Lest We Forget (9 page)

My pops agreed that as long as I got my permit while he was at work the following day we would go when he got home.  Of course I stayed out until 4am catching up with my friends the night before we were going to go.  It didn’t matter.  I was
packing the saddlebags at 8:30 when he arrived home from the fire station.  He asked me what I was doing as if we hadn’t talked about a seven-hour motorcycle ride to sin city. 

“Well,” I informed him, “We are fucking going to Vegas!”  I pulled out my permit and shot him a crooked grin.  I don’t think that my dad has ever really been surprised by any of the shit that I have pulled but he had a look on his face that morning for sure.  Obviously my dad is a champ.  He went and put on a pair of blue jeans, had a cup of coffee and called my stepmom to let her know he would be in Vegas for the next three days.  They had waited until I returned home to have their wedding so they had been married for less than a week and he was taking off with me to hit the strip.  The man is hands down the best dad on the fucking planet. 

As we accelerated to over 60 mph I began to regret my decision.  I had never been out of a parking lot on two wheels.  Here we were on a desert highway with 18-wheelers buzzing past us.  I’ve never clenched onto anything as hard as I death gripped those handle bars but we made it.  We made it every bit of those 275 miles without a single stall; I didn’t dump that thing once and when we arrived, the ear-to-ear grin on my dad’s face made the terrifying journey 100% worth it.  It was that moment that I think most dads wait for, the time when your son also gets to be your best friend, when you get to do cool shit with him not just be his parent.  

He taught me how to play poker and wouldn’t you know it I pulled off a royal flush.  I was playing a buck a hand but the jackpot was still over $1,400.  I was unaware of the rule but my father informed me that if you hit a hand like that you are obligated to pay for drinks for the rest of the trip.  I was happy to oblige after all that he had done for me.  It was three of the
most fun days that I can remember, sans the hung-over ride back through the desert. 

Before I knew it my 2 weeks of leave was up and it was time to head back to Battalion.  This would be my first full training cycle where I would finally learn all of the cool trade secrets on how to kill a dozen men with my bare hands and shoot laser beams from my eyes. 

……

Chapter 8 - Away We Go

              In all honesty there is nothing really glamorous about the day-to-day life of a Ranger medic.  The alarm clock snaps you awake at 4:45 in your dorm style barracks room that you share with another guy.  Five minutes to hit the three S’s (Shit, shower, shave) and out the door.  After a short walk you open the aid station and wait for the guys to start coming in.  On any given day we would have 3-6 guys come in with a mild complaint, usually something that happened during training or something that he contracted from playing with the ladies in downtown Columbus.  If a guy has a medical issue that is outside of our scope of practice we would take him across the street to the Battalion Aid Station (BAS).  The BAS had a handful of medics, a Physician's Assistant and a surgeon.  It had a fully stocked pharmacy and multiple treatment rooms.  There really isn’t too much that we couldn’t treat in house. 

Shortly after sick call the entire company would do PT.  Most of the time I was trusted to do my own thing but every once in awhile someone would do something stupid at a bar and we would all get punished for it.  After PT we would eat breakfast and get ready for whatever training was on the plate for the day.  We drilled all the time. 
Airborne operations, demo practice, rifle time, medical training and then some.  A 15-hour day was not at all uncommon.  We trained and trained and trained.  Between the constant deployments and this type of a day-to-day grind when we were in the states I have no clue how guys stayed married.  I have so much respect for Ranger families; they get put through the grind right along with us.  I don’t know how some of the guys managed to have a wife and kids through all of that.

CQB training on Ft. Benning
, Georgia.

By the end of that first training cycle I had things pretty well figured out.  I moved out of the barracks and in with my friend Matt.  Matt was in charge of the medics that had graduated RIP but were waiting to go to SOMC and had already gone to Ranger school and deployed once with Regiment.  The scar on the back of his head was still very visible from our Panama City outing a year and a half earlier.

"Should we have a BBQ for the fourth of July this weekend?"  Asked Matt.

"This is America isn't it?" I respond.

It is the final days of
June 2005 and I was already preparing to leave on my second combat deployment.  Matt and I shared a two story, three-bedroom condo that was considered "on-post" housing on Fort Benning.  Just as Matt and I begin planning our ‘Happy Birthday America’ debauchery, I received a page from my company to return immediately.  This means one of two things.  One, some moron got caught doing something illegal so our entire company has to come in and pee in a little plastic cup or we are getting a high profile mission which will require us to be wheels up in the next 18 hours. 

As always, deployment bags are already packed and staged in the zoo. The zoo was what we called our company headquarters.  It was a dismal building void of windows or fresh air.  It was divided
into separate platoon areas by giant wall lockers.  There was a communications shop, supply and the aid station that I spent years pretending to be productive in. 

Most of the guys live within the brown barbwire fence of our compound, so by the time I arrive there is already a shit storm of chaos.  Rangers were running around frantically looking for various pieces of mission essential equipment and speculating as to what was going on.  I knew better than to ask my platoon Sergeant what was happening. 

I was very recently transferred to 1st platoon.  They had just undergone a command change and a man I will call SFC Bent had recently taken over as platoon sergeant.  He was one of the cadres responsible for torturing me during RIP.  His cruelty rivaled that of SSG Runza so I had plenty of reasons to keep my distance.  At this point I didn't really care what was going on as long as I didn't have to pee in that fucking cup!

             
By nightfall we were boarding a cargo plane on what felt like an abandoned runway on Ft. Benning and I still didn’t know what was going on.  Popular is the guy with a cargo pocket full of Ambien on an 18-hour flight in a noisy military flight.  I passed that shit out like Skittles on Halloween. Those flights are very uncomfortable for several reasons.  First of all the seats are just cargo nets, we are allowed to lay on the metal floor once the plane hits a certain altitude but laying on cold steel for the better part of a day isn’t exactly luxurious.  Most guys opt out by taking the popular sleeping pill and going black for several hours. The next thing I remember is landing in Germany to refuel, still groggy from the double dose of that happy little white pill. 

The second leg of the flight would be far less restful as I begin to get information on what we are doing.  Apparently there was a group of Navy Seals that were compromised in some remote province of Afghanistan and we were going in to act as a Combat Search and Rescue team (CSAR).  I know what you are thinking
; I thought the exact same thing.  Why wouldn't they deploy a team that was already in Afghanistan?  Well, they did.  This became the next point of my great unrest.  An MH-47 "Chinook" helicopter containing eight members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and eight U.S. Navy Seals was shot down en route to aid the compromised members of Seal Team 10 as a Quick Reaction Force (QRF).  All of those men lost their lives in an effort to come to the aid of their brothers.

Upon landing at
Bagram Air Field (BAF) our platoon has just enough time to grab ammo and MRE's and meet at the airfield.  My stomach sinks as I find out that our Chinook will be following the identical flight path of the one that was recently shot down.  We sit on the airfield waiting for darkness to fall over the distant mountains that will soon become the proving ground for our young platoon. While we wait we see a group of A10 pilots getting ready to take off.  As if they knew exactly where we were about to go they give us a strong thumbs up from the cockpit.  Members from each of the different branches of the military love to give each other a hard time, but when it comes down to it there is a very deep level of respect for the job that others do.  We didn’t realize it at the time but these men would be our salvation once we hit the ground.  It was evident by the gesture that they gave us from their cockpit that they had a great deal of respect for the job that we were about to do.

             
"The stars will cry the blackest tears tonight, and this is the moment that I live for...And I'm here to sing the anthem of our dying day."  The lyrics speak directly to me from the mp3 player stashed in my shoulder pocket.  The popping of the snare drum matches the rhythm of the cover fire being laid down by the flight crew.  It's dark as we exit the back of the hovering Chinook.  I can make out the outline of each one of the other Rangers that have, without order, formed a semi-circle formation.  We face out and pull security as the bird pulls away into the night.  And in an instant we sit in silence.  The stars are in abundance like I have never before seen.  Even surrounded by a platoon of Rangers, I feel entirely alone.  Stranded in the middle of nowhere.  The air is cold and thin.  One at a time we pick up and move to a rally point and I can already feel the effects of the high altitude stealing my breath.

  To my surprise we see a group of guys sitting around a campfire.  They looked like a small contingent of Special Forces guys but they could have been Seals.  I didn't ask
. I was just amazed that they had built a campfire!  It didn't seem like the most operationally sound decision to me but then again what did I know. 

Even as we set up a patrol base I am still not entirely sure what is going on.  Not surprising considering that I spent most of my first year as a Ranger having almost no clue as to what was actually happening.  At a company level the first sergeant delegates to his platoon sergeants, those platoon sergeants pass the information to their squad leaders, the squad leaders pass the info to their team leaders who pass it to their privates.  You may not have picked up on it but "let the medic know what the fuck is going on" isn't really in that chain.  Most of the time I had to pester one of my buddies who was a team leader to let me know what we were doing.

One of the guys begins to complain of a severe headache and I am worried that it may be altitude sickness.  48 hours ago we were sitting at sea level and if I was cool enough to have one of those sweet GPS watches like the other guys I could tell you that we were sitting at nearly 10,000ft.  Even if someone did get altitude sickness there wasn’t much I could do about it.  The treatment calls for a drug called Mannitol, in a dose that would have been way too much to carry with me.  It was a risk that we were going to be taking.

The first night is quiet but no one sleeps.  The entire platoon understands that this is a very important mission.  As the sun rises it exposes the most beautiful country that my eyes have ever seen.  It was the most expansive, remote and wild terrain imaginable.  Even at the end of June when the midday highs would reach 100+ there
were snow-capped mountains in the distance.

My gazing session would be short lived, the sun was up and it was time to begin our first patrol.  My inexperience is made evident as I realize that having both an aid bag and an assault pack would make navigating this terrain miserable.  Why did I bring two bags?  I use a
carabineer to snap the two together.  Within the first 40 meters of our movement I realized this was going to be awful!  The assault pack is sitting on top of my aid bag and every step causes it to swing around to the side and smack me in the head. If you're going to be dumb you better be tough I suppose and I was stupid for not packing more effectively.

We traverse some of the
gnarliest terrain my feet have ever experienced.  We have shifted from a wedge type formation into a more snake like single file.  I am the third to last person in the movement.  The guy behind me is an Air Force Combat Controller.  The guy behind him is an Afghan Special forces member known as a "Mohawk" that was on loan from our OGA (Other Governmental Agency) buddies.  I ask them both if they get the feeling that we are being followed.  They both have the same feeling.  I hear footsteps behind us.  We're being hunted.  Maybe not the same way Apollo Creed and Governor Schwarzenegger were hunted in that Predator movie, but it was still pretty eerie.  I relayed this information to my Platoon Sergeant that was directly ahead of me.  This was my first mission as SFC Bent’s medic as he was recently assigned to 3rd Battalion.  He took over our platoon several weeks before this deployment and I had attempted to avoid him as best as I could in the train up.  I would come to find out later that he was a great guy but at this time all that I remember of him was him making me low crawl through a partially frozen mud puddle in December at Cole Range during RIP.

Not more than thirty seconds after I relay the information to him I hear POP
POP POP POP. 

"Enemy target, 200 meters to the right!"
one of the squad leaders announces.

Every weapon system in the platoon orients in that direction.  As my Platoon Sergeant spins to get eyes on the target he loses his footing.  He slides 30 feet down the steep terrain and is finally stopped by a stump.  My first thought was, that's what you get for making me crawl in that fucking ice pond you prick!  That thought was quickly followed by the instinct to run in the direction of the enemy.  I took off, in a hard sprint up that hill
and to the right of our platoon.  I dropped behind a cluster of rocks that provided a perfect cover for the firefight that was sure to take place.  My Platoon Sergeant makes his way up the mountainside and settles in next to my location.  I ask him if he is alright but I really didn't really care.  My focus was on the fact that I was about to be in a real deal Taliban versus Ranger firefight and I was ready.

Nothing.  Nothing happened.  A few quick shots from one our guys and then nothing.  It was like having a random girl at a bar grab your junk then just leave.  Now here I am left with a combat chub and nothing to shoot at.  Within a few minutes we pick up and continued our movement, at times having to literally crawl on our hands and knees in certain areas.

My good friend Josh, who has the very appropriate nickname “the angry leprechaun” has the unfortunate task of hauling the ammo for the 240B.  A 240B is a belt fed weapon that dispenses 7.62 rounds like confetti at a parade.  Josh was a stud for sure; he wrestled in college and had that ‘I’d rather die than give up’ attitude, which is a common theme among successful Rangers. The combination of the altitude, heat and 60+ pounds of gear will wear on anyone, however, and he was no exception.  I can tell that he is getting his lunch money taken and ask him if he wants an IV.  He refuses so I give him some Gatorade and sit with him for a moment.  He recovers and we continue to crawl up the side of that steep mountain.  This makes me much more aware of how the men are responding to these rigors.  I felt okay but I spent a decent amount of time in my youth hunting in the mountains of Northern Arizona.  My father and I would cover 30+ miles in a weekend hunt across some demanding terrain.  And while this made that feel like walking from Cinnabon down to the Hot Topic at the Arrowhead Mall, it was still a better indoctrination than my friend from Iowa would have ever had.

As the sun sets on our first day in the
Kunar we set up a patrol base.  Do you remember that kid in school that asked, "when are we ever going to use this? Why do we have to learn this?"

Well, that kid was me in basic training when we were going over how to set up a claymore mine. A claymore is a directional, anti-personnel mine that saw heavy use in Vietnam but has become a relic of sorts by modern warfare standards. Right up there with the bayonet.  So needless to say, when my Platoon Sergeant gave the order for us to set them up just outside of the patrol base I nearly shit myself.  I mean seriously, it's 2005 and we are Rangers!  Don't we have something a little more high speed than a fucking claymore?!  Luck
ily for me, the instructions "Front toward enemy" were idiot proof. (Sorry Matt, I know that's why you got No-Go'ed in Ranger school.)

With our cool guy booby traps in place and the first watch posted up I decided to check on
each of the guys.  I walk around checking feet for blisters, handing out pieces of candy from my ‘morale pouch’ and making sure that no one had sustained any injuries throughout the day.  Some time during the night we get a care package in the form of a 1-ton pallet dropped from a C-130 cargo plane, full of water, medical supplies, food and batteries.  I gather up several IV bags and pre-package them with everything necessary to get a line started.  I make four of these and give one to each of the squad leaders.  One of them complains about having to carry the weight.  I explain to him that I already have six of them in my bag, plus every bit of equipment that he is carrying.  The next morning I find the blue package hidden in the bush where he was laying the night before.  What a shit head. I pick up the bag and add it to the contents of my pack.

My Platoon Sergeant calls me over and says that we need to set up a choke point.  I'm at a complete loss.  I have no idea what he was talking about.  I thought it
might be some other Vietnam area Ranger trap.  I felt pretty dumb when he just wanted me to take a knee and count the Rangers walking out of the patrol base to make sure that we had everyone.

It's midday and we have been walking for hours.  The temperature on my buddies cool guy watch says 102.  We find the set of huts that we suspect was the home of some of the Taliban members that were involved in the firefight.  We
find a decent spot to set up over watch and a team goes into the house.  It's more of a shack really.  It has dirt floors and only 3 walls made of sticks and mud.  There is a fireplace and a couple of utensils.  There is a section of the hut designated for chickens.  This guy definitely wins the award for lowest carbon footprint.  I will say this, the view more than made up for his lack of appliances.  It was breathtaking.  You could see terraces across the ravine and mountains in the distance that were snow covered.  No one was there, well besides the chickens.  We do a quick search that comes up pretty flat.  As we are searching a near by ravine I hear a call come over the radio.

"There's monkeys."

"Repeat last."

"
Ummmm, there is a pack of big ass baboons staring at us.  And so help me God if they get any closer I am going to open up on them with the 240!"

It was Josh on over watch.  Now I know what you're thinking, "There
aren’t any baboons in Afghanistan."  Well listen here: that shit happened!  There are a dozen Rangers that will confirm it.  It was a pack of huge, fang-toothed baboons!

We keep our distance and patrol the area in small teams looking for any signs of a firefight.  One of the patrol teams finds several 5.56 shell casings so we know that this is where shit went down but there was no sign of the Seals. 

Four guys with very impressive beards, wearing shorts walk up to our over watch position.  They are members of Seal Team 10.  My first thought was, look at these shit bags wearing shorts.  Then I realized that it's over 100 degrees out and shorts would be pretty awesome!  Wait, why the fuck are we wearing pants?  And long sleeve DCU tops?  Damn I should have gone to BUDs.  We exchange information.  They tell us that they have Intel that one of the local goat herders has information on one of the missing Seals.

We move out to the houses in the valley below.  A couple of our guys accompany the Seals while myself and the other half of our platoon pull security.  They find out that the body of one of the Seal operators was nearby.  One of the locals agrees to show us where for a price.  I'm not sure what they paid the man but I imagine that it was difficult for those guys to not pay that guy with a throat punch.   

We recover the body of Matt Axelson, a Navy Seal from California who turned 29 just 3 days prior. They must have anticipated what had happened, one of the Seals pulls out a black body bag.  Throughout my time in the military I have been exposed to countless acts of absolute professionalism, this moment ranks among the top.  Those four men refuse our help.  They will carry their brother out themselves.  A decision that I hold in the highest regard.