Near death experiences aren't meant to be funny, but this next one could be if you turn down the light on your humor.
Y'all, not all firefights are sexy and even the best of us can get humbled.
In the early months of 2011, I was on a long movement between Jalalabad and a small combat outpost on the northern tip of Afghanistan. These particular movements were very long, could be very slow and usually required no less than three Boom Boom's, one Jolly Rock and an 800 Motrin to keep you awake and your knees from locking up. They did come with one particular caveat, though...contact. Truth be told, nobody wants to turn in the same ammo they were issued on deployment. All the teammates I deployed with wanted to change mags over enemy bodies and find out if barrels could really glow in the daytime.
In absolutely predictable fashion, it was the ride back that got interesting. Anyone who's ever had to do convoy operations knows it's almost always the ride back that gets interesting. We ended up taking contact in nearly the exact same location we always did, and the platoon I was with laid on a full light show in broad daylight that left the mountain opposite to ours smoking and smoldering. Rounds were pumping, the ground was thumping and the air even got musical with zips and zings. This really isn't all that unique and you could almost call it a regular convoy in Afghanistan. In case you weren't aware, the Taliban are warriors and they take no issue with confrontation.
The fun an excitement took an "oh shit" turn very early on, however. In most instances, when a convoy gets ambushed, they don't stay and play. They return fire superiority, push through the contact and continue mission. We experienced a minor setback this time, though...we weren't moving. The whole convoy was at a dead halt.
If you've never had the pleasure of navigating the roads in "the Stan", let me paint the picture for you. They are questionable at best in durability and are typically only wide enough for one lane of military vehicle traffic. This means if one vehicle isn't moving, nobody behind it is moving either. As you can imagine, becoming a stationary target in the middle of an ambush is a very bad situation to be in.
I was already behind the cover of a vehicle when I linked up with two other teammates, Dwight and Eddie. It was assumed there was a casualty since the downed vehicle wasn't moving so, being doc, I was the third wheel in our group. The contact was still pretty intense and the three of us made our way up to the downed vehicle causing all the problems. And then, the mystery was solved. It was a local partner jingle truck that was stopped on the narrowest part of the road. These jingle trucks were giant fuel trucks decorated more elaborately than an henna tattoo and more colorful than a rainbow. They also had hanging ornaments all over them like a Gypsie wagon. As they would drive down the road the metal ornaments would jingle, hence the name.
As the three of us came to the downed truck we posted up and got cover behind the front passenger side tire. We pounded on the vehicles passenger side door that was too high for any of us to see in and shouted at the driver. Unfortunately, we got no response. We also couldn't get the passenger side door open which meant one thing; someone was going around into the contact side to get into the cab and see what the fuck was going on. Since he was most likely as casualty, that put me at the top of the list. Fuck...
"Doc! Go around and get that motherfucker out! We got you!" Eddie yelled.
As Dwight and Eddie covered me, I circled around the front of the truck as quick as I could. All I wanted to do was get this mother fucker out as quick as possible and be a target in the open for the minimum time required to do so. Then, I could treat him in a more respectable place, like behind some fucking cover. Circle around the vehicle, hop up in the driver side door, pop it open, get my guy and get the fuck out. How hard could that be?
Y'all, I hauled my little 155lb ass like a rabbit and made my way to that door with a purpose. Then, my fucking heart sank. There was no step rail to get up to his cab! This thing was a good sixteen inches off the ground, I was in full kit and in the middle of a fucking firefight. I had to get the fucking the door open before I could get any kind of footing to boost myself up into the cab! I reached my vertically challenged hand up to the door handle, managed to pop it open and made the most unsexy entrance into the cab that smelled like bread and body odor. The moment I got in I saw a lone man hunched over in a cab that was decorated like a hippie opium den on the inside. Then, my heart sank even more.
"Hey! Hey motherfucker! Are you dead?! You better not be fucking dead!" I yelled at the top of my lungs while trying to shake the guy awake.
Yup, you read that correctly. As soon as I opened the door and got into the cab I saw a local Afghan man hunched over a steering wheel, eyes fully locked and glazed over and those were the first words out of my mouth. As I moved him, I saw very clearly he had been shot and knew he was dead. Fucking great. Just...Fucking...great....
Keep in mind, I'm bent over like a plumber under a sink because I'm a small guy and had to lean so far into the cab to get my arms around this dude to get him out. All this while rounds are both incoming and outgoing. I'm a physically fit guy, but I was struggling to move him anywhere near the door to get him out. When I did manage to move him he slumped over the opposite direction and fell flat across the front seat. Fuck me! This felt like an eternity and all I could think about was an incoming round hitting me right in my ass that was sticking out like a giant target into the contact. Fellas, listen to me and take my advice, there’s allot of ways to die in the Stan, but hot lead up the ass is definitely not the way you wanna go.
As the moments kept passing and the rounds kept cracking off, thoughts began flashing before my eyes. It wasn't of my life, though. It was of my future funeral that seemed likely to happen. True story, y’all, my closest friends back then were real ass holes, and I could only imagine the jokes that were gonna be told over my casket and at the bar for years to come if I died from penetrating trauma to the rectum. Of all the ways to get killed, I managed to find myself right into this one.
After what seemed like an eternity, I realized my efforts were useless. I was also completely fucking done making myself the most laughable target on the battlefield and decided it was time to cash in my chips. I slumped out of the cab and ran my ass back around to Dwight and Eddie who both had a questionable look on their face and were probably wondering why I came back without my casualty. I spelled it out crystal clear for them; "I can't fucking get him! I can't fucking get that dude! We need a big guy in there he's too far back in the cab!" This is when Dwight's eyes got very big. If you've never met Dwight, he's an extra-large man. He wasn't just the biggest guy of the three of us, he was the biggest guy in whole the unit.
"Awww, fuck! You kidding me!" were the last words he said before making a mad dash around the front to the driver's side of the vehicle.
As relieved as I was to be back behind cover and to have my ass facing a better direction in the fight again, this feeling was temporary. Now, the realization was setting in that if Dwight got hit trying to get the driver out…how the fuck would we get him AND the casualty? Y’all, there are no good scenarios in firefights, only different dice to roll and chances to take.
Then, just moments later, he came charging back around the vehicle with our dead driver slung over his shoulders in a fireman's carry and bullets still whizzing by. This scene could have been straight out of a Hollywood movie. No shit, I’m talking slow motion movie worthy and epic. That was the first and only fireman's carry I ever saw in real combat and it did not disappoint. The only thing ruining the seriousness of the situation was the goofy looking dead driver who looked exactly like Bernie from the Weekend at Bernie movies that was waving and flopping around with every step Dwight took.
The fun didn’t end here, though. The three of us were still stuck behind a downed jingle truck and still in contact from across the river. Now, a different kind of fun began. We had to get Bernie in another vehicle and someone was going to have to push the disabled jingle truck out of the way so the convoy could get moving again. We began rushing between vehicles and frantically looking for a place to put our casualty while other vehicles came up to try and push the jingle truck out of the way. Vehicle to vehicle, we would pound on the doors and look for room to put our new comrade. Then, about the second or third vehicle I came to, I took a knee behind a tire to catch my breath before making my next rush to Eddie where he was covering me. In full kit, completely fucking smoked and exhausted, I popped up from my knee behind the front tire of an MRAP and dead sprinted in Eddies direction. Just then, I could hear very distinct “crack, crack’s” in the distance from across the river and a zipping noise that seemed to be coming right at me. It felt like a bee buzzed right over my shoulder and across my face and the next thing I knew I straight fucking ate the dirt. Right out in the open and almost exactly mid-way between the two vehicles I did a full-face plant into the road.
The bullet had zipped right in front of my face and surprised me so much I lost my footing and tripped. I was in full kit with a BlackHawk Stomp II aid bag on by back, so, the landing was unpleasant to say the least. I hit the ground so hard it sent a small cloud of moon dust in the air and got the wind knocked out of me. I was laying in the road motionless and heard Eddie yelling, “Doc! Doc!”, but couldn't respond. Laying in the nasty road I could feel every rock underneath body, big and small, that I had just landed on and the taste of the dirt I had just kicked up in mouth while trying to catch my breath. I was flat on my right side with my head looking back in the direction of the vehicle I had just ran from and completely dazed and confused.
The next thing I knew, there was Eddie. He was out in the open, rounds still cracking off and kneeling right over top of me. He reached down, grabbed ahold of me and ran me back to cover. He straight up broke cover, ran back into the contact and pulled me back behind the next vehicle. Straight up hero shit, no joke.
“Doc! Where you hit, buddy?!” he yelled while on one knee and patting me down looking for wounds. He had the seriousness of the whole world on his face and was waiting for me to tell him where I had just been shot, ready to get to work and save my life.
“Fuck, I’m fucking good!” I said while moaning and rolling over to my knees so I could stand up.
“What!?” He yelled back at me with his hand still on my plate carrier.
“I’m fucking good! I'm good! I fucking tripped!” I said while trying to roll over and catch my breath.
Needless to say, the expression on Eddies face changed very quickly from concerned and ready to save my life to fucking pissed and ready to shoot me himself.
“Aww, get the fuck up, Doc! I ain’t got time for this shit, fuck!” he said while forcing me up to my feet.
This was a very justified response that I had no rebuttal for. That’s when I looked back at the vehicle I had been running from and saw Kevin Butts, a company first sergeant who was firing his M4 to cover us, looking right in my direction and laughing his ass off. I’m talking straight up laughing his fucking ass off. He had seen the whole thing and didn’t forget to bring it up again for laughs once we made it back to J-Bad. Fuck my life.
We all managed to make it out unscathed. Bernie eventually got tossed in the back of an MRAP, the downed jingle truck was pushed out of the way and lit a blaze and we all Charlie Miked the fuck out of there. I was left licking my wounds and sulking the rest of the trip back. I was in no hurry to sit in the after-action review and reflect on the heroics of my two teammates, Dwight and Eddie, all while having to acknowledge the two major failures of my own. That was hands down my most unsexy performance ever as a medic and it wasn’t going to be forgotten any time soon. All things aside, that was some straight up hero shit from both Dwight and Eddie and I’m damn thankful for it too. I never could’ve gotten that guy out of that cab myself and I could’ve easily gotten hit laying out in the open if Eddie hadn’t come back to get me as quick as he did.
There’s a very warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you know your stepping out with guys who can get the job done and will always come back for you. That’s the stuff you can’t put a price tag on and keeps people alive.
As for Bernie, he needs to keep his weekends in the Hamptons and stay out of the Kunar Province.
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