certain US marine who might have been waiting for her, she abruptly stopped herself. Once her duty had finished, her mind had instantly filled with images of the woman who had had her hand on Joe’s arm in the mess, and the thoughts irritated her with their persistence. She did not want to see Staff Sergeant Anderson again.

  Determined to dismiss all thoughts of Joe Anderson from her head, attempting to achieve some sort of control over herself, she headed for the mess with the intention of getting some hot food inside her then returning to her tent for the admin evening. Nearing the building, she heard Wanda’s voice calling her name, waited for her friend to join her, and the two women continued on to the mess together, entering its air-conditioned interior with relief.

  Once seated, Katie set about her food with gusto, at one point asking, “How was your day?”

  “The usual Numbnuts,” Wanda answered, taking a long gulp from her can of Coke, “requesting equipment with no authorization chits or serial numbers—same old, same old. By the way, what the hell was wrong with you this morning?”

  “Nothing was wrong,” Katie answered, hating to lie to her friend. “I was late for work. I told you.” She couldn’t help averting her gaze from Wanda’s, who was a little too clever to be deceived. “And anyway—” Her sentence was abruptly cut short as from a distance there came the distinct booming sound of a loud explosion. The building and floor shook, and cutlery, cups and plates rattled slightly on the tables.

  Chapter Five

  Conversation in the mess ceased abruptly, as though cut off by a switch. Everyone froze, holding their breath, hoping and praying that it was not what they dreaded. Giant Voice suddenly boomed then crackled with feedback and a calm, clear, unhurried voice spoke the shocking words that all base personnel dreaded and hoped that they would never hear.

  “Attention, attention! This is a red alert. There has been an unidentified explosion on the northeast side of the base. If you do not need to be about the base, remain in your accommodation. All CTTs, trauma teams and medical personnel on standby are to report to the CTH. All infantry on standby are to report to their muster points. That is all.”

  As the voice ceased and Giant Voice boomed again with more feedback, a deep intermittent siren sounded followed by another and another, all over the base. Adrenaline and tension rocketing up a level, everybody in the mess was suddenly on the move, combat boots thudding heavily on the floor. Helmets slammed hastily on, chairs overturned and tables skidded across the rubber floor as personnel leaped to their feet, grabbed equipment and headed for the doors. Cutlery scattered on the floor, drinks spilled from plastic cups and plates full of food went flying.

  “Fuck!” Wanda spat out the expletive and grabbed her helmet from her webbing belt. Silently, Katie followed her example, unclipping her helmet and slapping it on, haphazardly thrusting her military cap into a pocket of her trousers. Leaving the straps of her helmet dangling, she grabbed for her weapon and ran across the room, Wanda following close on her heels.

  Slamming out of the doors and still running, Katie quickly slapped her friend on her arm. “Stay safe, girl,” she called, and was off jogging down the road toward the CTH.

  As she ran, she glanced in the direction of the reported explosion and saw a huge column of black smoke, roiling and curling upward from the distant perimeter wall. Because there was no wind, it hung in the air, a solid, unmoving mass. So, it’s not a drill or a hoax then. Katie picked up speed, her right arm pinning her weapon to her body, her other arm pumping at her side, dust spiraling up around her from her pounding boots.

  The noise was deafening. Sirens wailed. Giant Voice blared every now and again with new instructions and orders, and camp personnel ran or walked hurriedly in all directions. A unit of armed soldiers jogged past her on the opposite side of the road, the unit leader bellowing, “Double time, come on, move it, ladies. Move your goddamned arses.”

  Just as she was becoming out of breath, Katie arrived at the CTH. The entrance doors had been chocked open and inside medical personnel were milling around, preparing the theaters and trauma rooms for possible incoming casualties.

  Panting slightly, her face glistening with sweat, Katie jogged down the corridor, dancing around hurrying nurses and CTH staff, and entered the briefing room, which was already full of people.

  “Okay, listen up,” Sergeant Webster began without preamble, raising his voice. “There has been a large explosion. It appears that insurgents created a diversion outside the perimeter wall, and while the guards were distracted, they blew a hole in the thing using two vehicles full of heavy explosives. Sadly, there was a squad of soldiers training in the area at the time and one of the guard towers has gone. There will almost certainly be casualties. I want two CTTs down there and CTMs Walker and Wilson. A four-tonner will be here in five to take you all to the incident. You all know what to do. Stabilize the wounded on the scene then get them back here. Understood? Let’s get to it!”

  Katie darted out of the briefing room and ran to the locker room. Reaching her personal locker, she slammed open the door and quickly put on her combat shirt, body armor and limb protectors. She attached the pouch with her personal role radio—PRR—to the front of her body armor then fitted the lightweight radio headset on over her head, putting on her combat helmet over that and tightening the chinstrap. She finally lifted out her heavy medical bergen and struggled to put her arms through the webbing straps. As a last check, she made sure that her scissors were in their appropriate place on the front of her body armor and that there were fresh field tourniquets and hemostatic dressings in one of many pouches clipped to her webbing belt. Finally ready, she left the locker room, quickly grabbed an emergency medical carrier—EMC—which contained more complex medical equipment that might be needed to attend to any possible casualties, and jogged down t
he corridor, retrieving her weapon and going on out into the warm evening air. As she did so, their transportation, pulled up onto the hard-packed sand and gravel forecourt of the CTH, turning three hundred sixty degrees to face back the way it had come.

  The two CTTs and CTMs moved around to the back of the vehicle. Someone released the locks of the tailgate and it crashed down, allowing everyone to hoist themselves into the canvas-lined interior. Once everyone was on board the driver of the truck raised the door, slammed it shut and locked it. After a moment, the truck pulled away with a hiss of air brakes.

  Katie seated herself on one of the uncomfortable wooden benches that lined the sides, elbows resting on her knees, helmeted head turned sideways so that she could look out of the opening in the canvas at the back. No one spoke each person alone with their thoughts, turned inward on themselves, perhaps contemplating what was about to come, what they would find and how many injured there would be. Katie’s thoughts were of Joe.

  When Sergeant Webster had mentioned at the briefing that a squad of soldiers had been training in the area at the time of the explosion, Katie’s heart had sunk. She had hoped, selfishly, that it hadn’t been Joe’s squad in the vicinity at the time of the blast, and that in turn made her wonder where he was. If he was there at the incident, would she get to see him? The situation was serious with what could possibly be many injured, a breach of security and a sudden escalation of hostilities with heightened tension and fear on the base, but she couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope that she might have a chance to talk to him again. Feeling guilty at her thoughts, knowing that they were inappropriate and this was not the time or the place to have them, Katie focused her mind on the present.

  Five minutes later, the truck drew up at the motor pool and once the tailgate was lowered, Katie and the other medical personnel jumped down.

  As she landed on the hard ground, Katie glanced around, quickly assessing her surroundings. She saw that military police had cordoned off the site of the explosion. Soldiers armed with weapons were standing guard at strategic points around the area while others were carrying out a sweep through and around the motor pool, accompanied by a K-9 unit and their dogs. The animals patrolled the area with their handlers, sniffing beneath parked vehicles and inside and outside buildings in a bid to discover any evidence that insurgents had managed to infiltrate the base. Four Army ambulances had drawn as close to the site of the explosion as possible. They could go no farther because of the narrow approach to where the blast had occurred, so any casualties would need to be treated for their injuries on site then stretchered to the ambulances.

  Katie could hear distant shouted commands and screams of pain. Clouds of turbid black smoke, drifting low to the ground, billowed into the area, causing people to cough and their eyes to burn and sting.

  Katie’s training took over and she began to jog in the direction of the sounds and the source of the black smoke. When she arrived at the scene and saw the destruction and the amount of casualties there were, she raised a hand to her mouth in stunned silence, her mind shocked into emptiness. During her years as a CTM she had been involved in many traumatic incidents and had seen some horrific injuries. It always disturbed her to see the amount of devastation that resulted from an explosion, and the chaos it left behind.

  She noticed that part of the reinforced concrete perimeter wall was completely demolished. Caught in the blast, a guard tower had been blown to pieces, wood and metal lying in a pulverized heap. Huge chunks of concrete from the wall lay shattered on the ground, coated with small pieces of the barbed wire that had topped it, blasted into tiny razor-like fragments that would have shot through the air like shrapnel during the explosion. Two vehicles burned furiously outside the wall, with two Army fire trucks in position, spraying foam on the conflagration, surrounded by a protective cordon of armored military vehicles. As Sergeant Webster had already stated, it appeared as though—unseen by the guards in the tower—the vehicles had been aimed at the wall, and loaded with explosives driven at speed to hit it, the resultant impact detonating the explosives on board. Soldiers and medical personnel milled around the site, tending to the many bodies lying on the hard, dusty ground.

  Katie could not comprehend how the insurgents could have gotten so close to the base. She knew that besides the high concrete wall with its added protection of barbed wire, guard towers every one hundred meters and both human and canine patrols twenty-four hours a day, there were also sensors, both infrared and thermal imaging cameras, motion detectors and a specially designed radar that could detect human or aircraft movements from twenty miles away. Collectively this dazzling array of surveillance equipment, known as STARS—surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance system—should have alerted the base to the impending incursion, but something had obviously failed.

  Aware of an immediate need to treat each casualty depending on the severity of their injuries and get them back to the CTH within an hour, Katie noticed an injured soldier lying on the ground to her right attended to by a US Army corpsman. Striding over, she put down the EMC, shrugged out of her medical bergen and dropped to her knees beside him. “What have we got here, Lance Corporal?” she asked quietly, as the attending US corpsman turned to her.

  Katie was shocked to see that the young soldier’s face was pale and there were tearstains on his cheeks. She also noticed that his hands were trembling. “Lance Corporal?” she questioned gently. “Do we have a problem?”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” was the startling response. “I shouldn’t be alive. I should be dead on the ground with my buddies. I should’ve…” The corpsman’s shaking voice trailed off into a stifled sob.

  Katie instantly knew that it had been this soldier’s squad who had been in the area of the bomb blast and that he was one of the survivors. Even though the young soldier was a medic, the US equivalent of her own role, he was still human so was neither immune to grief nor protected from the consequences of his combat role. Many medical personnel, either in the field hospitals or out in the field, suffered mental trauma if members of their squad were devastatingly injured or killed. Anybody, from the lower ranks to the higher echelon could, on occasion, develop survivor syndrome, a feeling of intolerable guilt at having survived when others died. Nobody was immune in a war theater.

  Turning to the shivering soldier, Katie bent her head close to his and spoke quietly. “Lance Corporal,” she began clearly and firmly, “your friend is badly injured and we need to deal with him quickly so that we can get him to an ambulance and back to the CTH. If you feel that you can’t deal with this, then please find me someone who can. What you are feeling is perfectly natural. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but we need to move on. Your buddies need our help. Now, if you can, I need information on this man.”

  Katie waited patiently for a response, conscious of time moving on, the golden hour for successfully treating this particular injured soldier ticking down.

  The corpsman eventually took a deep, shuddering breath, brushed a hand across his face and spoke in a stronger, steadier tone, “Abdominal wound,” he explained. “Left penetrating. I suspect the cause is some kind of shrapnel. He’s tachycardic, sweating. Pulse is thready. I’ve assessed the wound, packed it with hemostatic dressings and given him some morphine. He was conscious at first but now he’s out of it and needs to be transfused.” The corpsman swallowed. Hands covered in blood from dealing with the wound, voice still trembling slightly, he sat back on his heels.

  “Thank you. You’ve done well, Lance Corporal,” Katie praised gently. “I’ll take a look then we’ll set up an IV line with saline to prevent a chance of shock. It will stabilize him until we can get him back to the CTH.”

  Katie gently lifted the large gauze packing on the wounded soldier’s stomach. An object, perhaps a piece of concrete, fragment of barbed wire or sliver of wood had penetrated the lower left side of the abdomen, tearing through skin, muscle and destroying subcutaneous fat. The wound was large, open and oozi
ng blood, but the corpsman had packed it with hemostatic dressings, reducing the heavy flow, and the blood was now clotting satisfactorily. Katie turned to the EMC and opened the lid. Pulling on nitrile gloves, she took out a length of tubing, a bag of saline solution and a large bore cannula needle.

  “We need to find a vein, Lance Corporal. Can you find one for me? If not in his arm, then we’ll take one in the wrist.”

  The corpsman pushed the sleeve of the soldier’s combat jacket as far up as it would go and tapped the crook of the motionless arm. It was getting difficult to see in the quickly fading light, but eventually the lance corporal turned to Katie. “I have one, Corporal,” he stated.

  “Okay, good. Let’s do this.”

  Katie quickly and skillfully fastened a tourniquet above the area where she was intending to insert the cannula, tightened it roughly then palpated the vein. Once she was satisfied, she pushed the needle through the fragile skin, twisted on the tubing then attached the plastic bag of fluid. Taping the needle in place, she finally checked the casualty’s vital signs then quickly raised her head and glanced around.

  At that precise moment, two portable lights, brought to the site, lit up, their intense white beams flooding the scene and lighting it up in all its macabre horror.

  Relieved that she could see more clearly, Katie raised a hand and gestured at a US soldier who was striding past them. “Excuse me, soldier, could you come and help us, please?” she called.

  The soldier glanced in her direction, about-turned and came striding toward her. “Ma’am?” he queried and offered a half salute.