Authors: Charles W. Sasser
“My God!” Isbell cried, aghast at its size and power. Smoke and pulverized earth smudged out all view of any of the soldiers crossing the field toward the fence. One thing was obvious, though: the dismount had set off an IED. Who and how many were involved was impossible to determine.
Chiva Lares' first thought was that he had seen Crazy Legs walking down the road earlier that morning. Then, voices over the radio erased all rational thought and replaced it with panic and emotion. The net came alive with men yelling and screaming like Chewbacca in
Star Wars,
every-body trying to get his transmission heard at the same time. Company HQ was going apeshit. The beginning of what everyone hoped would be an unremarkable day had unexpectedly turned into a soup sandwich. As Mayhem Menahem liked to say, “It only takes one IED to screw up your whole day.”
“Break! Break! Everybody clear the net
. . .”
“
Man down! Man down!”
That froze the blood of every soldier listening. Combined like that, in a combat zone, they were the two most chilling words in any dictionary.
“Two-Six, this is Delta . . . Two-Six, tell me what you got
. . .”
“. . .
platoon caught . . .”
“I need you to calm down. What is your grid, over
?”
“
Medic
!”
“
Say again. How many personnel are involved, over
?”
“. . .
need a medevac
!”
“
Delta X-Ray, this is Four-Six
. . .”
“
Four-Six, clear the net
. . .”
“
Four-Six, we have visual on possible enemy personnel trying to exfil along the river.”
Lares, in the security truck, caught glimpses of his platoon mates running about in a whirlpool of black smoke, as though engulfed by mindless panic. Shrapnel chirping and whistling fell out of the sky to land all around the hummer.
A voice on the platoon net took over. In spite of all the chaos, Sergeant Montgomery sounded unruffled and in charge.
Circle up the wagons. Get out local security. Everybody, keep your heads down and get ready for an attack . . .
Order returned, such as it was, although no one monitoring the radios knew what was going on. Conflicting reports continued. At first, it appeared one man was down. That was quickly amended to two men down, then
three.
It soon became clear that the IA terp was one of the injured. Minutes later, Lieutenant Dudish requested medevac for one IA and two U.S., their identities unknown since names of casualties were never broadcast in the clear, only their roster numbers followed by the last four of their social security numbers.
Second Platoon seemed to have stepped into some serious shit.
At 151, radio watch turned up the volume and put it on speaker box. Unable to leave the fort unsecured, Fourth Platoon gathered around to listen. Lieutenant Tomasello and Platoon Sergeant Garrett frantically shuffled through rosters and company manning tables, looking for SS numbers. Mayhem Menahem's heart pounded against his ribs.
Who are they? How badly are they wounded?
He wouldn't let himself consider that one of his friends might have been killed. So far, Delta Company, unlike a couple of other companies in the battalion, had suffered not a single KIA.
A similar scene played itself out with First Platoon at FOB Inchon.
Gathered around chattering radios inside the Company TOC, Gray, Murphy, Anzak, Jimenez, Corny, Fouty, Schober, and all the other men lapsed into a grim, white-faced hush, their attention riveted on the radio and whatever news came out of it next, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.
“First Platoon!” Sergeant Burke ordered. “Get your battle rattle on . . . Just in case.”
At the Battalion TOC in Yusufiyah, Colonel Michael Infanti and CSM Alexander Jimenez had just returned from battlefield circulation checking on 4/31
st
companies in the field when all the excitement began. Infanti's policy was to stand back and let subordinate commanders fight their own companies unless they started fucking up things. All hell was breaking loose at the scene of the attack, but Captain Jamoles and Second Platoon appeared to be getting control of things.
A chill crossed the Colonel's spine as he monitored the company net. All the shouting and crying broke his heart, the pleas for help growing louder and more frantic. He realized what he was hearing were the sounds of soldiers dying.
There is a technique of film making in which action slows down to almost stop time, then suddenly speeds up again to convey the confusion and fast pace of battle. That was the way it was with Sergeant Montgomery after the IED went off. The monster explosion all but obliterated sight of the platoon's leading wedge in a display of dirty gray and black smoke that began out of a red fire center and billowed upward and outward in agonizing slow motion. Shards of flying metal sliced the air into ribbons, whistling dangerously, but even they seemed sluggish enough to be plucked out of the air with a quick hand.
Then everything sped back up to double, even triple time, until things happened so fast it was like an old Charlie Chaplin movie fast-forwarded. Montgomery's wedge went to ground. The sergeant buried his face in the weeds and forced himself to take a deep breath to slow down. Always after initial contact came that period of damage assessment that required a cool and rational mind in order to reorganize an appropriate response.
The man who rose back to his knees to see what was going on was once more the total professional soldier, a sergeant who knew by heart the Infantryman's Bible, the Seven-Dash-Eight manual. The first thing he did was grab his nearest section leader, Sergeant Nathan Brooks.
“Set up security until we get this mess straightened out,” he ordered. An IED often preceded an ambush.
The platoon's commo was going crazy. There was no small arms fire. That was a plus. Montgomery broke in on the net to initiate reorganization. “Get a head count going. Everybody okay?”
“All good to go,”
responded a team leader from up front. “
We're all up
.”
“Man down! Man down!”
came an interruption.
Montgomery rushed forward to link with Lieutenant Dudish, bent low
and ducking and dodging to prevent making an easy target of himself, Sergeant John Herne right behind him. The lieutenant was already on his feet and on the radio trying to determine the extent of the hit. Nearby in the weeds lay the IA interpreter with a hot piece of metal sticking out of his arm. He was writhing on the ground and trying not to scream. Doc Bailey was bent over him with his aid bag open. He looked up.
“He'll be all right,” he said. “It's not serious.”
Smoke obscured everything forward from that point. Out of the swirl came the sound of men coughing and calling out to check on each other. Specialist Streibel, the point man, had pushed on through. He stood on Malibu Road next to the security truck, waving his arms to attract attention. From his elevated position, he commanded the patrol's only overall view.
“
Hey, Sarge! Sarge!”
he shouted over the platoon radio. “
They're down. Given and Messer. They're down!”
He pointed, then bounded off the road toward them. Sergeants Montgomery and Herne ducked into the smoke toward where Messer and Given were last seen. Montgomery grabbed Doc Bailey on the way. Somebody else could look after the lightly wounded IA.
The smoke dissipated some to reveal a four-foot crater blown into the raw earth at the gap in the fence. The two Second Platoon soldiers appeared to have been picked up by the explosion and dumped out into the weeds, almost to where last night's burn began. They must have been standing on top of the mine when it went off. They lay twisted on the ground like a pair of broken mannequins. Streibel was already with them, kneeling at Messer's side, his rifle cast aside.
Montgomery took in the situation at a glance. Given lay quietly on his back with his shattered right leg bent sideways against his ribs at an impossible angle. His uniform, webgear, and boots were torn and scorched. The boy's eyes were closed. Not a drop of blood marred his face. Just freckles and a kind of at-peace expression.
Messer had fallen a few feet away, groaning and barely conscious but not otherwise moving. Montgomery couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Holy Christ!
The man's legs were blown off below the groin. Nothing remained
except strings of torn flesh. Blood pumped from severed arteries. Streibel snatched a cravat from his first aid packet. He looked up helplessly as Doc Bailey dropped down next to him.
“What do you want me to do?” he pleaded, tears streaming down his cheeks. “He's bleeding, but I can't get on a tourniquet. He doesn't have any legs left.”
“We gotta put pressure, pinch off the bleeding.”
Doc went to work with Streibel on one side of the body, Herne on the other. They ripped open combat bandages and stuffed them into cavities where Messer's legs used to be. Shooting arteries sprayed their faces and uniforms and they were immediately soaked. The copperish smell of fresh blood mixed in the air with the pungent cordite whiff of smoke. Herne and Streibel kept talking to the wounded man at the rate of a mile a minute.
“Chris! Chris, you can't leave us, man. You hear me? Stay with us, buddy. Hear me, you can't go. Damn it, Chris, you can't leave us. We won't let you.”
Horrified as they were by Messer's condition, they were equally stunned by the realization that everything was occurring almost exactly the way Messer's dream foretold it. More than once he had instructed teammates that
when
it happened he didn't want anyone trying to save him. He said he couldn't live without his legs.
“I'm not going back home half a man,” he had said. “I couldn't stand the pity.”
Streibel looked up, tear tracks on his face. “
Damn!
Damn it. He kept saying he was never going home again.”
“We've not lost him yet, Streibel,” Doc Bailey snapped.
In the meantime, Sergeant Montgomery was seeing what he could do for PFC Given. He took out his knife and cut off the soldier's gear to check for wounds. Given still hadn't moved. It was the strangest thing. There was almost no blood. A large hunk of shrapnel had pierced his side beneath one armpit and went all the way through, exiting below the other armpit and apparently sucking out all his blood with it.
PFC Nathaniel Given, former fuckup turned model soldier, was dead.
The sergeant rose wearily to his feet and looked around. Lieutenant Dudish had formed the platoon into a protective defensive perimeter around the wounded men. Soldiers glared at the little knots of Iraqis forming in front of houses down the road to watch.
“Sons-of-bitches!” someone carped bitterly. “They
knew
. Them fucking ragheads knew what was happening and they let it.”
Time was critical if Messer was to survive. As Inchon afforded the nearest landing site for a Black Hawk medevac, heartsick GIs loaded their buddies onto stretchers and strapped the stretchers one to a hood on arriving humvees. The hummers scooted around the S-curve to Inchon, soldiers on either side jogging along with them, their rage and sense of loss almost palpable. It would not have been a good time for an Iraqi,
any
Iraqi, to show any kind of hostile intent. There was even another proposal to blow away Crazy Legs if he was stupid enough to present the opportunity.
Sergeant Montgomery stayed back with a few other soldiers to police up body parts and put them in a bag. The burn and weapons cache forgotten, he still reached Inchon ahead of the medevac. He rushed to the aid station to check on his men.
Messer was intubated because he couldn't breathe on his own. The blanket that covered him flattened out below his hips. Given lay on another stretcher next to him, his young face covered.
“Sarge, you can't be in here,” Doc Bailey reminded him gently.
The rest of Second Platoon waited out in the yard in almost total silence. Jared Isbell looked up. Tears stained his pale face. He was twenty years old.
“Sarge,” he said, choking up. “Today was Chris' third wedding anniversary. He was upset because he didn't get a chance to call his wife before we left on patrol.”
Sergeant Ronnie Montgomery knew the score as soon as he spotted the short, square figure of Chaplain Jeff Bryan get out of a humvee at Inchon late the same afternoon of the explosion. The chaplain would be spending the night counseling with Second Platoon, which had been relieved of all duties because of the blow it suffered. The death of even a single soldier made a major impact in limited warfare, unlike at Gettysburg, Normandy, or Hamburger Hill where soldiers were so busy surviving they failed to immediately grasp the enormity of their losses. Casualty rates were so proportionately higher in previous wars because it took hours, days, sometimes weeks for a wounded soldier to reach a hospital. Part of the modern U.S. Army's creed that no soldier would be left behind included the promise that if you were wounded on the battlefield, the army would do everything it could to save your life and not let you die. A soldier who reached a hospital within thirty minutes of being wounded had a 99 percent chance of surviving.
Of course, there was always that one percent.
Chaplain Bryan took Montgomery and Lieutenant Dudish aside. “I'm sorry,” he began. His eyes were red. Messer and he had been close. “Your boys didn't make it.”
Montgomery stared back, feeling numb, dead. The platoon's losses were still sinking in.
“Damn it,” he managed.
“You all right, Sergeant?”
“Yeah, yeah. I guess. I knew Given was . . . that he wouldn't make it. But Messer?”
“He died on the medevac. He was DOA when they took him off.”
“This is so . . . Pardon me, Padre. This is so fucked up. Did you know
about his nightmares? Is it possible that someone can predict his own dying?”