A dark trip down memory lane
I'm on the night shift at work for two weeks. It could be worse; I work 4 10 hour nights, and I'm taking vacation for 2 of them. Even so, I'm not a graveyard shift kinda guy, and I find it mildly annoying that I'm here. I'll go ahead and tell you that the night shift is not very busy and tends to drag, leaving ample time to do......whatever else you might need to do (such as post on your blog). So anyway, I get into the office and I start clicking through my work emails, 90% of which I read, take note of, and delete, and the other 10% I simply delete right away. When I get to the end of my furious deletions, I click on the trash bin and prepare to erase them forever when I notice one I hadn't read. It's from a friend who works in Admin. I open it and I'm greeted with "Hey John, you'll never guess what I found......check it out".
It's my casualty report, from when I was wounded in combat in 2004.
As soon as I saw it, a flood of emotions rushed over me. I hadn't seen this thing in over 5 years, and yet I could suddenly again taste the dust in my mouth, hear the roar of the explosion in my ears, and the frantic cries of the people rushing to our aid. I could remember, as clear as day, the disorientation as I struggled to my feet and helped the Corpsman pull Burgess to a standing position, his right shoulder covered in blood. I could feel the wall we were blasted through caving down upon us. I could remember wondering if I had been hit by shrapnel. I could remember wondering if I was going to die. Why did my friend send it to me? Not that I was angry or traumatized by seeing it. In fact, I'm well over it. So why the sudden barrage of images and emotions and sounds? In order for you to know, I need to take you back with me, 5 years ago.
It was May of 2004, on Mother's Day. I was a young LCpl in the middle of my first combat tour in Iraq. My Battalion had set up a little FOB (Forward Operating Base) about 10km south of Fallujah, in a small village called Zadan. The FOB had no official name, but we called it FOB Incoming or FOB Suicide. This was because of the fact that there was absolutely no cover and no place to take refuge from the constant barrage of rockets and mortars we recieved on a daily basis. Sometimes the number was high as 12 or 13. We had been there for about 2 weeks at this point and morale was.......well, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't exactly optimistic, either. Just days before, GySgt Ronald Baum had been killed by a direct rocket hit, and those that worked with him (myself included) were still badly shaken by his death. There was absolutely no going anywhere without wearing your flak, kevlar, throat protector, the whole nine yards. We even wore our gear as we slept.
That morning, I had been tapped for guard duty at the front gate of our small compound, along with another LCpl named Burgess. He was a nice kid, a bit younger than me, and we got along well. We all shared the burden of guard duty during our time there. We were standing near the front gate behind our concrete barriers talking about how much alcohol were going to need upon our return home, when a massive explosion rocket the outer wall across from us. We were immediately able to guess that it was an RPG round (we were later proven right) and dashed back into the compound, turning to draw down with our M16's once we were behind the HESCO barriers. (A HESCO is basically a big square sandbag that comes up to about your mid-torso). As we were turning, the world suddenly became nothing but noise and sand as a 107mm rocket slammed into the ground not 10 feet in front of us, lifting both of us off our feet and right through a stucco-alabaster wall with no ceiling, which had been right behind us. We landed hard and the wall came tumbling down on top of us, and as it did I could discern two things: Burgess shouting that he had been hit, and that fact that I could hear nothing in my right ear.
A Navy Corpsman was the first to get there and pulled me upright. I did my best to help drag Burgess to his feet, a large chunk of shrapnel protruding from his right shoulder. I'm not sure how much I actually did help, but hey, I tried. We were both ushered to one corner of the FOB, at which the Corpsmen worked to remove the shrapnel from Burgess's shoulder and tried to determine how much hearing I had lost. As it turned out, we were both ok: Burgess would suffer no lasting damage from his wounds, and I was not deaf. However, the BN Surgeon correctly predicted that I would face significant hearing loss over the following years (in fact, a recent physical showed that I scar tissue in my right ear had deteriorated further, and I could expect to need a hearing aid within a few short years). My saving grace had been that my ears were dirty. Had they been clean, I would have been put on a chopper headed for Germany and the Hospital.
So what was the fallout? We went back later and examined the HESCO that we had been standing behind to discover large, jagged pieces of shrapnel embedded into the cloth. Had we stopped running on the other side, just one foot forward, it would have torn both of us in half. Burgess and I rested for a day or two and we returned to our duties. We were in the middle of a war, after all, and every man counted. Although my hands shook for the next two weeks and I couldn't hear out of my right ear for four, I was none the worse for wear. Burgess recieved the Purple Heart, obviously. I was denied my Purple Heart by Congress because "despite a debilitating injury for which I would feel the effects over a lifetime, I had not actually shed blood". My Company Commander and my father were livid and both wrote their congressmen, but that was that. In hindsight, I don't really care anymore, as no one goes into combat hoping they'd be wounded. But that was the reason that my friend had emailed my CASREP to me, because I was listed by the DoD to this day as WIA (wounded in action), yet I had no Purple Heart to my name. My friend wanted me to write a letter to Congress and ask for an overturn of their decision. And as much as I appreciated the thought, I deleted the email and declined. Why? A smartass answer would be that I have little desire to ask anything of the current administration. But for a truly honest answer, I would refer you to a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson I came across on a day from which I have happy memories, which has come to give me great comfort:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust
So near is God to man
When Duty whispers low, Thou must
The youth replies, I can.
I leave it to you to determine what I mean.
It's my casualty report, from when I was wounded in combat in 2004.
As soon as I saw it, a flood of emotions rushed over me. I hadn't seen this thing in over 5 years, and yet I could suddenly again taste the dust in my mouth, hear the roar of the explosion in my ears, and the frantic cries of the people rushing to our aid. I could remember, as clear as day, the disorientation as I struggled to my feet and helped the Corpsman pull Burgess to a standing position, his right shoulder covered in blood. I could feel the wall we were blasted through caving down upon us. I could remember wondering if I had been hit by shrapnel. I could remember wondering if I was going to die. Why did my friend send it to me? Not that I was angry or traumatized by seeing it. In fact, I'm well over it. So why the sudden barrage of images and emotions and sounds? In order for you to know, I need to take you back with me, 5 years ago.
It was May of 2004, on Mother's Day. I was a young LCpl in the middle of my first combat tour in Iraq. My Battalion had set up a little FOB (Forward Operating Base) about 10km south of Fallujah, in a small village called Zadan. The FOB had no official name, but we called it FOB Incoming or FOB Suicide. This was because of the fact that there was absolutely no cover and no place to take refuge from the constant barrage of rockets and mortars we recieved on a daily basis. Sometimes the number was high as 12 or 13. We had been there for about 2 weeks at this point and morale was.......well, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't exactly optimistic, either. Just days before, GySgt Ronald Baum had been killed by a direct rocket hit, and those that worked with him (myself included) were still badly shaken by his death. There was absolutely no going anywhere without wearing your flak, kevlar, throat protector, the whole nine yards. We even wore our gear as we slept.
That morning, I had been tapped for guard duty at the front gate of our small compound, along with another LCpl named Burgess. He was a nice kid, a bit younger than me, and we got along well. We all shared the burden of guard duty during our time there. We were standing near the front gate behind our concrete barriers talking about how much alcohol were going to need upon our return home, when a massive explosion rocket the outer wall across from us. We were immediately able to guess that it was an RPG round (we were later proven right) and dashed back into the compound, turning to draw down with our M16's once we were behind the HESCO barriers. (A HESCO is basically a big square sandbag that comes up to about your mid-torso). As we were turning, the world suddenly became nothing but noise and sand as a 107mm rocket slammed into the ground not 10 feet in front of us, lifting both of us off our feet and right through a stucco-alabaster wall with no ceiling, which had been right behind us. We landed hard and the wall came tumbling down on top of us, and as it did I could discern two things: Burgess shouting that he had been hit, and that fact that I could hear nothing in my right ear.
A Navy Corpsman was the first to get there and pulled me upright. I did my best to help drag Burgess to his feet, a large chunk of shrapnel protruding from his right shoulder. I'm not sure how much I actually did help, but hey, I tried. We were both ushered to one corner of the FOB, at which the Corpsmen worked to remove the shrapnel from Burgess's shoulder and tried to determine how much hearing I had lost. As it turned out, we were both ok: Burgess would suffer no lasting damage from his wounds, and I was not deaf. However, the BN Surgeon correctly predicted that I would face significant hearing loss over the following years (in fact, a recent physical showed that I scar tissue in my right ear had deteriorated further, and I could expect to need a hearing aid within a few short years). My saving grace had been that my ears were dirty. Had they been clean, I would have been put on a chopper headed for Germany and the Hospital.
So what was the fallout? We went back later and examined the HESCO that we had been standing behind to discover large, jagged pieces of shrapnel embedded into the cloth. Had we stopped running on the other side, just one foot forward, it would have torn both of us in half. Burgess and I rested for a day or two and we returned to our duties. We were in the middle of a war, after all, and every man counted. Although my hands shook for the next two weeks and I couldn't hear out of my right ear for four, I was none the worse for wear. Burgess recieved the Purple Heart, obviously. I was denied my Purple Heart by Congress because "despite a debilitating injury for which I would feel the effects over a lifetime, I had not actually shed blood". My Company Commander and my father were livid and both wrote their congressmen, but that was that. In hindsight, I don't really care anymore, as no one goes into combat hoping they'd be wounded. But that was the reason that my friend had emailed my CASREP to me, because I was listed by the DoD to this day as WIA (wounded in action), yet I had no Purple Heart to my name. My friend wanted me to write a letter to Congress and ask for an overturn of their decision. And as much as I appreciated the thought, I deleted the email and declined. Why? A smartass answer would be that I have little desire to ask anything of the current administration. But for a truly honest answer, I would refer you to a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson I came across on a day from which I have happy memories, which has come to give me great comfort:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust
So near is God to man
When Duty whispers low, Thou must
The youth replies, I can.
I leave it to you to determine what I mean.
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