Rafiq Maqbool and I spent two weeks with medivac teams, and the emergency room staff at Bagram Air Base. It was an assignment I’ll never forget. Everyone has a story to tell, and the hardest part is wrapping your head around what’s happening in front of you. It’s so easy to just shut down, go on autopilot, and do your job. But it’s really hard to conceptualize what war actually is.
I posted the following piece on my Facebook for friends and family after a particularly violent day.
To the hardened war junkie the stories are cliché, but each day here is another story of the tragedy and triumph of the human condition. There’s the Army sergeant who was hit with shrapnel from three RPG’s as he directed his Humvee driver to press on during the attack. Once his guys saw him laid up in the hospital bed they blamed his bad luck on the “porn mustache” he’d been growing.
There’s the truck commander who fired his driver for taking off a rearview mirror when he hit another Humvee. Fifteen minutes later that humvee was hit by an IED killing three soldiers instantly. The guy that should have been driving will live with survivor guilt for the rest of his life. Rather then praying to god for sparing him, he was pissed off for not being behind the wheel.
There was the photographer who showed up on that same scene sticking his camera in the faces of six friends as they loaded a body bag full of pieces onto a chopper. As you would imagine they weren’t happy with the intrusion. Minutes later I had to help the sergeant who led those troops into combat buckle his seatbelt because his hands were shaking with rage and fear. That chopper ride would end at a fallen hero’s ceremony, but not before we picked up another member of the same platoon who didn’t have a body bag. He was wrapped in a camouflage tarp that couldn’t conceal his face or mangled body.
The only thing I have to remember that scene is four seconds of video that stops abruptly as a soldier screams at the camera in a mixture of disgust and frustration. I guess I failed that day. There’s the eight year-old Afghan girl who was burned beyond recognition by the white phosphorus round that fell through the roof of her home killing her two sisters and changing her life forever. The doctors looked on in horror as the phosphorus reignited in the emergency room several hours after the incident. They had no idea what they were dealing with. All they knew is they wanted to save this child who hasn’t even had a chance at life yet.
Then there’s the 21-year-old soldier who was riding in an MRAP when it hit an IED. He walked away unhurt — nothing broken, nothing missing. Hours later his buddies sent him to see a doctor. He couldn’t remember the incident, couldn’t remember the day, and couldn’t remember the time. As they loaded him on the chopper for the ride to the hospital the medic told him they were heading to Bagram Air Base. Every 10 minutes or so he would ask where he is, and where they’re heading. A man that looks as normal as you or I, but he couldn’t remember the simple details like how he got on a helicopter or where he was going. A traumatic brain injury- one can only hope he’ll recover.
There’s the soldier who, after losing three friends, called his dad from the emergency room and said “Dad, I think you’re going to be mad at me. Remember when you told me not to join the infantry…” A day later that soldier was wheeled outside in his hospital bed, IV’s and all, and shared a cigar with a chaplain and a fellow brother in arms.
Then there’s the kid who was trying to figure out how he was going to tell his wife that part of his ring finger was blown off. He can no longer high five- it’s more like a four and a half. Kinda fitting for an infantry grunt, at least his buddies thought so.
So what does this all mean? Well, it doesn’t mean anything. A wise reporter once told me that trying to gain a handle on what’s going on theatre-wide from your embed is like “looking at a landscape through a straw.” They’re just stories. War sucks, but I guess I already knew that.
excellent piece. thank you.