p35
Member
Not sure if this belongs here or in L&P, but it's a great story:
(from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/214064_likeasoldier06.html)
Like thousands before him, a soldier comes of age
By JACK LEWIS
GUEST COLUMNIST
NORTHERN IRAQ -- He's young enough to be my son. Annoying enough, too.
When I beat on his hooch door this morning to get him up for a mission, he was his typical floppy-jointed, addle-headed, eye-rolling self. It was pouring down rain, I was standing out in it wearing PT shorts and a raincoat, and I had no patience: "Get up, time to move. You're going down with Apache."
Long groan -- but he knew what the mission was since last night.
"Quit your bitchin', Y---," I told him. "You're lucky as hell -- you get to hang out at the castle, and I have to ride the hatch in this ****."
Y--- was going downtown to broadcast over the LRAD -- i.e., "Long Range Acoustical Device," a gizmo originally designed to warn boaters away from the exclusion zone surrounding naval vessels, while I was going to charge around town in one of Charger Troop's Stryker armored vehicles, broadcasting pro-election messages, pre-recorded in Arabic, from a manpack loudspeaker system.
"Yeah ... I guess," he said, rubbing the back of his head, sullen as a teenager, which, at 21, he practically is.
"Be at the office no later than zero-seven-thirty," I told him, before throwing on a uniform and $400 worth of rain gear to go there myself.
I was closing in on a peak experience of blood pressure when he slouched through the door at 0729.
"I took the trailer off."
"Oh," I said. "How we doin' on fuel?"
"I filled it last night."
"All right, let's get your pack together."
"I already got it, sergeant -- it's ready to go."
"Damn, Y---. I hardly know you!"
Goofy grin from him: "I do what I can, sar'nt."
And so I dropped him down at Apache's hangar, ran to the DFAC (dining facility) to get him a box breakfast, and presently, off he went into Tall 'Afar.
But I never went out on my mission today. After I put together a briefing memo for the squadron commander, I ran straight into the battle captain.
He said, "Oh.
"It's good you're here. Y---'s your guy, right? We got a report he was shot in the neck --"
"WHAT?"
" -- but apparently he was wounded in the hand. A fragment hit him in the chin, and it bled all over, and they thought he had a neck wound."
"IDF or small arms?"
"We don't know yet."
"Are they bringing him in now?"
"We don't know yet."
Everything takes too long, and the cavalry's axiom is true: The first report is always WRONG. And so I grabbed my troop data notes, and dropped the Squadron Commanding Officer's memo, and Capt. Murphy and I settled the report.
Then I went to the aid station to wait. Everything takes too long, and Murphy's Law (no relation) never fails us: Y--- couldn't be evac'd immediately because of continuing small arms fire and mortar fire, which required all available combat power to stay on-site and fight. Then, after Apache's company commander rolled his own vehicle out to the castle and picked up my soldier, they hit an IED (improvised explosive device) on the return trip.
Everything takes too long. It took 20 minutes for Apache 66 to move from the front gate to the aid station, because a convoy of civilian fuel tankers was plugging up the roads.
When A66 finally rolled into the aid station lot and dropped ramp, my kid soldier was sitting inside, holding up a bloody bulb of gauze the size of his head. He looked mighty uncomfortable.
The first words out of his mouth were, "I'm all right, sergeant."
It seems that Y--- was running the LRAD when the castle came under fire, as it usually does when that bullet magnet is in operation. He put down his DVR/MP3, picked up his rifle, and took up a security position along the battlements. When the sniper found him, the neck-aimed bullet hit him in his forward hand, bounced off his rifle and dug into his armored vest with a heavyweight punch. A fragment of the bullet jacket flew up and cut his chin to the bone. Infantry and commo soldiers gave him buddy aid. They said he wheezed pretty hard. They said he stayed alert and responsive. They said he never complained.
What Y--- did do, after he was shot: He trained up a commo sergeant on how to run the LRAD, so that while he waited for evac, he could keep his mission going. He secured, or caused to be secured, all of his sensitive items and psychological operations equipment. He marveled at the bullet they dug out of his vest. He told everybody not to worry about him, and reminded them to keep their heads down.
Everything takes too long. At the aid station, one X-ray salvo wasn't enough; they had to go two rounds with that. The shaky-handed lab tech who tried to start Y---'s IV failed five times on his right arm before someone else took it away and plugged it in properly, upstream of his bullet-raddled left paw.
Through all that, nothing but some wincing and the occasional, "Oww."
And this comment: "I'll tell you one thing. These elections better work. They better get democracy, and freedom, and their rights, and hot chicks in tight jeans.
"I hope I didn't take this bullet for nothing."
And so, although everything seemed like it was happening in slow-mo, Specialist J----- Y--- was treated, given a bit of morphine, and presently evac'd to the 67th Combat Support Hospital by a UH-60 Blackhawk helo.
I made sure he had his IBA (interceptor body armor) with the souvenir slug in one pocket, helmet, coat and the bloody DCU blouse with his name on it -- they can wash it out at the hospital. They do it all the time.
I held onto his weapon, which caught the bullet as it exited through the meat of Y---'s left thumb. That weapon is NMC ("non-mission capable") and irreparable -- it won't ever cycle again without the bottom half of it being replaced. Later, I would have to strip rounds out one by one, and crush the magazine to remove it. I pray my driver's left hand will recover better than his rifle.
Then I stood and watched him lift off, and saluted him in my way. I doubt he noticed. He was trying not to drop his IV bag, which sounds like a simple trick until you try it while juiced to the gills on morphine and battling the shaky shock of adrenaline withdrawal.
I'll miss Y--- here, and not just for the work he does, which is plenty if I remind him often enough. I'll miss him pulling dumb stunts, working so hard at not working that it exhausts him just to think about it, starting to do push-ups just because I gave him a hard look, teaching me how to play Yahtzee (then beating the crap out of me), and schooling me at pingpong until he gets impatient and starts hitting the ball too hard to spin it down onto the table.
He's a near-total dingbat with no sense of planning who still manages to get things done; a lazy sloth who works like a sled dog. A good kid with bad manners; a graceful athlete who trips over his own size 12s. This is the overgrown boy I have to kick out of the rack every morning, remind him to check the oil, take his gloves on mission and shower periodically.
Mostly, he's just too much of a goofy kid for me to have expected him to take this like a man.
Y--- doesn't want to be deployed to Iraq. He wants to chase women around Seattle, and go to college and find out what he wants to be. He wants to play video games, drink some beer and buy a Mustang.
Guys my age are supposed to gripe about how kids today are letting the world go to hell in a handbasket, how there aren't any standards for behavior anymore. After all, we've taken such good care of things. Maybe it's because guys my age usually work with guys my age. Guys Y---'s age are just parts for the big machine in civilian life: laborers, clerks, apprentices. Y--- went from busboy to combat soldier. Now he's wounded in action, and he doesn't even have the good sense to snivel about it.
He was subsequently evac'd to 67th CSH for surgery, then on to Landstuhl. As they loaded him onto the C-130, he was fretting about letting down my team and our detachment by flying out to Germany.
I don't want to hear any more about the passing of "The Greatest Generation." Ain't no generation better than his. Specialist Y--- didn't take it like a man. He took it like his brothers across the generations, and earned his flagon of mead at Valhalla or at least his pint of Bud at the local VFW.
He took it like a soldier.
(from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/214064_likeasoldier06.html)
Like thousands before him, a soldier comes of age
By JACK LEWIS
GUEST COLUMNIST
NORTHERN IRAQ -- He's young enough to be my son. Annoying enough, too.
When I beat on his hooch door this morning to get him up for a mission, he was his typical floppy-jointed, addle-headed, eye-rolling self. It was pouring down rain, I was standing out in it wearing PT shorts and a raincoat, and I had no patience: "Get up, time to move. You're going down with Apache."
Long groan -- but he knew what the mission was since last night.
"Quit your bitchin', Y---," I told him. "You're lucky as hell -- you get to hang out at the castle, and I have to ride the hatch in this ****."
Y--- was going downtown to broadcast over the LRAD -- i.e., "Long Range Acoustical Device," a gizmo originally designed to warn boaters away from the exclusion zone surrounding naval vessels, while I was going to charge around town in one of Charger Troop's Stryker armored vehicles, broadcasting pro-election messages, pre-recorded in Arabic, from a manpack loudspeaker system.
"Yeah ... I guess," he said, rubbing the back of his head, sullen as a teenager, which, at 21, he practically is.
"Be at the office no later than zero-seven-thirty," I told him, before throwing on a uniform and $400 worth of rain gear to go there myself.
I was closing in on a peak experience of blood pressure when he slouched through the door at 0729.
"I took the trailer off."
"Oh," I said. "How we doin' on fuel?"
"I filled it last night."
"All right, let's get your pack together."
"I already got it, sergeant -- it's ready to go."
"Damn, Y---. I hardly know you!"
Goofy grin from him: "I do what I can, sar'nt."
And so I dropped him down at Apache's hangar, ran to the DFAC (dining facility) to get him a box breakfast, and presently, off he went into Tall 'Afar.
But I never went out on my mission today. After I put together a briefing memo for the squadron commander, I ran straight into the battle captain.
He said, "Oh.
"It's good you're here. Y---'s your guy, right? We got a report he was shot in the neck --"
"WHAT?"
" -- but apparently he was wounded in the hand. A fragment hit him in the chin, and it bled all over, and they thought he had a neck wound."
"IDF or small arms?"
"We don't know yet."
"Are they bringing him in now?"
"We don't know yet."
Everything takes too long, and the cavalry's axiom is true: The first report is always WRONG. And so I grabbed my troop data notes, and dropped the Squadron Commanding Officer's memo, and Capt. Murphy and I settled the report.
Then I went to the aid station to wait. Everything takes too long, and Murphy's Law (no relation) never fails us: Y--- couldn't be evac'd immediately because of continuing small arms fire and mortar fire, which required all available combat power to stay on-site and fight. Then, after Apache's company commander rolled his own vehicle out to the castle and picked up my soldier, they hit an IED (improvised explosive device) on the return trip.
Everything takes too long. It took 20 minutes for Apache 66 to move from the front gate to the aid station, because a convoy of civilian fuel tankers was plugging up the roads.
When A66 finally rolled into the aid station lot and dropped ramp, my kid soldier was sitting inside, holding up a bloody bulb of gauze the size of his head. He looked mighty uncomfortable.
The first words out of his mouth were, "I'm all right, sergeant."
It seems that Y--- was running the LRAD when the castle came under fire, as it usually does when that bullet magnet is in operation. He put down his DVR/MP3, picked up his rifle, and took up a security position along the battlements. When the sniper found him, the neck-aimed bullet hit him in his forward hand, bounced off his rifle and dug into his armored vest with a heavyweight punch. A fragment of the bullet jacket flew up and cut his chin to the bone. Infantry and commo soldiers gave him buddy aid. They said he wheezed pretty hard. They said he stayed alert and responsive. They said he never complained.
What Y--- did do, after he was shot: He trained up a commo sergeant on how to run the LRAD, so that while he waited for evac, he could keep his mission going. He secured, or caused to be secured, all of his sensitive items and psychological operations equipment. He marveled at the bullet they dug out of his vest. He told everybody not to worry about him, and reminded them to keep their heads down.
Everything takes too long. At the aid station, one X-ray salvo wasn't enough; they had to go two rounds with that. The shaky-handed lab tech who tried to start Y---'s IV failed five times on his right arm before someone else took it away and plugged it in properly, upstream of his bullet-raddled left paw.
Through all that, nothing but some wincing and the occasional, "Oww."
And this comment: "I'll tell you one thing. These elections better work. They better get democracy, and freedom, and their rights, and hot chicks in tight jeans.
"I hope I didn't take this bullet for nothing."
And so, although everything seemed like it was happening in slow-mo, Specialist J----- Y--- was treated, given a bit of morphine, and presently evac'd to the 67th Combat Support Hospital by a UH-60 Blackhawk helo.
I made sure he had his IBA (interceptor body armor) with the souvenir slug in one pocket, helmet, coat and the bloody DCU blouse with his name on it -- they can wash it out at the hospital. They do it all the time.
I held onto his weapon, which caught the bullet as it exited through the meat of Y---'s left thumb. That weapon is NMC ("non-mission capable") and irreparable -- it won't ever cycle again without the bottom half of it being replaced. Later, I would have to strip rounds out one by one, and crush the magazine to remove it. I pray my driver's left hand will recover better than his rifle.
Then I stood and watched him lift off, and saluted him in my way. I doubt he noticed. He was trying not to drop his IV bag, which sounds like a simple trick until you try it while juiced to the gills on morphine and battling the shaky shock of adrenaline withdrawal.
I'll miss Y--- here, and not just for the work he does, which is plenty if I remind him often enough. I'll miss him pulling dumb stunts, working so hard at not working that it exhausts him just to think about it, starting to do push-ups just because I gave him a hard look, teaching me how to play Yahtzee (then beating the crap out of me), and schooling me at pingpong until he gets impatient and starts hitting the ball too hard to spin it down onto the table.
He's a near-total dingbat with no sense of planning who still manages to get things done; a lazy sloth who works like a sled dog. A good kid with bad manners; a graceful athlete who trips over his own size 12s. This is the overgrown boy I have to kick out of the rack every morning, remind him to check the oil, take his gloves on mission and shower periodically.
Mostly, he's just too much of a goofy kid for me to have expected him to take this like a man.
Y--- doesn't want to be deployed to Iraq. He wants to chase women around Seattle, and go to college and find out what he wants to be. He wants to play video games, drink some beer and buy a Mustang.
Guys my age are supposed to gripe about how kids today are letting the world go to hell in a handbasket, how there aren't any standards for behavior anymore. After all, we've taken such good care of things. Maybe it's because guys my age usually work with guys my age. Guys Y---'s age are just parts for the big machine in civilian life: laborers, clerks, apprentices. Y--- went from busboy to combat soldier. Now he's wounded in action, and he doesn't even have the good sense to snivel about it.
He was subsequently evac'd to 67th CSH for surgery, then on to Landstuhl. As they loaded him onto the C-130, he was fretting about letting down my team and our detachment by flying out to Germany.
I don't want to hear any more about the passing of "The Greatest Generation." Ain't no generation better than his. Specialist Y--- didn't take it like a man. He took it like his brothers across the generations, and earned his flagon of mead at Valhalla or at least his pint of Bud at the local VFW.
He took it like a soldier.
