Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic (25 page)

I finished my work and joined Vic and the others to watch Chris and his men move toward a fork in the wadi, which in turn splintered into two lanes on the east side of the fork. The three-story walls that lined the wadi had slowly decreased into a series of shoulder- and waist-high berms.

Suddenly a single gunshot echoed through the wadi, sending Lal falling to the ground on the left of the hill in front of them. “Contact front!” was repeated by numerous voices on the radio, notifying the rest of their patrol where the fire was coming from. Chris returned fire off to the right as he moved forward to help render aid to his fallen comrade. The exchange of gunfire made it difficult to tell how many enemy were out there and where they were. Chris moved forward and then suddenly fell, as if he had stumbled or tripped, which gave me hope. Normally a fatal shot would drop a man like sack of potatoes, but if someone is able to brace his fall, he’s not only alive but generally aware of everything around him. I grabbed my aid bag and threw it over my shoulder.

“Medic, medic.” The call came over the radio from one of the men from 10th Mountain. I got the nod from Vic, and off I went. The chatter over the airways was extensive; Vic received the casualty report over the radio and requested another round of air support. Two men were wounded, and one of them was Chris. I knew I had to get there fast but wasn’t sure which way to go. I met up with one of the army officers at the base of the hill and moved forward a short way until we reached a few more of his men. It was obvious these boys hadn’t seen what was going on but rather were reacting to sounds and radio chatter. Hell-bent on getting there, they tried to move as fast as possible, forcing me and one of their platoon leaders to slow them down in order to prevent a bad situation from turning worse.

“It’s like a maze! Which way do we go?” asked one of the soldiers, who looked fresh out of high school. I keyed my radio, but the officer, who didn’t look too much older, was already on it, receiving guidance from the perch above.

When the call came back to move, I turned to the men next to me and said in a low voice, trying to temper their adrenaline, “Stay low and keep your eyes open. We don’t know who’s around the next turn.”

One of the primary aspects of special operations training is how to remain calm during periods of pandemonium. Excessive yelling and erratic movements only invoke a frantic state, but keeping your composure instills confidence. A warrior with an even-tempered disposition moving at a controlled pace is often moving as fast as a situation allows, especially when moving into the unknown. It gives you time to analyze the situation and prevents accidentally placing yourself or your men directly in the line of fire. I’ve seen young medics do it all too often. Unfortunately, Hollywood has them imagining themselves instantly running out to save their fellow man when that might be the absolute worst move. Moving quickly but
cautiously
gives you the ability to formulate a plan for how to approach the casualty and gather support, which is what we needed to do right now.

With help from our eyes on the ridge, we safely navigated the wadi and reached our destination. The majority of 10th Mountain was spread across an open area near us but covered by the wadi walls. The enemy had a clean shot at anybody who meandered into the field between us, so we stayed put. This time, the battlefield looked markedly different. From this vantage point it was impossible to see how the right side of the wadi bifurcated, which might have been the reason Chris was taken off guard. I was unsure if there was another way around, so I turned back to speak to the men behind me and noticed enemy machine-gun rounds ripping into the trail we’d just came from. “Alright, they’re on both sides now,” I said aloud, trying to visualize the layout of the battle space that I’d been watching while sitting with Vic before this whole thing started. I crawled forward and saw the first sergeant lying with his gun facing toward the enemy, while another American soldier tried feverishly to control the bleeding coming from Chris’s chest. We could also hear Lal just ten feet away, writhing in pain as he pressed his blood-filled hands against his belly.

“Vic, you got an eye on me?” I said into my radio mic.

“I’ve got you, Doc. Hang tight at your current pos. The enemy is right across the wadi.”

“I got that part already figured out, but are they located at any other locations other than my ten to two o’clock?” I asked.

“Negative, I don’t see anything,” he replied while guiding gunships into the wadi on a separate radio. For the next few minutes we yelled across the wadi and spoke by radio, forming a plan to retrieve our wounded.

The 10th Mountain opened up with a pair of machine guns and raked the wadi with a wall of hot lead while the rest of the soldiers concentrated on any of the areas they missed. Once we knew a solid rate of fire was keeping the enemy’s heads down, the first sergeant who recovered Chris from his initial fall while under enemy fire and another man bolted forward to recover Lal while an army medic and I grabbed Chris. We dragged the wounded to the only area in the wadi that shielded us well enough to work on the men.

Chris’s face and arms were pale from the lack of oxygen-rich blood. I worked fast on him while the army medic next to me focused on Lal’s abdominal wounds. Rounds cracked over our heads and into the ground in front of us as the soldiers continued the fight, yet we were laser-focused on our patients. As I cut away Chris’s body armor I felt a notch in the upper right corner of his chest plate. The body armor deflected the round from striking his heart but didn’t stop it from nicking the major vessels directly under his clavicle before entering his lungs. Once again I worked hard to pack a teammate’s mortal wound praying I would somehow manage to control his bleeding. Chris’s body was working against him, however, in its fight to stay alive. The more blood he lost, the faster his heart pumped as it tried to get oxygen into his cells, but the faster it pumped, the more blood he’d lose. It was a vicious cycle that I watched unfold in front of my eyes with no way to stop it. As I worked on Chris I could hear Vic push a pair of Apache helicopters to one of the 10th Mountain officers kneeling only a few feet away, who then directed fire at the enemy.

I unrolled a package of gauze and began pushing it into the wound, attempting to tamp off the bleeder as I called out to Chris, hoping for some kind of response. He had moved forward in order to prevent death from taking the life of his teammate, only to find death closing in on him now.

Despite the extreme pressure I exerted on his chest as I forced the bandage into the bullet hole, I couldn’t elicit a response from him. I told myself he knew we were doing everything we could to stave off the inevitable, but I’ll never know for sure. Over and over, I reached back into the aid bag, pulling out another bandage or device in my attempt to control the hemorrhage, but my efforts were becoming futile. I then realized the only thing I could provide was comfort. Suddenly my mind raced back to a conversation I had with my father when I was a very young boy.

Like all the kids in the neighborhood, my brother and I played army, running around with toy guns and wearing my father’s military equipment as if we were conquering heroes. I would imagine I was the soldier who turned the tide of the battle, emulating scenes I had seen on the silver screen, oblivious to the real horrors of war. Later in the evening as I joined the others at the dinner table, still wearing my father’s steel pot helmet, I asked him what was the scariest thing a soldier will ever face. Without hesitation he looked at me and said, “Dying alone.” His delivery was so chilling it stopped everyone at the table. His words return to me with every death I encounter, but never with such impact as when I kneeled beside Chris. As I listened to my friend’s final breath I was proud that he had his fellow warriors by his side, and I felt fortunate to be with a hero during his last moments on earth. As I wiped away the blood from his upper chest and looked upon him, a great sadness filled my soul. He might have passed, but he looked as if he were only resting. I felt helpless and wanted to reach back into my aid bag and pull out something, anything, in order to restore life, but I knew there was nothing anyone could do.

The sounds of the helicopters flying low overhead woke me from my trance. Pass after pass they fired their guns and rockets, but nothing seemed to slow the enemy’s fire, until the young army officer called them in danger close.

I could tell on the approach it wasn’t going to be good for any of us. Vic tried to warn over the radio by shouting, “Incoming, incoming!” but the Hellfire missile had already whooshed over our heads, landing forty feet away on the other side of the hill. The blast showered us with rocks and small fragments of shrapnel as we instinctively covered Chris and Lal with our bodies.

“Holy shit!” I shouted out loud. I doubt anyone could hear me because our ears were ringing. Despite the risk, he’d made the right call as the enemy guns finally went silent long enough to allow 10th Mountain’s litter teams to move in and retrieve Chris’s body while the medic and I carried Lal.

Ideally a litter team would be comprised of four soldiers per wounded man, but the narrow terrain often forced us to carry them two at time, delaying our ability to exfiltrate from the area. Within a few minutes the sounds of sporadic enemy fire once again echoed throughout the canyon, compelling each of us to bend at the knees and waist in order to keep our heads below the hills that sandwiched the trail.

With all of us in a fighting withdrawal, Vic took back control of the Apaches and ordered them to redirect fire to the opposite mountain wall the 10th Mountain’s MK-19 grenade launchers had been firing at minutes earlier. The Apaches fired again, and a full layer of the wall disintegrated in a shale avalanche, burying the enemy soldiers below.

The Hellfire missiles calmed things considerably and gave us the opportunity we needed to return to the vehicles, including Muscle Tom’s patrol. When I got back to the triage area, I joined the battalion surgeon and his team, who were treating the small fragmentation wounds and other assorted injuries. I then prepared Lal, Chris, and a couple of others for the Casualty Evacuation circling overhead, and once the patients were secured, I collapsed to the ground and drank a quart of water, exhausted beyond words.

Once all heads were accounted for, Vic called in a scorched earth strike, and two A-10s roared down from their holding pattern and turned the entire wadi and the surrounding mountains into a charred, smoking hell.

We then loaded up the vehicles and headed back to the Alamo, this time taking the main road and rolling as fast as possible. Vic requested air support, and with the Apaches overhead the return was relatively uneventful except for one vehicle breaking down halfway home. We stripped it of critical equipment, then watched from a distance as an Apache lit it up with a Hellfire missile, leaving nothing to the enemy. The adrenaline wore off on the way back, but I knew I still wouldn’t be able to relax when we got there. It had been a full twenty-four hours since we drove into the wadi and took fire, but it seemed like a lifetime.

16

RETURN TO BATTLE

There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.

—U
LYSSES
S. G
RANT

Following the mission at Khand Pass, we spent several days restocking ammo and supplies, repairing equipment, and writing up after-action reports. Life was as close to normal as it can get, and when things become “normal,” it means change is inevitable. On one particularly hot Tuesday afternoon, I was typing away on one of the computers when Wil walked in and said, “Doc, looks like the team is going to be pushing out again.”

I didn’t bother to look up. I knew what it meant—we would be leaving soon, and where we were heading wasn’t going to be anywhere good. I asked, “How much time do we have?”

I tried to concentrate on typing, but all I could think about was how I felt the day we returned from Khand Pass.

“Not sure, Doc, it could be twelve hours, maybe thirty-six. Go ahead and sync up with the guys.”

“Right, I’ll get with the rest of the team,” I said absently. I flashed back to that day when we limped in after twenty-four hours of hell, the gates closing behind our mangled vehicles as we pulled into the compound, Chief and Chris no longer with us. I never thought a warning order could be so traumatic, but somehow that one was.

“That’ll be good, Doc. Let’s meet here at 1400,” he said as he wrestled with the jumble of papers piled on the table that we used as a desk. I took a deep breath, forced myself up from my chair, and headed toward the door.

“Alright, I’ll let everyone know,” I replied.

I headed over to the only vehicle that was under the canopy, thinking I’d drive down to the Afghani camp and let the rest of the team know. When I got to the truck, though, all I could do was stop and stare. It looked dramatically different than when we drove it in that October day. It was cleaned up and all battle damage repaired. Except for the bullet holes, you’d never know that day had ever happened—but I did, and that was all that I could think about. When we returned to the firebase, I walked up from the rear of the convoy and looked over each vehicle and realized how close we’d all come to death. I looked into one of the trucks and stared at the blood splatter that covered the seat and at the spent cartridges covering the floor. I remember standing there wondering which of the casualties was sitting in this vehicle when the rounds started piercing the metal. I ran through the list of wounded and killed, mentally reviewing their injuries and desperately trying to figure out which one it could have been.

Now, I found myself doing the same thing. The vehicles triggered raw memories, and I was overtaken by emotion. It was as if I were losing one of our guys all over again.

“What’s wrong?” I asked myself. “You’ve seen all this before; this is nothing new.” Yet it was new! Things were different. No one was shooting at us, and there had been nothing for me to do since our return except reflect on the dead, the wounded, and our mortality. I stood there frozen like a statute, unable to move except for my heart, which was racing at a hundred miles per hour.