The Memories That Fell to the Wayside

Posted on June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 by Forest Ray

The posts on this blog are told like short stories. Although the collection of posts relates a longer story of my deployment to Iraq, each post can be read independently, without loss of continuity. I wrote them this way to make each one entertaining on its own. One downside to composing my memories as a series of self-contained stories, however, is that some of them inevitably fall to the wayside. They might be too tangential to any one story, or it simply might have been too hard to fit them in. Maybe doing so would have broken the flow of the greater story, or would have just made it too long. Maybe I just forgot. Nonetheless, they’re memories that I treasure, of a time that marked one of the great periods of change in my life. I still tell them during conversations or just when a good opportunity arises.

So here are the bits and pieces that didn’t make it into the stories, but help to fill out the experience. Enjoy.

Wardrobe Malfunctions

Hey Sarge, can we wear our dresses tomorrow?
http://s257.photobucket.com/user/sofia_art/media/5a7fb10e.jpg.html

It took a while for our command to settle on a stable duty uniform. This is really a problem that can only exist in an organization that is at once so driven by hard pragmatism yet so mired in bureaucracy as the military. Our daily changing uniform directives became both a running joke and a source of unneeded annoyance. At first, we were told to dress is “full battle rattle” – fatigues (BDUs, in Army parlance), helmets, boots and body armor – during all work activities. Many of those early work involved strong manual labor as we worked to build our living and working quarters. Building, demo and digging are hot enough without full battle rattle in the midday of the desert. Next, we were told to work in our PT (physical training) uniform, consisting of a t-shirt, shorts and running shoes (trainers, for the British reader), but to keep on our helmets and body armor. The next day, we were ordered to swap the running shoes for our combat boots, which, while still slightly more comfortable than the first day’s uniform, looked ridiculous bordering on profane (for some shorter people, their shorts were hard to see under the chest plate). The day after that, we were told to go back to BDUs but that we could lose the blouse (what normal people call a jacket). The end of the week arrived with directions to wear BDUs (with blouse) and full armor, but that we could wear our running shoes instead of our combat boots. Tomorrow, said Armstrong, we’ll wear our body armor with nothing underneath and our battle buddy’s PT shorts on our heads. Tomorrow, Rick said, the command sergeant major can wear his rifle up his ass.

The Time They Gave Us Non-Alcoholic Budweiser

I dislike Budweiser. I think that it is a genuinely bad beer. It’s lazy, boring and tasteless and its only redeeming value is that it can be quite refreshing when it is very cold and you are very hot and thirsty. In this way it is similar to cold water, or cold piss, should you be short on other options. One hot day, a bunch of us from ambulance and treatment platoons sat around our trucks during down time on some training event. Someone, Lt Chapman maybe, drove up with an unexpected gift: a case of cold Bud.

The author, noticing the “NA” label on the can.

My feelings towards “NA” Budweiser.

Our mouths watered like Pavlov’s dogs and we were bitten by the sense of thirst the second we laid eyes on the beer. The lieutenant told us to dig in and so we did. I looked at my can and saw the two letters “NA” following the usual Budweiser logo. What is “NA”, I asked. Someone else, Brian maybe, read the label a little further. It’s non-alcoholic, he said. This elicited cries of “What the fuck?!” and other angrily disillusioned remarks.

While some of the others shrugged and drank it anyway, I pantomimed a mock firing

Lt Chapman says why not?

Sgt Meyer takes the plunge.

squad for my can. It was hot, though and I was thirsty and anyway, we were out there in the desert, a long way from such comforts of home as real beer, so I shrugged too, and enjoyed my Budweiser NA with the others. When I was finished, I had another and watched the sun go down while waiting to be called back to duty.

To hell with it. I drink my not-beer and enjoy the sunset with the others.

The Dead

I’ll count myself as fortunate, that I only saw one dead body in Iraq. A truck had driven into a ditch along a road and turned over during a convoy and one of its occupants had died in the crash. As we manned the nearest battalion aid station (BAS), the soldier’s body was brought to us so that a physician could pronounce him dead and initiate the process of paperwork that followed a death. One of our doctors, another medic and I jumped into the back of the truck, where the soldier’s remains had been transported. His body had been draped with a cloth. We pulled it back and I was struck by the man’s doll-like and unhuman appearance. Looking at him, I could not picture him having ever been alive. Such was the wax museum unreality of his features. The doctor quickly checked him out, made his grim pronouncement and the two of us medics began the solemn task of cataloguing his possessions before sending his remains on to Baghdad, from where he would then be flown home.

The Game of Risk

There is some irony to be found in the image of soldiers in an active war zone playing Risk. For us, this game evolved from a good way to pass long hours into a passion bordering on obsession. I cannot overstate this. Because a single game could last for several days, due to the duty shifts of everyone involved, we actually made a separate guard roster to make sure that no one grew too tempted to alter the board between rounds. Remember that Seinfeld episode, where Kramer and Newman get so passionate about their game of Risk that they even take it onto the subway? We lived that episode. One of the biggest jokes in the episode involved the phrase “the Ukraine is weak.” The Ukraine might be challenging to defend in Risk, but it pales in comparison to Southern Europe, which on the Risk board, is mostly Italy.

One of the Risk regulars was a guy named Grizzante. If his name doesn’t give it away, he traced his family heritage to Italy. He was extremely proud of this heritage and his strategy in Risk was consistently to take Southern Europe/Italy as quickly as possible and use that as his base to launch attacks elsewhere. This might literally be the single worst strategy possible in Risk. Grizz lost every single match and as this wore on, we teased him about it more and more. “Eetaly is veak!” we shouted with glee, as Grizz fumed, arms crossed, his tattoo of Italy prominently displayed down one tricep.

One night he had enough. Someone at the table took out Grizz’s last army within only a few rounds. Amidst jokes and laughter, Grizz shouted “fuck this game anyway!”, flipped the board over and stormed out of the ambulance depot quarters, causing peals of laughter from the group inside. Grizz, come back, we called and after a minute, he did.

Captain Dickhead Proves Unhelpful

I’ve mentioned in past posts, that the soldiers in my unit did not have an entirely nurturing relationship with Captain V, our commanding officer. Cpt. V once accompanied one of the convoys that Dustan and I worked on. On the way back, while driving down a stretch of road the cut through farmland, we heard the ping of bullets glancing off kevlar plating. There weren’t many, but someone was clearly taking shots at our convoy. The radio lit up with chatter about what various people could see, how many shots were being fired, which vehicles they hit. Sitting in the passenger seat, I did what any normal person might do and pressed myself as far back into my seat as I could go in an effort to take maximum advantage of the thin armored lip of the door frame. It was pretty clear that this was just somebody hidden in the distance hoping for a lucky shot, rather than the beginning of an ambush. Drive through it, the convoy commander ordered over the radio. This was standard operating procedure for us. The attention drawn by stopping an armed convoy could easily turn a relatively simple situation like this one into something much greater. The coordinates of the incident were called in to be investigated by other units.

Moments later, however, the convoy was at a full halt. The shooter actually did manage a halfway lucky shot. The victim was our rear passenger side tire. Dustan and I jumped into action. We grabbed the tire change kit, chocked the wheels and started cranking the jack. Again and again, the weight of the ambulance pushed the jack into the loose soil of the road. Growing concerned with our exposure and loss of time and not enjoying our place at the center of attention, we finally found a more solid spot to place the jack. Once up, Dustan and I put all our energy into changing the tire as fast as possible. Cpt. Dickhead invested his energy int superfluous advice. “Put your weight into it!”, he shouted, smiling. It cost Dustan and I most of our strength to loosen the lug nuts. The jack still wasn’t optimally high, owing to the softness of the earth, which made the lug wrench hit the dirt hard with the force required to loosen the nuts. Our knuckles hit the dirt with it and tore open. We swore and kept cranking.

Holy shit, get a load of this, said Dustan. We had just swapped off on wrench duty. He stood lookout, while my knuckles softened the impact of the wrench striking earth. That motherfucker is taking pictures of himself.

This was 2003 and they weren’t called selfies yet, or if they were, we weren’t hip enough to have known.

There he stood, Cpt. Asshat, wandering around the dirt off the road like a complete and happy idiot, posing for selfies with his weapon slung across his back. Not a care in the world. Unbelievable, I said. Motherfucker, we said. Piece of shit. Come on you two, put a little elbow grease into it! came the cry from Cpt. Boy Wonder, reverberating across the desert.

Fueled by anger and resentment, the elbow grease paid off and we returned to our base with a new story to tell.

Aftermath of an IED and Reflections on Memory

Our convoy missed a turn-off and we had to back-track a bit, losing some time. Shortly after turning onto the road we were supposed to have taken, we came across a sobering sight. The charred and still smoldering remains of a US truck, the open-back kind often used to transport troops, lay to our driver side. A chopper could vaguely be made out, rapidly disappearing in the distance. I never got the story about what happened there, or which unit was involved. It was left to our imaginations and meager detective skills to infer the recent past. My guess is that the truck was hit by an IED.

Given how recent the scene looked, Dustan and I had the sobering thought, had we not missed our turn earlier, that same scene would have played out with a slightly different cast. Someone else would be driving by the wreckage of one of our vehicles, maybe even our own. We slipped into silence for a while as we put miles between us and the carnage.

You know, I said, all this is so fresh right now, but sometime in the future, we won’t remember it the way it happened. Not just today, but all of this. It will all change for each of us, over time. There’s nothing much to be done about it, that’s just the way memory works. It’s just strange to think of right now. Yeah, he said, it really is. I guess we’d better write it down.

It took almost thirteen years to finally begin doing that, and now you’re reading my corrupt memories of that year.

Desert Vasectomy

Colonel Adams stepped into the ambulance depot one day with an unexpected offer.

Who wants to learn how to do a vasectomy?

A quick glance, a few nodded heads and four or five of us found ourselves in one of the treatment rooms in our battalion aid station (BAS), gathered around a middle-aged and mustachioed soldier laying on the room’s bed. Time has erased the reason that this soldier opted to get a vasectomy on an Army post in Iraq, but if nothing else, it illustrates our distance from most wartime action.

We assisted Doc Adams in setting up a sterile field and readying the needed instruments.

This is a very quick and simple procedure, Doc Adams said. I’ll talk you through each step as I perform it and then you can provide more of a hands-on assist in the future. Sounds good, sir, we replied.

This was actually poor planning on his part, as the first step in the procedure involves injecting local anesthesia into the scrotum, or in layman’s terms, stabbing the balls with a needle. If just reading that elicits some sympathy pains, imagine watching it happen in real time.

How’s it going up there, Doc Adams asked the patient. Adams looked up at the patient, who’s face was literally as white as a clean sheet. Doc Adams followed the patient’s gaze to my own face, which was probably a mask of fear. Man, you gotta wear a surgical mask or something, if you’re gonna be in here, Doc Adams said to me.

I nodded, took a deep breath and got the mask.

Going 15 in a 12

During those final days in Kuwait, while we were getting everything ready to be packed into a ship for the voyage home, Dustan and I drove our ambulance through a large and largely empty field on Camp Arifjan. In the side mirror, we saw a hummvee marked “MP” (military police) quickly pulling around us. When the other truck came alongside, the MP in the passenger seat motioned for us to pull over, which we did.

The MP, a captain, jumped out of his vehicle and ran to our driver side window. What took place next felt like a demented Monty Python sketch, or an angrier scene from Super Troopers.

Do you know how fast you were going? the MP asked.

About 15, Dustan replied.

That’s right, about 15! You were going 15 miles per hour.

A pause, in which neither Dustan nor I knew what to say.

Do you know what the speed limit is here?

Sir, to be very honest, I didn’t know that there was a speed limit right here.

It’s 12 miles per hour! The speed limit is 12 miles per hour! You were doing 15!

Our odometer doesn’t measure 12 miles per hour. It lists increments of ten.

Are you being smart with me?

No, sir.

You’re telling me that you can’t tell 12 miles per hour on your odometer?

Sir, I’m telling you that 12 miles per hour isn’t a real speed limit and that going 3mph over it is meaningless.

WHO’S YOUR FIRST SERGEANT? WHO’S YOUR COMMAND SERGEANT MAJOR?

We gave him their names.

I’ll see you both tomorrow for some extra duty. I hope you like digging ditches. This’ll teach you to be disrespectful. Don’t think I won’t get in touch with your First Sergeant!

We parked our vehicle at our company headquarters tent and decided to tell our First Sergeant ourselves that he should expect an angry call from the world’s most unbending MP. We related the story to him and unsurprisingly, he got a good laugh out of it. I can’t wait for him to call, he said, I really hope he does! I’ll fuck him up!

To add further insult to the poor MP, that was our last night in Kuwait. The next day, we almost died loading our vehicles onto the boat and flew out of country.

16. Going Home

Posted on May 26, 2016June 10, 2016 by Forest Ray

Pack your bags

Finally it came time to go home.

After nearly nine months in the desert, we packed our bags, loaded our trucks, said goodbye to the marine unit replacing us and drove out the gates of al-Taqqadum air base for one last time.

The wreckage of an unlucky convoy. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

My last action as a medic in Iraq came in those final days. While pulling a shift at the ambulance depot, we were called to attend to a group of soldiers from another unit coming on post after an incident involving an IED. As the trucks pulled up to our aid station, I ran to one and began to offload the wounded soldier in the rear. He had a small perforation wound in his right thigh, the result of a piece of shrapnel having punctured it. The muscle pushed its way out of skin in a red, round circle. It wasn’t a terrible wound, all things considered. The soldier was stable, bleeding was minimal and he was dealing with any pain in a calm and stoic manner. His lieutenant shouted and swore as we tended to the wound. In the emotionally deadened state that comes with spending too long in a dangerous place, we grumbled to each other, wishing the lieutenant would shut the fuck up and get himself together. The wound was no big deal, no lives were lost. It was a good day all around. I couldn’t appreciate then, the extremes of emotion that a commander feels when the lives of his or her soldiers are put in jeopardy.

A year or so later, I would spend four months on assignment with an infantry unit, serving under a staff sergeant, whose soldiers were killed by an IED in Iraq. He drank frequently to extremes and during some of these sessions he would come to a full stop, stare into the distance and say “I made the roster that day. I sent them to die.” This could be followed by violence, or by tears. Or by a catatonic silence. There was no telling.

But that hasn’t happened yet in this story.

Hail, hail, the gang’s all here. Ambulance platoon group shot.

The day came for our final convoy through Mesopotamia. Dustan and I checked our gear one last time, loaded our ambulance and mounted up for the drive. Our convoy commander on this occasion was a young 2nd lieutenant (like a private, but an officer) who had yet to command a convoy. Several officers were in the same situation and our unit wanted to make sure that every officer commanded at least one convoy during the deployment, as this made them eligible for one of the Army’s awards. The more decorated officers a unit could count in its ranks, the better that unit looked on the parade field next to other units. Because these last convoys would be considerably larger than the ones that we usually ran and each one would be just one of a group of convoys making up an entire battalion, the support was deemed strong enough and the risk low enough that each could be commanded by a newbie.

Desert view. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Thankfully, the convoy was uneventful, but our new commander did make one decision that annoyed those of us, who had been convoying across the country for the past half year. On the second day, he ordered us off the main highway and onto an older, more disused highway. This was the way that we had come up through Iraq from Kuwait initially and we knew that it would add many hours to our route. In our pre-convoy briefing, we had been told that intel had declared the length of the main highway to be clear for passage. Maybe the situation had changed, or maybe the lieutenant wanted to go the longer, harder way for bragging rights. Maybe he was just an idiot. Lacking any more information, our imaginations were left to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

Break lights, Forest, break lights!

The drive was long. Time stretched out across an unchanging horizon and we each fought to remain alert. It was a losing battle. At some point long into the drive, I started to hear something. The sounds made no sense, but they kept being repeated. Then something heavy and dense struck my helmet. I had fallen asleep at the wheel and Dustan had awoken me with the butt of our vehicle’s pickaxe handle, shouting “Brake lights, Forest, brake lights!” over and over. We avoided rear-ending the truck in front of us by only millimeters.

The convoy had slowed because we had reached the end of the miserable, pot-holed old highway and were turning (back) onto the newer, better maintained one. It meant that we were almost to Kuwait. We switched drivers and chewed through the last miles of oilfields dotted with their apocalyptically burning towers before crossing the border back into Kuwait.

The Enemy Within

Typical view from Camp Arifjan

Oil burns near Camp Arifjan

We met our real enemy at Camp Arifjan, near the port of Kuwait City: US Air Force inspectors. Their duty was to make sure that no potentially invasive species of any sort caught a ride to the United States on any part of our vehicles. Before that miserable night spent cleaning, re-cleaning and re-cleaning our vehicles again, we had no idea that any single vehicle could have so many parts, too many of which appeared to be only visible to our tormentors, the inspectors. We power washed, scrubbed and probed every surface, nook and cranny of our vehicles. The first wash alone took over an hour. When we were satisfied, we hailed an inspector, who promptly stuck a white-gloved finger into a hidden recess of our truck, showed us the offending smear of dirt and walked wordlessly away.

By the time we were finally cleared, we were tired, angry, borderline mutinous, soaking wet from all the pressure washing and I had blisters on my heels from the hours spent in damp boots. We caught a couple hours of rack time (sleep, in civilian English) before being called to the next task: loading our vehicles onto the transport vessel that would bring them home.

Trucks in Tight Spaces

Here, we learned that not being in a combat zone did not mean that we were out of danger.

The ship that ferried our trucks home. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Same ship, with more of a sense of scale. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

We lined up our vehicles at the port and began the slow task of driving them into the belly of the ship, wherein other soldiers guided each of us to a set of tie-downs, to which our trucks would be secured for the voyage. It was slow going, LA-style stop-and-go traffic at its worst. Fortunately, I had thought ahead to bring a book to read while idling and waiting to be motioned forward. Some time well into this process, I drifted off to the sounds of a song playing on my car radio. I was shaken roughly awake by a fellow soldier, who was shouting at me to dismount and get to the top deck. Are we done? I asked him. The radio was no longer playing, which annoyed me. I didn’t remember turning it off. Stay awake and get on deck! the soldier shouted again. I waved at him, mumbled something and tried to catch the dream that I had been having. Had I just been driving my car somewhere lush and green? Wake up!! he screamed at me again, tearing me by the arm both from my reverie and from my truck seat. Get on deck now!! Are we done? I asked him again.

I finally did stumble my way to the top deck, shuffling disjointedly in step with the other soldiers from my battalion. When I came up top and felt the wind across my face, my eyes and throat began to slightly burn and my head to slightly clear. Had I just been listening to a song on the radio? Impossible, as the only radio in my ambulance was for talking to other people. As we stumbled down the gangway to the dock, other medics stood by to check us out. As our heads continued to clear, they explained that we had been found passed out, slowly suffocating from carbon monoxide poisoning from our vehicles idling in the still below-deck air. Perhaps we had been so distracted by thoughts of going home that we had overlooked some very basic things about running engines in enclosed spaces. All joking about the Air Force inspectors aside, this made bacteria and exhaust our two most dangerous enemies over the course of our deployment. We took a break to catch our breathe, then continued on with the task, a little bit wiser and more wary than before. With the trucks finally loaded on the ship, we loaded ourselves onto an airplane and left the desert behind, a tan smear across the earth below us, quickly giving way to the green land and bright city lights of Europe.

Welcome to Hell

So long, Iraq. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Over the course of our time in the desert, we had a running joke about Hell being a bar that was never closed, but always out of any drink you want. Another common reference to Hell was to tell someone to go there, to which the stock reply was “I’ll save you a seat at the bar.” At our layover in Frankfurt, we found ourselves in Hell. We had a couple, maybe three hours to kill and a small part of one airport wing was sectioned off for us. We were not allowed to go beyond its confines and no civilians were allowed in. The one shop in our cordoned section was a cafe/bar. We were ordered not to order any alcohol. Rick, Dustan and I, along with several others from Ambulance Platoon sat at the bar for want of anything better to do. We ordered juice or something equally unsatisfying, while trying not to stare to hard at the tap handles behind the bartender. Well boys, Rick said, welcome to Hell. Thanks for saving me a seat.

Anticlimax

Without a family to greet at Ft. Bragg, landing back in the States was a bit of an anticlimax. We disembarked the plane, stood in formation for a few quick comments by unit commanders and got ferried back to the barracks. I can’t really remember what Rick and I, who shared a barracks room, did when we first stepped inside it. Probably dozed off for a while. Maybe watched TV. Who knows.

The entire battalion was due for two weeks of block leave, starting a week after our return. That first week back was one of constant briefings. They were called “reintegration” briefings, meant to prepare us for a return to life outside a combat zone. Many of them were given by chaplains and psychiatrists, who warned us to watch our emotions and to guard against outbursts of anger and violence, to get help when needed. Even given our relatively uneventful deployment, it was hard to listen to these briefings seriously. I think I can speak for most of us, in saying that we just sat through them, eyes vacantly fixed on the speaker, but minds active in imagining what would happen while on leave.

The end of that long, dull week finally arrived and once again, we boarded airplanes, this time scattering each to our own destination.

Crossing the median in a convoy. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Rolling deep and armed on a convoy in Iraq. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Back home in Juneau, I enjoyed the company of friends and family, rock climbing on sea cliffs and food that I hadn’t tasted in a long time. Then I scared my sister when I pulled a perfectly normal combat driving maneuver to make a sharp left-hand turn through an intersection. Fuckers didn’t expect that move. Which fuckers? Damn, sorry…I forgot…no one here is gunning for us. Even an uneventful deployment leaves you seeing movement in the shadows.

A parting smile before leaving country.

15. Convoy to Kuwait

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Forest Ray

“Ray, Beitey – we’ve got a special mission for you two.”

The special mission involved accompanying a National Guard unit to Kuwait, from where they would return to the US. We were chosen for this “special mission” largely because the mission coincided with Dick Cheney’s visit to al-Taqqadum, our base. It was no secret that our political views ran contrary to Dick’s, so that combined with the need for medics to accompany the convoy solved two problems at once – the convoy was accompanied, and no seats were wasted for Dick Cheney’s pep talk. For Beitey and myself, having heard our fill of pep talks from angry old men, a week-long convoy sounded like a lot more fun.

A Night so Dark

The cab of our FLA in its usual state. Note the copious amount of Red Bull.

We left in the dark, as usual, for tactical reasons. On this occasion, we were ordered to drive off of the main highway and onto an older, less well-maintained road. This likely carried less risk of IED or other ambush.

There were no stars in the sky on this night and as we drove with lights off to minimize our visibility, the darkness quickly grew oppressive.

Driving without lights also minimized our ability to see the truck directly in front of us, so before long, the whole convoy was driving with the aid of our NVGs, or night vision goggles. On this night, the darkness was so complete that even those proved ineffective.

After several narrowly avoided rear endings, the convoy commander ordered us to stop, while he and the other officers and NCOs reassessed the situation. We were told to stand by our vehicles and keep watch, an order we found difficult to follow on this night. We played with our inability to see our hands in front of our faces while the leadership deliberated.

Dustan checking inventory.

The decision was finally made to continue, creeping through the desert at a snail’s pace. Scant minutes later, all but one vehicle rounded a bend in the road. The one truck that didn’t bounced across a dozen or so meters of rough desert terrain before realizing its error.

The order was quickly changed to rejoin the main highway. The risk of injury through vehicular accident now seemed far more likely than that of ambush. Already tired and with a long road ahead of us, our convoy rumbled on towards Kuwait.

Sleeping in the patient compartment.

One benefit to driving the ambulance was the patient compartment, which readily doubled as a sleeping compartment. While most other soldiers had to make do with sleeping on the hard metal of their truck’s top surface, or awkwardly positioned, half-sitting, across seats, we had the relative luxury of our litters — canvas cots normally used to transport and support patients.

We also had one extra litter. This item became an object of fierce competition throughout the ride south. It took us two or three nights to reach Kuwait and each night, the other soldiers quarreled over who slept on the spare litter. Dustan and I remained agnostic in this process, merely making the litter available and demanding that it not be destroyed. Then we shut ourselves into our bulletproof sleeping quarters and racked out. We reached Kuwait without further incident.

Back in Kuwait

Our stay in Kuwait was brief. We walked out of a movie in the recreation tent because its opening scene was of a convoy of American soldiers being fatally ambushed. A Jimmy Buffet cover band played on a small stage one night. I made a pathetic and unsuccessful attempt to hit on one member of a group of Canadian schoolteachers who were visiting the base for reasons long forgotten. Our time passed in a sand-colored blur and then we were back on the road towards Iraq.

The Road Home

Lake Habbaniyah and surrounding area, with our base of al-Taqqadum on the northeast shore.

We probably should have refueled at the last stop before exiting Highway 1, but we knew that we had enough fuel left to easily make it home to al-Taqqadum, so we saved a few minutes without much concern.

Not long after, however, the convoy commander announced that we would drive around Lake Habbaniyah from south to west and back along the northern shore, thereby making an almost complete circumnavigation of the lake.

Our panic was soon rising with the falling of our fuel gauge. Our fuel level dipped below an eighth of a tank, then a sixteenth, then we were redlining. All the while, we debated whether we could make it, or whether we needed to call for an emergency stop to let us refuel with our 5 gallon emergency jerry can.

This option would, of course, out us as the jackasses who had miscalculated. Maybe they’ll call for a quick stop, we mused desperately. These happened, but unpredictably and we felt ourselves at the sharp end of Murphy’s Law. Just in case we did get lucky, however, we pulled our reserve fuel can to the front, where it was in easy reach and cut apart a plastic 2 liter water bottle and converted it into a makeshift funnel for pouring fuel from the jerry can into our tank.

Finally, mercifully, the commander’s voice came across the radio, signaling a stop. Soldiers dismounted, taking up watchful positions alongside their vehicles. Knowing that we likely had only a minute or two before continuing, Dustan and I sprang into action. I threw open the passenger side door and ran to remove the fuel cap and jam our jury-rigged funnel into the fuel port. Dustan ran, stumbling around from the other side of the ambulance, jerry can in hand. We frantically poured fuel through the funnel into our truck. It was a messy affair and we were walking fire hazards by the end of it, but we got most of the fuel into the tank. Soldiers witnessing the debacle doubled over in laughter.

We pulled into al-Habbaniyah, wrapped up the last of our convoy business, refueled and returned to the barracks. We started a game of Risk and talked about darkness, spare litters and never taking your route for granted. We teased each other about our weaknesses, hot family members and drunken moments. Night fell clear and starry and I slipped into dreams of Canadian schoolteachers and of beds more comfortable than ambulance cots.

The Army vs Graduate School

Posted on January 31, 2016February 12, 2016 by Forest Ray

Still no story updates, because I’m trying to make an April thesis defense deadline. As promised, however, here is a (very) hastily made chart comparing Airborne School, the Ranger Indoctrination Program and grad school. Enjoy.

Things you will experience	Airborne School	Ranger Indoctrination Program	Grad School
Freely volunteering for the experience	Yes	Yes	Yes, but why?
Positive motivation	Yes	No	Yes
Negative motivation	No	Yes	Yes
Having a definite end date	Yes	Yes	No
Being called stupid	Yes	Yes	Yes
Feelings of inadequacy	No	Probably	Yes
Sweat	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tears	No	Likely	Yes
Blood	No	Yes	Surprisingly, yes
Loss of social life	No	No	Yes
Loss of conciousness	No	Possibly	Happened once
Sleep deprivation hallucinations	No	Yes	Yes
Fear	Once	A couple times	Regularly
An instructor who will physically hurt you	No	Yes	No
An instructor who will psychologically hurt you	No	Yes	Yes
Killing a living thing	No	No	Yes
Mental breakdown	No	Maybe	Yes
Feeling of accomplishment	Yes	Yes	Pleaseletitbeyes

How the Army might teach science.

This is how I expect my thesis defense to take place.

14. Interlude

Posted on January 24, 2016February 12, 2016 by Forest Ray

Hi all!

I see a few people checking the blog & obviously, there haven’t been any updates for a while. Blame it on grad school….I’m in the final phase, where I try to get a paper published, secure a defense date and write up my dissertation and all that has rapidly became a more-than-full-time, 7-days-a-week job. So no posts. 🙁

Only a couple more stories to go, at this point. One is halfway written & hopefully I’ll put it up next weekend. It’ll depend either on how much science I can write up before then or how burned out on science I am by then.

All else fails, maybe I’ll write a quick post covering the uncomfortable parallels that can be drawn between grad school and various Army training programs.

Until then, thanks for checking in!

I would credit this, but I honestly can’t remember where I found it. Been on my computer a while…

13. Working with the Locals

Posted on January 2, 2016June 12, 2016 by Forest Ray

Taking the slow way across the desert. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

I wanted to meet Iraqis. It’s a pretty idiotic statement. Something a tourist says about their upcoming trip, not something that you should expect to hear from a soldier invading someone’s country. We weren’t sent over there, armed with handshakes and smiles. If I’m being honest with myself, though, and I try to be, then that was one thing that I looked forward to.

We crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq in a series of convoys, all making our way up Highway 1 to our future home of al-Taqqadum air base, or TQ for short. Drivers passed by on the highway, unseeing us in their efforts to get about their daily business despite the invasion.

Personnel documents found in the ruins of TQ. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Our first task at TQ was cleaning up the detritus of its former inhabitants. Originally built by the British RAF after WWII, then used by the Iraqi Air Force, its ruins were littered with clues of its former occupants. From the look of it, it had been a mess for long time. I don’t know much about its use, if any, immediately prior to our occupation. It had been bombed during the first Gulf War in 1991 and as far as I could tell, little appeared to have happened since. When we set foot there, the desert was well on its way to reclaiming a collection of old documents, rusted filing cabinets, atropine injection needles, gas masks and a few dried-out combat boots. The chemical warfare paraphernalia and lack of knowledge concerning al-Taqaddum’s recent past put people a little on edge. We sifted through the wreckage, with our own gas masks at the ready, put on edge by the chemical warfare paraphernalia and our lack of knowledge concerning al-Taqaddum’s recent past. It was eerie, seeing only the negative spaces around which people once moved. Empty vehicles, desks and beds. A pair of boots drying in the sand. Gas masks, paperwork, the empty packaging of a dry ration. Being surrounded by personal effects with no people attached to them made me feel like a ghost, an observer to a world that I wasn’t fully part of. If I could only squint my eyes just right, I might see the people, who were surely there, moving about in all the patterns of their daily routines. Except that they were the ghosts, of course, but then I thought that perhaps that distinction lacked any meaning there.

Gas masks on the ground at TQ. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

We quickly filled in the negative spaces with locals, who we hired to work on the base. Many of them worked as construction laborers, some helped with logistical tasks, others worked in shops that we set up on post and translators. I was excited to interact with them.

Iraqi man wearing red checkered keffiyeh, holding a shovel and another Iraqi man standing nearby.

Day laborers at al-Taqqadum.

As we developed our base, we installed a shopping and food court area, all run by local business folk. It included a shawarma stand that offered pizza, which we ordered once, while missing the comforts of home. We missed the same comforts after eating it. It wasn’t bad, but the guys running the shop might have only ever seen pizza on TV or in movies. The dough was an unleavened bread, rather like a oversized pita. The sauce was something like a tzatziki without dill and the topping was clearly lamb shawarma, recently cut from the rotating spit of meat in the corner of the stand. It probably tasted fine, although our enjoyment might have been clouded by mild disappointment at the unexpected result of our order.

The door to our future barracks

The aging wreckage of trucks

Garbage left on the base

More garbage, this time in the form of a wrecked fighter jet

Gas masks and filters

Atropine needles, now waiting for the chance to give someone tetanus

I got to sample some much better food, thanks to our translator. To my chagrin, I forget the guy’s name. I wish I hadn’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. We were together only briefly and when we parted, it was final.

Treatment area in the BAS. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

He was a slender man, only a little older than myself and an inch or two shorter. He worked at the battalion aid station (BAS, a clinic/urgent care). He seemed gratified by my attempts to learn Arabic and enthusiastically taught me as many useful phrases as I could learn. Despite doing him the disservice of having forgotten his name, I remember that he had been a university professor and was often asked to act as muezzin, the one who calls others to prayer, because of his singing voice. He began working with us early on, while we were still repairing the building that would become our aid station and we sometimes took lunch together, me eating an MRE and him eating a meal that his wife had prepared for him. Without exception, his meals looked and smelled better than mine. They usually consisted of chicken and an assortment of brightly colored pickled vegetables. After joking about the relative qualities of each other’s food, he offered to bring me in some of his. I accepted. The food on this occasion did not disappoint. The chicken had been roasted and remained juicy as though it had also been brined. The pickled vegetables were delicious. Some of my squad mates warned, half-jokingly, that I should be wary of any food cooked by the locals, this being an ideal way to poison an American invader. I didn’t buy the argument and did not regret the results.

Security concerns were always in our collective imagination when dealing with the locals. We were invaders in their country, living among them, but always a world apart. We held no illusions about being loved for playing the role of liberator. Every local hired to work on our base was screened and limited in what they could do, where they could go. Pro-American sentiment was not a requirement for passing the screening process. From my limited sample size of a few Iraqis on the base, I got the impression that pro-American sentiment correlated strongly with one’s level of education.

Ammo boxes. Not the ones that caught fire. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

The only danger we were ever in on account of the locals came about from pure human error. This occurred when the ammunition tent caught fire. Corey and I were first up on ambulance duty when the call came in. Corey drove, while I set up the patient compartment. Corey gunned the engine and hit the road. Unhindered by any seat belt, every bump in the road sent me flying into walls, the ceiling and back down onto the floor. “Slow the fuck down!” I shouted. “Sorry!” Corey replied.

We pulled up to burning tent, to the sound of popcorn gunfire and a company of soldiers all taking cover. The firefighters (don’t go to war without them) worked cautiously to extinguish the tent, from which thick, oily smoke issued. We parked our truck parallel to the fire and got out to stand on the far side of our armored patient compartment, where a couple of soldiers from our company joined us.

“What happened?”

“The Iraqis were smoking next to the tent.”

The tents that the army uses are waterproofed with a petroleum-based coating. All throughout our service, we were admonished not to smoke anywhere near them. The firefighters finished their work and as luck would have it, there was no reason to call upon us to perform our jobs. Over a thousand rounds had gone off from the heat, but most of them were shut away in metal ammunition boxes. Without the momentum imparted to a bullet by a rifle’s firing mechanism, most simply exploded inside their storage boxes. Some managed to achieve a short flight, but nothing resembling a gunfight occurred that day. Scanning the area after the action, we saw the Iraqi workers sitting sullenly off the side, their clothes singed, while our commanders gesticulated angrily nearby. I wonder if they knew that the tents were so flammable. As we only had one full-time translator, who could not possibly be everywhere, communication was frequently an issue.

As medics, most of our interactions with the Iraqis occurred in our BAS, while treating the frequent and

Viagra won’t help here.

thankfully always minor injuries of the day laborers. The day laborers who helped build our working and living spaces were hard working and said little. Thinking back on them in the years that have passed, they often blend into images of cowboys from movies about the Old West. There was the old man who was bitten by a scorpion. He wore an epic mustache. Picture Lawrence of Arabia played by Sam Elliot. He walked into the BAS while I was on duty there and showed us the sting mark. His skin, at the site of the sting, burned a deep, angry red. Pus oozed out of it. At no point did the old man show the slightest physical sign of discomfort. How badly does it hurt, we asked. Not much, he replied and then asked for Viagra. We don’t stock Viagra, I told him. It’s not for me, he said, it’s for my wife. It always is, I thought. I sympathized with him, but we still didn’t have any.

Not long after, a worker came in with a broken toe. Some bricks or rocks had fallen on it during the construction of a wall. How bad is the pain, I asked. Not bad, he said, but I think that my toe is broken. Can I get some Viagra?

This quickly became a trend. Workers would come in with their injuries, receive medical attention and ask for Viagra. We didn’t have any, of course, because nothing good has ever come from mixing wars with hard-ons.

Fortunately, many of the laborers seemed equally impressed with aspirin, to which they ascribed benefits far beyond those for which it is prescribed. This, at least, we could pass out freely and cheerfully. As it was always received with a smile, it gave me a sense that we were building some level of goodwill with people and wasn’t that one of the pillars of our overall mission anyway? Hearts and minds, after all.

12. Barracks Life, Part 2: Bombs & Urine

Posted on December 23, 2015 by Forest Ray

Bombed building. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

The sharp crack of an explosion shattered the midday quiet of our company area. The blast came from right

next to our company commander and First Sergeant’s quarters, in which a meeting had been taking place. The platoon nearest to the blast scattered towards any available cover. A second or two later, the officers and NCOs in the meeting ran out in full battle rattle; armor on, weapons ready, fear and fight in their eyes. We in my platoon, Ambulance, remained seated. We did not flinch, but watched the unfolding action with mute acceptance.

It was a hot desert day and a group of us had grown a little bored over lunch. Our lunch had consisted of MREs, which are the military food rations. MRE stands for Meal, Ready to Eat and they taste about as good as they sound. The greatest thing about an MRE is the heating pouches. Each MRE contains a pouch full of iron, magnesium and table salt. When water comes in contact with the pouches, it dissolves the salt, forming an electrolyte solution in which the iron and magnesium function as thousands of tiny galvanic batteries, heating your food while splitting the water into hydroxide and hydrogen gas, which rapidly expands in whatever confines they are placed. Since heating up the food in an MRE in no way improves the flavor, many soldiers preferred to use the heater packs to make bombs.

Your typical MRE. The heater packs are in the long green sleeve on the right. Source: http://www.mreinfo.com/mres/

An MRE bomb is made by placing the heater packs into any empty, resealable plastic bottle, the bigger the better, into which one adds water, seals the bottle and chucks it towards some target, usually another soldier. The resulting explosions are harmless but satisfyingly loud and shocking. On this particular day, Corey had packed an impressive nine heater packs into a one liter plastic bottle, for the intended purpose of throwing it over the perimeter security fence. Given that we were in a notionally active combat zone and, only having been there a week or two, were still fairly jumpy, expecting at any minute a full-scale assault on our post, this would have been a bad idea even if it had worked.

The nine heater packs boiled the water before Corey had the chance to throw it. The temperature of the bottle went instantly from comfortable to searing and Corey’s hand spasmed, reflexively jerking away to avoid the heat and sending the bottle tumbling on a misguided course straight into the wall of the command quarters, where it immediately burst from the pressure of the gas. The source of the blast was quickly discovered, as was the perpetrator, who received a potentially record-breaking six weeks of Kitchen Patrol, or KP, which is army slang for washing dishes.

Our commanding officer (CO) and first sergeant (1SG) each berated us, telling us that they expected better from all of us and that we, as a team, had let them down. I can’t really argue that with a straight face, but at the same time, I don’t think that many of us felt terribly crushed by their disappointment.

Beast of war.
Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson

Few things unite anyone so well as a common enemy. For us, our common enemy was the command team of our CO and 1SG, affectionately known as Ace and Gary. We viewed them as the ultimate bureaucrats in uniform. Each took over their post in our company very close to the other one. Once they were in place, anything resembling ‘army’ training came to a halt. The command team that preceded them had a philosophy of training first as a soldier and then as whatever your job specialty might be. In this, we tended to agree with them. Every week during ‘sergeant’s time’ training, we would alternate between small unit tactics that every soldier should be familiar with, to specific medical tasks like managing MASCALs and accessing and extracting patients from challenging situations. Those training tasks were great. They consisted of doing the sorts of things that I had hoped to do while in the Army.

Under the regime of Gary and Ace, our sergeant’s time training was frequently reduced to tasks like taking inventories and filling out forms. Basically, things that could be done during normal working hours. So we were pretty thrilled to deploy with them to war.

We didn’t appear to suffer alone in our distaste for our ambiguously commanding duo. Little love was lost between our battalion commander and our CO. On occasion, we would see the battalion commander walk away from an interaction with Ace without bothering to return a salute, leaving Ace standing in the middle of the desert saluting the departing officer’s back. Even if the salute has never been a part of your life, you can imagine the level of disrespect conveyed by this action.

During a nighttime session with the contents of one of our illicit care packages one night, the conversation turned to our beloved company commanders. Grievances were aired, jokes were made, accusations leveled. Someone got up to pee. I really don’t remember who started it, but what followed sounds like something that I might have instigated.

“I’m gonna piss on the door handle to their quarters.”

Laughter, followed by encouragement. Then,

“I’m gonna piss on Ace’s seat in his hummvee!”

“I’ll piss in their clean laundry!”

“I’ll piss on their toothbrushes!”

We all proceeded to make good on each of our boasts. Even, incredibly, the mechanic who made the toothbrush bet. There was really no way to one-up that one without pissing on their faces and our liquid courage was not yet up to that.

Our adventures for that night ended after the deeds were committed. The next day unfolded like every other. Medics ambled off to take their shifts at the aid station or the ambulance depot. Mechanics crossed the main field from the dining tent to the motor pool, to keep the hard desert environment from claiming our vehicles. Soldiers walked in pairs to take up their guard posts. That day and so many of the following were unremarkable, one barely distinguishable from the other, except for a knowing nod and a conspirational smile exchanged between certain soldiers in passing.

11. MASCAL

Posted on December 13, 2015December 15, 2015 by Forest Ray

Training for a MASCAL. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

The radio came alive during one of those dark hours of the night, before dawn tries to force itself onto the horizon. “MASCAL, MASCAL, MASCAL! All medical units gather at the battalion aid station and prepare for incoming patients.” In Army parlance, a MASCAL is an acronym for a massive casualty incident, one in which there is relatively high ratio of casualties to medical personnel.

Nights spent at our ambulance control point, or CP, were basically sleep-overs for adults. The group present at the CP consisted of two two-person ambulance crews, one ready to take a call and the other available as back-up. As we didn’t get many calls, most of our nights were spent watching movies on DVD, playing video games or Risk and sleeping. Because the four of us were packed into a fairly small space and at least two people were expected to be awake at all times, no one ever got a full night’s sleep. Instead, we typically dozed in chunks of a few hours at a time, to the backdrop of Super Mario Brothers or Sex and the City. You read that last bit right. Someone sent us a boxed set of the entire series in a care package. Lacking access to a video store, our general policy on entertainment was ‘if they sent it, we watch it’. None of us really understood what Carrie ever saw in Big.

1LT Hawkins plays medical dummy for Becky & Jackie. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

We moved fast. In the span of a minute, we had our boots laced were running across the street to the aid station with our rifles in hand and aid bags slung over our shoulders. The duty staff at the station were already setting up the OR (operating room) and a triage area by the time we arrived. We were immediately grouped into teams of three or four people and assigned to either a triage station or to a bed in the OR. My team got assigned to one of the beds. We set up our station and waited.

We didn’t know what to expect, which left our imaginations in charge. In my mind, bullets made meat of men’s flesh and bomb blasts turned their brains to mush. We trained, of course, frequently for a variety of situations. The army training philosophy can be thought of as practicing a task until your hands know what to do without your brain intervening. Nonetheless, my “real-life” medical experience was still rather limited on that night. I had seen one knife wound, the product of a fight between two drunken soldiers, cuts and bruises, some scorpion stings and a hell of a lot of cases of dehydration (easily the soldier’s single greatest enemy). All

Convoys passing each other. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

told, nothing worth writing home about.

Some information came through to us, concerning our incoming patients. We were told that the incident leading to the MASCAL was a traffic accident involving a vehicle rollover during a convoy. We were to expect a dozen or so casualties, with some in critical condition. We didn’t get a complete rundown of the injuries.

The casualty that arrived at my bed was a young black soldier, who had been trapped underwater in a ditch on the side of the road for several minutes. He had been resuscitated en route, was unconscious and in an unclear state of stability. We had barely gotten a line in him, when my teammate monitoring his vitals called out that he had stopped breathing. While that same teammate administered rescue breathing, we checked his pulse and found that that, too had stopped. The medical officer in charge of our team, a tall, lanky nurse practitioner (essentially a doctor, but without the surgical training) pushed something through the IV, while we did CPR.

The guy came back to life with a fury, fighting and screaming. Maybe he didn’t like what he saw on the other side. Maybe he was just confused and disoriented and the experience of dying twice had stripped his oxygen-starved brain down to an animal state. Even though looking at us with the widest of eyes, I felt unsure that he saw us. He screamed and struggled, fought to free himself from us. I recall his expression perfectly. I had never before and have never since seen an expression of such perfect terror.

Two soldiers stand in front of a n ambulance bearing a red cross.

Corey & I. A couple of medics ready for anything. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

He thrashed and swung and each of us focused on simply controlling a limb. I wound up on his right leg. Literally on it. I’m not a big guy, but 165 pounds laying on top of a single leg should count for something. At that moment, though, it didn’t count for much. He would twist and thrash his body, lifting up both myself and Corey, who lay on his other leg. We would grab hold of a corner of the bed and muscle our respective legs back down. The struggle continued until the NP was finally able to push something through the IV to sedate him. Once sedated, a medevac was called for and a medic was left to monitor him, while to the rest of us tried to make ourselves useful elsewhere. As our case had taken longer than most others, there was little else to do but chat with the other medics until the medevac helicopter arrived.

And then the night was over & it was just another day. Photo credit: Cori Wilkerson.

The chopper arrived only minutes later and we loaded our unconscious patient onto it, then stepped back to watch it lift off and disappear over the low hills towards Baghdad. The NP lit a cigarette. I wished I had a beer. Think he’ll be alright, I asked. No, said the NP.

10. Mefloquine Dream #3

Posted on December 6, 2015December 15, 2015 by Forest Ray

My platoon is gathered in a group and I am standing off to the side, talking to someone. My platoon begins marching past me in a slow shuffle. They are followed by others. I notice that they are all dead. Hundreds, then thousands of dead soldiers file past in one long column, feet shuffling, heads downcast, eyes filled with sadness. One of them is my friend Rick Palacios. I barely recognize him before he looks straight at me and grabs my arm, his movement fast and abrupt, out of sync with the others. I scream, flinch and jump backwards into wakefulness.

9. The IED and the Truck Driver

Posted on December 4, 2015December 23, 2015 by Forest Ray

Dustan checking the cab of our ambulance.

I jerk forward, ducking my head, arching my shoulders and drawing my knees towards my chest, as though trying to dodge something. I am momentarily speechless, because it feels like my balls have jumped up into my throat. I look at Dustan in the driver’s seat and the look on his face tells me that he knows exactly how I feel.

The shockwave had gone through our vehicle, through us, so quickly that it was a memory before it even had time to be a thought. The radio erupted with chatter, voices asking us if we were alright, if everything was ok. As our insides unwound, we understood that we were uninjured. Improbably, the roadside bomb that had exploded next to our ambulance injured no one, damaged not one vehicle. From our side view mirrors, we saw the cloud of dust and smoke from where it detonated and further afield, in the desert sand across the highway, we saw smaller wisps of smoke from what must have been shrapnel. There was no point in investigating to be sure, but it appeared that the bomb that was meant for us had been some kind of claymore, designed to blast shrapnel in the direction of one’s enemies upon detonation. This particular claymore had been set backwards. We lucky bastards.

Roadside view.

Moments later, we reached the spot on the highway, where we needed to turn off onto a desert track that would carry us back to our base at al-Taqqadum, or TQ, as we called it. In order to get off the highway and onto the track, the convoy needed to make a left turn across the entire breadth of the highway, which involved stopping oncoming traffic while we made the turn. A scout vehicle with a mounted 0.50 caliber machine gun placed itself in front of oncoming traffic to act as a roadblock while the other vehicles in the convoy passed on its other side. Traffic was light, consisting of a few cars and an oncoming 18-wheeler, whose cargo section was a long cylindrical fuel tank. By the time we realized that the 18-wheeler wasn’t going to slow down, it was too late to have deterred it even with the 0.50 cal. Those vehicles that hadn’t crossed the highway yet pulled forward to get out of the truck’s path. The scout humvee that had acted as a roadblock jerked off to the side. The 18-wheeler veered sharply away from the scouts and slammed into the aluminum divider in the shallow ditch that served as a median, sending bits of aluminum flying through the air like matchsticks that had been struck with a sledgehammer. The slope on the other side of the ditch helped to push the cab of the truck to an angle just shy of perpendicular to our side of the highway, but its momentum kept it going forward into our line of vehicles. As the cab of the truck came surging out of the ditch and onto the road, its long cylindrical fuel tank tipped violently and slammed forcefully into the ground, half in the ditch and half on the pavement, pulling the cab over with it. The truck barely slowed, despite now being on its side, as it continued towards our line of vehicles.

Woman in hijab walking along road in Iraq

Woman on the roadside.

The entire convoy was in a state of panic. When the 18-wheeler first went into the ditch, the driver of the forward vehicle made the quick decision to throw his or her truck into reverse and everyone behind them started doing the same, only a second behind, leading to a collapsing accordion motion going back through the convoy like a shockwave. In only the few seconds it took to see that the 18-wheeler’s trajectory had changed and we now had to drive forward and off to the side to avoid it, Dustan & I were jammed too tightly between our flanking vehicles to move more than a few inches in any direction. The two or three trucks ahead of us were doing their best to move out of the way, but by the time the one directly ahead of us had cleared enough space for us to maneuver, it was too late.

It was a scene ripped straight from an action movie. I clearly recall hearing the convoy commander’s voice over the radio. All he said was “Uh, medics…?” I clearly remember my response, given while staring at several tons of onrushing death. It consisted of one word. “Yup.”

For the second time that afternoon, though, luck favored us. The crashing truck didn’t quite make it as far as our vehicles and came to a rest just a few feet from our ambulance. Fuel gushed from the bowels of its trailer, creating a small lake around the truck. We pulled forward and put some distance between ourselves and the truck, then grabbed our aid bags, got out of the ambulance and walked cautiously towards the monumental crash. As we walked, we began trying to plan how we might access the truck’s driver, when a small boy of maybe 11 or 12 climbed out the driver side window, now facing towards the sky, and clambered to the ground. The boy was followed immediately by a middle-aged man and in the span of a few seconds, the two of them stood in the middle of the pooling fuel, surveying the wreck of their livelihood.

Dustan and I tried to hail them, waving and motioning to ask if they were alright, but they resolutely ignored us. Amazingly, we saw no obvious wounds on them, nor any sign of bodily damage. We stopped walking towards them when the man finally made a motion of resigned disgust with his head and shoulders, sat down and lit up a cigarette.

“Aren’t you going to check them out, medics?” a female sergeant standing nearby asked us.

“Sergeant,” Dustan told her, “I’m not going into that lake of fuel to have a face-to-face with a guy smoking a cigarette.”

I thought that Dustan had made an unassailable point, but the sergeant, one of our battalion’s mechanics, was unimpressed.

“That’s [I forget what she said it was], not gasoline. It won’t ignite unless under pressure. Now go check him out.”

Another hastily-snapped shot of our convoy view.

Despite our lack of subject expertise, we remained unconvinced and managed to stall until a few more people arrived. We soon stood in conference with the convoy commander, a couple more mechanics and some others, all gazing at the smoking man amidst the wreckage. The other mechanics all agreed with their sergeant and although we made sure that our apprehension was heard, we eventually lost the argument and were ordered to go into the fuel pool to assess the driver and the boy.

Ever since we got word of the deployment, I made it a personal goal to learn arabic. Their were no formal classes that I could have taken part in, prior to deployment, so I got hold of language learning books and a translation dictionary. In country, our interpreter was a Mauritanian guy who had worked in IT for the State Department until they asked him to consider a career change. He agreed to give me lessons and by the time of the truck crash, I could effectively do my job as a medic in arabic as well as muscling through a very limited set of other topics.

In an act of diplomacy, Dustan and I persuaded the man to put out his cigarette and, although he would not consent to let us check him for any injuries, he did allow us to evaluate his son. This boy, the son of the truck driver was clearly shaken, but utterly uninjured. His nervous movements and visible agitation stood juxtaposed with his father’s immobility and taciturn sense of resignation. During our assessment, we got the story of the crash from their perspective. The father, it turned out, had allowed his son to drive the truck. Driving a semi is more complicated than driving your everyday passenger vehicle and the kid had lost control, trying to slow down for our roadblock. Their sudden diversion into the median had been a desperate act to avoid a rear-end, high-speed collision with the vehicles that had stopped for our convoy. The boy and his father lived in their truck and made their living from it. They were uncertain how they would recover from this crash. Although unharmed, the boy was quite shaken. His father, defying our previous diplomatic success, lit another cigarette, shifting his gaze of morose despair from the wreck of his cab to the desert horizon.

The closest I ever came to a palace.

We still didn’t like standing a pool of fuel with a lit cigarette, no matter how combustible it may or may not have been. As there were no injuries to treat, we decided to leave and report back to the convoy commander. We found him on the other side of the highway, where we had set up the roadblock, talking to another Iraqi man. The roadblock had been reinstated while we had evaluated the father and son and the drivers who found themselves stopped by it were clearly agitated.

“Ray!” the commander called out as we approached. “I’m glad you’re here. Talk to this guy, explain to him that he has to wait for the convoy to pass.”

I engaged in my task without enthusiasm. I didn’t really know why we had maintained the roadblock during the time since the crash happened. It seemed pointless to me and allowing more cars to pile up at that spot only made me feel more vulnerable. Our luck had already been tested twice that day.

In the moment it took the commander to speak to me, the man had turned his attention to the scout standing nearest to us. He argued and pleaded, as much with his hands as with his mouth, while the scout struck his best don’t-mess-with-me pose. As I walked to them, the man put his hands on the scout’s chest. The scout reacted quickly, talking a step back and raising his M-4, barrel towards the man’s chest. It was a motion that we had been trained to make but from an observer’s perspective, it looked ridiculous, an armed and armored man backed up by a bunch of armed and armored men who would all fight like dogs to protect each other, acting threatened by a lone, skinny, unarmed man wearing sandals.

“I got this,” I said, waving the scout away.

Women hanging a banner.

It didn’t take any special language skills to understand the guy. He was mad at being made to wait for no apparent reason. Why couldn’t he and the other drivers have just been let through earlier, so that they would be out of our way? Good questions, all, and I had no real answer.

“I’m truly sorry,” I said, “just hang out a few more minutes. We’ll drive through and be out of your way. Please return to your car. I’m sorry.”

With little else to say, I just kept apologizing until the man gave up and returned to his car. I then returned to my ambulance. Dustan and I asked the convoy commander if there was anything else that we could do for the semi drivers. Perhaps arrange a payment to help them recover. After all, this war was nominally about winning hearts and minds, as well as battles.

“There’s nothing we can do,” the commander shrugged, “they’re at fault.”

We mounted our vehicles and drove from the highway onto the dirt track that led us home, leaving behind a crowd of delayed travelers, a shaken boy and a man staring at the horizon.

Taking the Train to Iraq

A blog about guard duty, long convoys and the ennui of war

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