Chapter One: Airborne, All the Way:
The jumpmaster started out by yelling, “Get Ready.” I looked around at the other Airborne students, they seemed as scared as I was by the look in their eyes. The jumpmaster then yelled, “Outboard Personnel, Stand Up” This was my cue to stand up. It was hard to stand up with that parachute on and the turbulence from the airplane. Salty sweat was burning my eyes. My adrenaline started to flow in me, and my legs began to tremble. I was getting a little bit nervous. The next order given was to, “Hook Up”. I hooked my parachute static line to the metal wire going down the length of the airplane.
My heart was pounding; I was beginning to wonder if I had made the right decision in doing this. It wasn’t too late to back out, nobody would say anything, and no one would even remember me. I thought about the past two weeks of running my ass off at Airborne School. I hate running. No, I was going to go through with it. We approached the drop zone. My stomach was tied in knots.
Chapter Two: The Army Brat
I am an Army brat. I might be a combat veteran with two combat tours under my belt, but I am an Army brat first. I spent my whole childhood around the Army. My father spent thirty years in the Army, so that is what I knew growing up. When people ask me where I am from, I tell them nowhere or everywhere. Sometimes I would say planet Earth. I never had a geographical hometown, the Army was my home. Our family moved every few years to different locations both in the United States and in several foreign countries. I was indifferent to where we lived. I associated with the Army post that we lived on. Having lived in foreign countries did not seem foreign to me. I felt that living in the American South for the first time was more foreign to me than when I lived in Europe and Asia.
Chapter Three: Desert Storm
One night on a mission, one of our helicopters dropped a combat team off in an undisclosed location for combat operations. A bunch of Iraqi soldiers had surrendered to the team. The unit had no choice but to treat them as prisoners of war. A prisoner of war is not considered a combatant anymore. The team off-loaded these men from the helicopter to the front of our hanger. Our medical section was called out to evaluate and stabilize them. We were in the middle of the desert and about to do our thing. I was finally getting a chance to do something combat related. Not too many nineteen-year-old medics can say they worked on prisoners of war fresh off the field of battle. They brought back about fifteen enemy prisoners of war with them. I seriously doubt that they were “captured” in the military sense of the word. I heard about how Iraqi soldiers were surrendering to reporters.
Chapter Four: Army Training
After establishing what platoon we belonged to, the Drill Sergeants started making our lives miserable for the next eight weeks. The first training exercise we did was a stand up and sit down exercise. The Drill Sergeants would yell, “Stand up” and another Drill Sergeant would yell, “Sit down.” This stand up / sit down exercise lasted for a couple of hours. I was getting so sore from doing something so simple.
The next event that occurred was to meet our Drill Sergeants face-to-face. The Drill Sergeants talked to each individual soldier for a few minutes. I heard what the Drill Sergeant was saying to the other soldiers. He commented on our facial features, places we were from, questioned our gender and sexuality, or what we did before we joined the Army. I dared not laugh, but some of the shit these guys said was hilarious. When the Drill Sergeant asked a basic trainee where he was from, the guy just answered, “Yes Drill Sergeant,” and said nothing more. The Drill Sergeant stared at this basic trainee expecting an answer and he started to cry. The Drill Sergeant just shook his head in disbelief and went on to the next guy in line.
Chapter Five: Medical Training
The most nerve racking class at the time was the intravenous therapy class. We practiced on a dummy arm a few times to learn the basics. After that we would practice on each other. I got stuck several times during this part of my training. The testing portion was quick-paced also. We had to demonstrate how to spike the bag of fluid and all, but we didn’t start any fluids. We just stuck each other until we got a good IV in. Some soldiers passed out as they were getting stuck, others just bled profusely. I enjoyed it, it was fun. Learning to start on IV on someone was what being a medic is all about!
We practiced on training manikins for the skills that we could not do on each other such as applying tourniquets, airway management, needle decompression and learning to assist mothers during childbirth. Those manikins are not the same as real-life, but it was a good starting point. I was sure I did not want someone putting a tourniquet on or sticking me in the chest with needles! The field portion of our medic training was one week long. We marched a few minutes to the field site every morning that week. It was late April in 1990. The weather in San Antonio was warming up. The training area was really muddy. We wore the old-style steel pot helmet. The insert of the helmets was made of steel. Back in the day, soldiers used the steel pot as a sink while in the field to hold water. The newer helmets are Kevlar helmets, but they too got the name K-pot for short.
A good portion of the field training included mixing the medical Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course (BNCOC) Sergeants with our basic medic class. These Sergeants were already seasoned medics. The training they were going through was more advanced and they were learning more Army leadership skills. A few of us followed this medic around and she told us what to do. She taught us field skills that were not in the book.
We had specific training lanes that we had to go through. The lane I enjoyed the most was the massive casualty exercise. We had about a dozen wounded people and we went through the motions of evaluating and stabilizing them. We applied neck braces, splints, and dressings, nothing invasive in the field, but it was still fun. After we stabilized them, we put them on the green Army litters for evacuation.
Chapter Six: The Combat Medic
The helicopter landed and the Syrians loaded the three wounded men onto the floor of the helicopter. The smell of spent ammunition, of burnt flesh and the exhaust from the helicopter are the smells that I remember most. I looked at these three men in front of me and thought to myself, this is for real. I hope I don’t screw this up.
The soldiers were moaning and I tried not to pay attention. Instead I focused on keeping these men alive while they were in my care. They already had tourniquets applied to the stumps. There was a moderate amount of bleeding from the stumps. I made the tourniquets tighter. I decided to dress the amputations to cover them up. One of the wounded was looking up to me. I don’t know how confused he was due to his blood loss, but I heard him moaning for Allah, Allah and I could not understand what else he was saying. I looked at him and smiled.
Chapter Seven: The Army and the Army National Guard
I was on the ground and watched the team parachute in. We started our patrol to where they were going to set up the landing zone. After the team set up the landing zone, a call came on the radio that we had to escape and evade. I knew this all along, but I played along. We started our patrol in the jungle again. It was dark and hot outside, and we walked through warm swamp water about knee high. One of the soldiers slipped and fell into swamp.
He was carrying the squad automatic weapon or SAW. The Sergeant gave me his SAW. I had to keep a closer eye on this guy now. We all took turns carrying the extra weapon. A few kilometers later, he slipped again, this time he passed out and his head fell into the murky swamp water. He was head first in the water. We all ran to him to prevent him from drowning. He was completely out of it. We quickly found some dry land and I went to work.
I started an IV and decided he needed to be evacuated. The team had to set up a landing zone for real now, helicopters don’t like landing in swamps. The helicopter took thirty minutes to arrive. I was going to go with the soldier on the helicopter, because our other medic had arrived. I had done everything I could for the guy, I was worried that he swallowed swamp water and that some of it had gotten into his lungs. The jungle in Panama is wild and unforgiving.
Chapter Eight: Camp Phoenix, Afghanistan
The biggest threat in Afghanistan was land mines and improvised explosive devices. We learned that the only real safe way to get out of a landmine was to go back the way that you came, be it in a truck or on foot. The improvised explosive devices were something different. The Taliban set up hidden, roadside bombs to kill and maim American forces. These devices could be set up remotely. We learned in our training that the only effective thing to do was to hit the gas pedal and get the hell out of the kill zone.
Our training period ended in July, 2004 and we were ready to go. I was in pretty decent shape at this point. I was eager to get it over with. We had a weekend to say good-bye to our families. We flew from Indianapolis to one of the former Soviet Republics called Kyrgyzstan. There were a few Air Force bases in that country. We unloaded our gear and put on our body armor. We had to wear the body armor because we were going to fly into Afghanistan.
We flew into Afghanistan in a C-130 cargo plane. This was it; our unit going into the combat zone. There was a lot of tension during the short flight; many of the soldiers had not been to war. I was not particularly worried, I have never heard of a C-130 being shot down over Afghanistan. I was more worried about what would happen when we landed on the ground. The flight itself was bumpy; I had been on bumpy rides before, but this was bad. The highlight of the flight was when the plane took a sudden, nasty, nosedive to the Earth. The crew chiefs on board the plane warned us about this before we took off. The airplane dropped altitude quickly to avoid getting hit by anti-aircraft missiles from the Taliban. After the nosedive, the plane leveled off and we landed in Kabul.
Chapter Nine: Camp Victory, Afghanistan
A newspaper reporter from the Stars and Stripes was attached to Task Force Phoenix in early 2005. The Stars and Stripes is a newspaper printed for military and civilian personal working for the military overseas. The reporter was at Camp Victory in Herat to see how the Regional Command was doing. He had spent time at Camp Phoenix before coming out to visit us. The medical section had the glorious task of making sure this reporter was taken care of. He was a likeable enough man, we had some pretty interesting conversations, and we were just as curious about him as he was about us. I guess as a nice way of thanking me for the hospitality at our camp, he quoted me in the paper.
The big story at the time within our Task Force was about a little child from a refugee camp in Kabul who had a congenital cardiac abnormality and the medical staff at Camp Phoenix arranged for this young boy to have corrective surgery at Riley Hospital for Children in Indiana. This was a very noble gesture, showing that the Americans cared about the kids.
Chapter Ten: Healthcare in the Military
I remember how it worked; we would show up for physical training at 6:30 in the morning. This would be the first formation of the unit. The person conducting the physical training would call out anyone who has a profile or anyone who wants to go on sick call to step out of formation. Other soldiers would see those who get out of the formation and that too could be humiliating.
Bear in mind that not every unit is like that, and in defense of First Sergeants, they have to look out for the health and welfare of their soldiers. If that means that they have to be an asshole, then they have to be an asshole. Some soldiers do abuse sick call to get out of doing duty and physical training. I have seen this as a medic doing morning sick call. A soldier can be charged with malingering. This is considered to be an offense in the military. The term “sick call ranger” is used to describe a soldier who goes on sick call all the time.
Chapter Eleven: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
The wounded Syrians I worked on during Desert Storm were screaming in Arabic. I don’t know what the hell they were saying, but I have a general idea. Hearing Arabic is a trigger for me to have a flashback. When I hear a person speaking in Arabic, some of these memories flood into my head. One time during a Medical Code at work, one of the physicians started screaming loudly, he was of Middle Eastern origin. This man walked in during the code and started barking orders without getting a history of what we had done already. No one was listening to him so he started flailing his arms around. I had to get away from the situation. I couldn’t handle being in this code; it triggered a flashback. I told one of the nurses standing by that she needed to take over; I was done. It did not help that we had a mild earthquake several hours before the code. Since the hospital is a federal building, my first thought was it was being bombed. The sad thing is, I thought terrorists were doing the bombing.
Chapter Twelve: Dear New Medic
Dear New Medic:
Welcome to the best job in the world. There is no job like that of an Army medic. You will travel to places and see things that others can only imagine. It is not an easy job, but it is a rewarding one. The rewards are not badges, ribbons, or bonus money; the rewards come from the good feeling you get from to helping people. You will learn new skills on the battlefield that doctors are not taught in medical school yet. You will experience highs when you save a life. You will experience the lowest of lows when someone dies on you. It comes with the job. Don’t let it get to your head either way.
Your job requires many things of you. You have to stay physically fit and mentally alert in order to do your job. Believe me; no one wants a medic who cannot carry his or her own load on the battlefield. In fact, you will often be called to carry someone else’s load on the battlefield. You never want to be a liability instead of an asset. Just because you don’t have to do physical training with your unit, does not mean you don’t have to stay in tip-top shape. Nothing is worse than having the medic struggling to keep up with everyone else. You don’t want to be that medic.
Chapter Thirteen: The Final Years
I don’t think life ever really gets normal after coming home from war. I guess I should say I wanted things to be as normal as possible. It was hard getting used to being a full-time civilian and a part-time soldier. I was used to going everywhere with my body armor on and having my weapon at my side. I would wake up in the middle of the night in my bed at home and feel for my weapon. I would wake up startled not being able to feel it. Then I remembered I was at home, not in Afghanistan.
I worked as a registered nurse at the hospital. I had not forgotten how my boss gave me a hard time when I asked her permission to take some leave when I learned I was going to be activated-in to train for the war in Afghanistan. She told me no because of staffing issues. She granted me only a few days. Another soldier, who worked on the same floor as I did, abused the system. Maybe she thought I was doing the same thing. I don’t know.
