Let’s see what happens with that.
As I pray, things seem to be quieting down around me. But I can hear fighting in the not-too-far distance. I’m in a real shit situation, but I know my brothers are in way more shit than I am.
I hear explosions caused by missiles—our missiles, from our A-10 fighter planes.
It gets real quiet after that.
I bet that pushed the Taliban back, I think.
I’m dozing off when I hear helicopters.
That’s good. Helicopters fly in to help people who are alive. Pilots are here to pick up the casualties. I move to the edge of the shack and sit there, watching a Black Hawk hovering a little bit out. I try to wave at it, try to say something. I try to wave the guys down.
Nothing happens.
Sometime later, I see people moving, coming up from the bottom.
I don’t have a gun. If this is a bad guy, there’s nothing I can do. If it’s a good guy, then great.
I check my watch. Three hours have passed since I was attacked.
I see Staff Sergeant Phillips, our mortar platoon sergeant, followed by Baldwin and Longman. Phillips is super professional; he secures the area, tasks everyone out. I see Longman staring at me from a secondary position. He looks concerned.
Then I see Baldwin below me. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I got hit by a fucking rocket,” I say.
“Then why are you smiling?”
“I smile all the time. What do you want from me right now, man?”
Longman says, “Baldwin ended up shooting Hazrat Umar. We got their leader.”
“How did they advance so quickly?” I ask.
Baldwin answers the question. “The ASG and ANA completely abandoned their posts five minutes into the fight. Once that happened, they started ripping through us.”
Phillips comes up to me. With him is an Army guy I’ve never met. Phillips hands me an M9 handgun.
“Take that shit back,” I say.
“No. You want a gun. We—”
“No. No guns. I can’t see right, and I don’t want to shoot you guys.”
They prop me up. Phillips tries to carry me down the mountain. I stop him.
“If you slip, we’ll both fall and die,” I say. “I’ll walk.”
I brace up on him. He’s on my left, and the Army guy is on my right. We slowly go down the mountain. I look to the Army guy and apologize.
“What are you apologizing for?” he asks.
“I got blood all over your uniform.”
“Dude, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
I get bandaged up by one of the brigade medics and put on a bird. I’m able to sit in one of the jump seats. There are people lying at my feet. I stare at them, trying to take in everything that happened, while we fly to Asadabad. It’s hot as fuck when we arrive.
I’m starting to feel pain.
They start cutting my clothes off. I’m buck naked, being carried on a litter through the desert sun. Next thing I know I’ve got four or five doctors working on me. They’re all talking, asking me questions.
One guy says, “This is going to sting.”
I’m given a catheter.
It’s the most painful thing I’ve felt that day.
One doctor works on my arm, one on my shoulder, one on my leg, and the fourth is carefully at work removing debris and chunks of metal from my head.
I black out.
When I wake up, I’m in Germany.
A doctor comes in and runs down a list of my injuries.
I have permanent blindness along the right side of my eye. Both of my eardrums were ruptured and had to be reconstructed. I have some shrapnel up and down the right side of my body. It’s not life threatening. My body, the doctor tells me, will eventually push the shrapnel to the surface, and then it can be surgically removed.
I’m told a six-millimeter fragment from an RPG is just chilling somewhere on the right side of my brain, right next to my motor movements—which explains why I’m having a hard time moving the left side of my body. I’m no longer in control of my body; it’s in control of me.
To get that control back, I’m going to have to fight like hell.
Someone comes into my room and gives me a phone. My mom and brother are on the other end of the line, crying. I’m still out of it.
I tell them I’m fine and hang up.
I want to go back to Afghanistan.
I’ve got to get back.
LIZA VICTORIA
Master Sergeant Liza Victoria was born in Panama. Her MOS is 68 Whiskey, which is a health care specialist. She is still on active duty.
When we arrive at the village, all the female medics file into a building. The rules of Iraqi culture dictate that male medics can’t treat the local women, and we have to follow the rules. The husbands will wait outside while we treat their wives.
We have security all around us.
Because I have a bit of a Middle Eastern look, the women all try to talk to me. I try to explain to them that I’m Spanish, not Middle Eastern, and I don’t speak Arabic. Most of them want medication. We can give them Tylenol, Motrin—stuff like that.
They’re nice to me and grateful. So, so grateful.
I respect them because they’re human beings. It’s hard at times because while they’re so nice, I know some of these women want to hurt us—the American soldiers.
The children have beautiful brown eyes and long lashes. One boy has a big scar from, I’m guessing, a recent surgery. The scar goes all the way around his head and across his face from a wound likely caused by an IED.
Seeing the boy reminds me of growing up in Panama.
I was a young girl when the Just Cause invasion happened in mid-December of 1989. Someone came into my room in the middle of the night, woke me up, and said, “We’ve been invaded by the United States. Go look out the window.”
I did. The sky looked like it was on fire.
I lived with my family on the fifth floor of a building. Every time we had a war or an invasion, people would start breaking into houses and businesses to steal things. The security guard made everyone go to the stairs. Then he barred the door.
Panama is very hot. The next morning, in the middle of the city, with airplanes and helicopters flying across the sky, I saw American soldiers wearing ghillie suits that made them look like walking bushes. I was convinced that these huge men were there to hurt us—to take over our country.
Then I found out the truth: the Americans had come to get General Noriega, who was hiding.
Everyone in Panama knew he was a dictator. A bad, bad person who had his hands in a lot of awful and dirty stuff. But it was a lot easier to ignore him rather than go against him. Everyone knew Noriega had people killed or made them disappear.
I moved to Houston, Texas, in 1992. While I was at Houston Community College, I met an Army recruiter who asked me if I was interested in learning a new skill and getting money for college. I joined.
And now here I am, an American soldier, in Iraq.
I feel so close to God.
I ask Him to protect me.
I don’t want to go, but if you want it to happen, I’m ready. I say it every night.
I hope and pray it’s not my time.
ANDY BRASOSKY
Andy Brasosky grew up in Flint, Michigan. His father served four years as a Navy corpsman during Vietnam. After attending Western Michigan University on a football scholarship, Andy enlisted in the Marine Corps. He served from June of 1997 to May of 2008.
A lot of people hear Iraq and they think mountains and caves and villages. But there are a lot of built-up areas that, while not Manhattan, have a large civilian population. You go into a place like that, you’re dealing with a three-dimensional battlefield—which is exactly what we’re facing right now, out on the wire, doing a routine patrol on foot in this shithole. An army battalion came through here not that long ago and laid waste to the area, but it’s still dangerous.
T
here are two fights going on in Iraq. First, you have Al-Qaeda being Al-Qaeda, blowing shit up, disrupting everything. Then you’ve got sectarian violence—Sunni fighting Shia—which is pretty brutal. Al-Qaeda, the insurgents—they’re always watching us, tracking where we go and what we do. We can’t move undetected.
It’s February of 2005 here in Iraq, the middle of the day, sunny, hot as balls. I’m sweating like a pig and carrying more ammunition, more batteries—more shit than we could even possibly imagine using. Little kids follow along, begging us for the pencils and chocolates we carry in our pockets.
All of a sudden there’s no one around.
I know what’s coming. We all do. We don’t know where or what.
Then I’ve got all these faces—these kid soldiers—looking to me for direction. I’m their captain. I lead the way, knowing I’m never going to make it home, back to my wife, my family.
And I’m completely fine with it. I’ve made peace with God. I don’t care about me, only my Marines.
Our patrol ends once we reach the remains of an abandoned ice factory. I’m literally walking inside when I hear it—an RPG shot. I drop to the ground, but I know the RPG’s gonna hit me and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
But it doesn’t hit me. Instead, the RPG hits a nearby building. I’m lying on my side, shivering, my mind telling me not to move for cover, just stay down.
My squad is scrambling. We’ve got sandbags on the top of the ice factory; our scout snipers are up there, other Marines. We also have another threat: the nearby mosque we bombed. Al-Qaeda sets up in there so they can fire down at us.
I get to my feet, weapon in hand. Somewhere nearby, another explosion. It rumbles under my feet, dirt, dust, and soot raining down on me from what’s left of the ceiling.
IED? Mortar attack?
People are firing at us. Some of my guys are returning fire. Some are good-naturedly bitching and moaning, and there are a couple of others, like this eighteen-year-old kid, John Smith, who is trying not to lose his shit. I’m often a complete prick to this private first class, but he needs toughening up—needs to face the grim reality of what life is like here in Iraq, what the enemy is capable of.
I can’t be a prick to him now. I move to him and lean in close so he can hear me over the gunfire. “John, look at me.”
He does, his face pale and eyes wide with fear, looking at me the way a kid looks at an adult: Make this shit stop. Make it go away. Please.
I cup my hand around his neck. “I know you’re scared as shit right now. I get it. But you’re not alone in this, okay? I’ve got you—we’ve got you. Now: you want to make it out of here in one piece?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. So do I. Now focus. Focus on doing your job. Do that and we’ll get through this together. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
When the fighting dies down, I get word over the radio that a mobile car bomb—what we call a vehicle-borne IED, or VBIED—hit an adjacent platoon. We’re ordered to provide support and help secure the area.
The area is in chaos—debris everywhere. Thick black smoke twists from the blackened remains of a car. The area is quiet, but not for long. I see a car on the horizon, and it’s heading straight for us.
Won’t slow or stop.
Could be another VBIED, I think, and give the order to the sniper. He shoots one of the tires.
The car doesn’t slow, continues straight at us. We shoot at the engine block and the car is still coming and we hammer the front windshield with rounds and the car finally stops.
An Iraqi gets out, screaming at us, no visible weapon. We’re all over him. We drag him away and then wait for the explosive ordnance disposal technicians to take a closer look at the vehicle.
EOD tells me it’s safe to approach. I see the blood first and then, when I get closer, I see a woman in the passenger’s seat and, in the back, a kid.
They’re both dead.
The driver is still screaming his head off. I look to our interpreter.
“He wants to know who’s going to replace his vehicle,” he tells me.
It takes every bit of leadership ability and restraint not to shove my pistol in the driver’s mouth and pull the trigger.
The next day, I get a visit from a JAG officer.
“The judge advocate general has opened an investigation into the shooting,” he tells me. He’s a Marine, a lawyer, and a major, which means he’s probably been in the Corps all of eighteen months. “I want you to take me back to the area where it happened.”
Is he for real?
He can’t be for real.
The JAG officer looks at me, wondering why I’m not up and moving. I take a deep breath.
“Sir, with all due respect, going back there is a phenomenally bad idea—a tragically bad idea.”
I patiently list off all the reasons why it’s dangerous, but he’s adamant. We’re going back out.
We drive to the location in a caravan of trucks—a total of seven. I’m in the far back, driving with the JAG officer, and we can hear it in the distance—boom. We keep driving. Boom. Boom. BOOM. Louder, closer, too goddamn close. I’ve been counting them—boom; number seven this time—and I see the front truck in our caravan roll onto its side.
Road bomb. Truck could have run over a trip wire and triggered it, or there could be a triggerman lurking somewhere nearby, watching and waiting for the right moment to light us up.
We come to a jarring stop.
Debris rains down on us.
The truck is engulfed in flames and I am fucking pissed. This didn’t have to happen. The JAG officer’s face is pale, he’s horrified—and he’s completely worthless.
We get out and get down. The enemy is trying to engage us with small arms fire. As we deal with the situation, I receive word on our casualties: one dead Marine, twelve wounded. I call in medevac and then ask for the name of the Marine KIA.
I hear the name and it’s chilling.
I know this kid.
By the time the medevac helicopter arrives, the enemy has retreated. I watch as they load the kid’s body onto the stretcher.
Back home, people ask what death is like. You can’t explain it. It’s not dramatic, there’s no music, it’s sudden, it’s violent, it’s reality.
CRISTIN MICHAEL MCKENZIE
Cristin Michael McKenzie’s family has a history with the Army. His father served in Vietnam and he had two great-uncles who served: one as a transporter during D-Day, the other as a soldier who stormed the beaches of Normandy. Cristin joined the Army in 1995 and served as an 88 Mike throughout his whole career. He’s a sergeant first class and his last assignment was at the US Army Transportation School, as an instructor.
I’ve seen and faced death before when I jumped out of airplanes during training, but this is the first time I’m going into battle, and I’m feeling like I might not come back.
Once I get settled on the plane taking me to Iraq, I start writing a death letter to my wife and our almost two-year-old son, in case something happens to me. I want them to know how proud I am of them, and how things in life happen for a reason.
When I joined the Army in 1995, it was a peacetime Army. My first job was truck driver for the 82nd Airborne Division, one of the most storied, outstanding units in all of military history. General Petraeus was the brigade commander at the time. Because I was attached to an infantry unit, I had to be fit to fight. My squad leader, my platoon sergeant, and my platoon leader were all infantry, so I got trained on infantry tactics more than on driving. I did jump training with them in Panama.
In 2001, twelve of us from the transportation unit based out of Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, were sent to Fort Polk, in Louisiana, to support an MRE, which is a mission readiness exercise, for the 10th Mountain Division. We were sent there to help them get ready to go to Kosovo.
On the morning of September 11, when I delivered water to one of the little bases set up in the training area, a contractor from
KBR, a company that did a lot of work for the military, came out of his trailer and said to me, “Hey. Come and take a look at this shit.”
I walked into the trailer. The news was on the guy’s TV. I watched the second plane hit the tower.
Oh, my God, I thought. We’re under attack.
Training was shut down immediately. We all got recalled to the barracks. One of the guys had a radio. We sat around it and listened to the play-by-play on what was happening in New York. We heard President Bush’s speech condemning the terrorist attack.
There was talk about units leaving right away for Afghanistan. Our unit, the 541st Transportation Company, had five-thousand-gallon fuel tankers, but we were soon told that there wasn’t a real need for bulk fuel in Afghanistan per se, so we got put on hold.
And then Iraq happened.
Now it’s April of 2003, and I’m going to war.
When the plane lands, an Air Force guy comes aboard and says, “Welcome to the war.” The way he says it makes it sound like we’re going to get shot at as soon as we get off.
We get on a bus and head over to Camp Wolf. The gate guard is dressed head to toe in a chemical suit: protective mask, gloves, boots, the whole nine yards. Someone yells “Gas, gas, gas!” and there’s a moment of sheer terror inside the bus. We’re all thinking the same thing: Oh, my gosh, this is really happening.
Everyone panics. We rush to grab our gas masks, to get them on within nine seconds, as we’ve been trained to do.
It turns out to be a false alarm.
This is our first introduction to the war.
From Camp Wolf we head to Camp New York, another staging ground in Kuwait. We train and practice shooting on the ranges until we get the call that it’s time to leave. We’re going to take all our equipment up north. I board a vehicle that’s part of a massive convoy of four to five battalions of support vehicles crossing the border into Iraq.
The idea of crossing the border is scary. On top of that, we have to deal with a new threat: Bedouins—people who were shunned by the Iraqi government and pushed out into the desert.
Walk in My Combat Boots Page 17