Thank You, The Chief

[H&D]

His post earlier got me thinking. The day that changed my life didn't involve a fire fight or a lost friend, even though those are also things I'll carry around the rest of my life.

August 7, 2003, Camp Sather, Baghdad International Airport. Just like every other day to that point. I was the gunner doing security for EOD. It was a long day, we had nine call outs. Three outside of the infamous Checkpoint Charlie and "four corners" intersection.

We had been taking wounded enemy and civilians on base the whole time, treating them at our hospital. We had been briefed earlier that week by OSI that the insurgency was planing on hiding explosives on or in injured and deceased. They wanted to set it off in our hospital or take out a medivac.

On this day a truck bomb was set off outside the Jordainian Embasy.  We received mortars and rockets about the same time they were flying in the injured. Our commander looked at us and said "this is it, one of these bodies are loaded." As the birds landed we pulled the injured over away from the birds and searched the bodies before they went to triage, any and all wounds.

I asked the EOD tech beside me what i should do if I feel anything. He said "stop moving and let me know or we'll be talking to Jesus."

The looks we got as we walked to the shower tent were of pure pity.  It was really quite in our tent for several days. It took a sustained fire fight a week later to get most of our heads back into it. A couple of our guys it didn't matter, they mentally checked out after that.

It gave me a new world of respect for our medics, I don't know how they do it.

[Ragnar Hogbrok]

It changes you.  When I first joined the Army, I was just like most new recruits:  I wanted to get into the "bad stuff" and fight me a war.

Right up until I saw the first casualties.  My first MASCAL was five American Soldiers hit by IED, RPG, and small arms fire in their HMMWV.  It was my first time seeing massive head trauma, amputation of arm and leg, shrapnel covering near 90% of the body, etc.

I realized right there and then, I was an idiot.  I grew up right then and there.  God bless those medics that made it a career.  Four years was all I could do before the psychological baggage became too much to carry.  I had to make a career swap or I wasn't going to be able to hack it much longer.