Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic

by Mark L. Donald

  “Vic, this is Doc,” I answered, then gave my status report, the one I knew he’d been anxiously awaiting. I also had to break the news about Chief, although I hated saying the words.

  “Vic, this is Doc, I have one American KIA.”

  “Say again last, over,” Vic said. Either he wanted confirmation or he hoped he misheard my last transmission.

  “Chief is dead,” I said bluntly, incapable of answering with anything but the painful truth. The radio went silent for a second or two, and I knew Vic was absorbing the shock.

  “Understood, one KIA,” Vic said professionally, his voice cracking slightly from the pain that was surging through his heart. After a short pause Vic continued on for a couple of minutes, telling me Chris was leading the 10th Mountain as our QRF, and attack helicopters would be on station within “One-Five Mike,” meaning fifteen minutes. That in itself should have given me some feeling of security, but it didn’t. However, Muscle Tom was also on the radio network, and I could hear him directing his commandos in the background, which did raise my confidence. Tom was a warrior through and through, and the landscape put him in a perfect position to assemble his men and flank those that killed our friend. Vic closed by telling me to hang in there and switch to the main frequency. Channel-hopping while managing two radios during a firefight was a bit much to handle.

  “Doc, remember everyone’s talking and listening on the main channel. Keep comms short and only what needs to be transmitted. See you on main channel, Vic out.”

  “Doc!” I heard Ned cry out in pain. He’d taken another round, and I knew I had to move fast. It was a miracle he was still alive. Normally, an ambush lasts long enough to accomplish the mission, which could mean harassing the enemy with a single IED (improvised explosive device) or complete destruction of the entire force. Clearly the enemy was going for the latter, but we’d interrupted their plans by surprising their forces. We would later learn men were still patrolling and collecting intel when we rolled up on them, but that was ancient history in firefight terms. The enemy had recalibrated and would soon execute the second phase of the ambush. They had the high ground and would attempt to envelop us on three sides and destroy the vehicles and annihilate every living being in or around them. They would also try to capture key pieces of valuable equipment and, worst of all, the corpse of an American. I said a half-second prayer over Chief, picked up my weapon, and concentrated on the men who were calling my name.

  The smoke had dissipated by the time I turned the corner of the vehicle and I fired full auto back at the enemy’s position. I slung my weapon to the side and pulled Ned out from under the truck. I held his wrists and ran backward toward the area where I’d left Chief and positioned him between the ditch and the front of the vehicle. I pushed on his shoulder and hips and maneuvered him slightly under the front of the truck, putting the engine block between Ned and the incoming fire. I stripped him down while listening to him talk; the sound of his respirations allowed me to assess his ability to breathe and maintain his airway. A round had penetrated his body armor and entered his upper chest but exited midflank. The immediate fix was simple—place an occlusive dressing over the wounds and move on to the next one—but if he was going to live, it was going to take more than a piece of sticky plastic. His leg wound was more complicated. Bone fragments could be heard grinding on themselves through the boot. Ned took the second round just above the ankle, and the once brown boot was dark and puffed out with blood. I placed a tourniquet above the wound and cut away his pants to see if it was in the right position before I finished tightening it down. Ned surged up with pain as the band collapsed around the viable flesh, but it did its job. I was contemplating removing the boot, arguing with myself on its effectiveness as a splint, when rounds starting coming in again.

  As I lay flat over his body, shielding it from the incoming rounds, I noticed a tumbling movement at the vehicle up ahead. I looked up and saw another Afghan commando fall to the ground. He screamed for a split second and then started to call out, “Doctor! Doctor!” desperate for someone to help him. It was obvious he had received a round to the upper body, but I couldn’t see much more than that. Ned needed additional help, but he was stable, and I needed to move on.

  There was nothing but chaos at the trucks ahead of us. I had to rally the troops or else the enemy would flank us. What started as a hasty linear ambush would soon turn into a deadly L-shaped enfilade if their reinforcements took control of the high ground northeast of our lead vehicle.

  “Ned, I have to move to the others. Stay still.”

  “I can hold on, Doc, but I am out of ammo.” I knew he could hold on, and he would have lied to me if he couldn’t. Ned was a courageous fighter who would have easily sacrificed himself for his men.

  “Don’t shoot! You’ll just draw fire,” I said to Ned as I moved the weapons away from him and threw my aid bag on my back. “Take this and throw it when I call for it.” I handed him the second smoke grenade from my harness.

  “Yes, yes,” he answered.

  I stood in a crouching position, careful not to expose my body, and ordered Ali to move up to the next vehicle when I gave the word “go.” Hell, it was a miracle he made it this far without being shot. For a split second, I wondered what in hell we had packed behind his seat that was absorbing all those rounds. It didn’t matter; I had to move.

  I started in a low run toward the lead vehicles but was stopped ten feet out by AK-47 fire. The enemy had stopped spraying the vehicles but instead was concentrating their rounds on our movements. Realizing I needed to get down, I dropped to the floor of the canyon and rolled to my right, landing in the same ditch our vehicle sat in. The trench twisted slightly left and right but eventually worked its way up to the vehicles in front. Rather than run across a lane of enemy fire I chose to rapidly belly-crawl up to the men. I heard the sonic crack of small-arms fire snapping overhead as I moved along the trench. As I crawled along, I felt a flood of cold liquid flowing along my lower back and upper thighs. I reached around to my medical pack to determine its origin. As a medic, I realized men can be shot or fragged and feel nothing due to the adrenaline running through their veins, but in my case a bag of saline had been ripped open by an enemy round. I was unsure if the enemy could see my medical bag, thus telegraphing my movements, so I shrugged it off and threw it to the side and continued low-crawling. The closest vehicle was only fifteen yards out, but it seemed like half a mile with the rounds cracking overhead.

  While I was pulling Chief from the vehicle, Vic had moved to high ground, giving him a bird’s eye view of the battlefield. This helped him direct air traffic to cover Tom’s assault on the hill, as well as my movement to the forward trucks. His position also exposed him to enemy fire, but that didn’t stop him from watching over us. Every few minutes I could hear him speaking with every available aircraft in country, asking them to get on station and prevent enemy reinforcements from flanking us. The fighting was too close for a bombing run, so we needed Apaches or SuperCobras on station, and needed them fast. We had worked closely with both airframes out of Khowst and in Iraq, and they were experts at supporting ground troops. Make no mistake about it, the strongest man on the battlefield is the one with air support, and those who control the skies generally win. That made Vic our biggest gun and the most important man on the battlefield that day.

  I arrived at the vehicle in front of ours and found one Afghan clearly dead in the driver’s seat. He’d been shot multiple times and was covered in frag wounds. Two other commandos were shot and lay prone beside the vehicle, barely covered from incoming fire and immobile. The fourth man was the vehicle commander whom we nicknamed “Dogface.” We told him it was because of his tenacity, but it was really because of his appearance.

  Dogface had come off his gun and was staring at his wounded men in a trancelike state when I got to him. Despite repeated medical training and time on the battlefield, he had never experienced the gore associated with combat wounds, so it wasn’t sur
prising to find him in a state of shock. A vehicle accident can cause terrible injuries, but the mechanism of injury on the battlefield is much more abhorrent. Combat weapons are designed for the sole purpose of extreme lethality. There really is no easy way to say it; tools of war do their damage by shearing, tearing, and ripping the body apart. The difference between hunting and combat is night and day, and in special operations we understand it all too well. The need to be familiar with carnage and the immediate care it requires is one of our most important training requirements. Removing any opportunity for hesitation might be the difference between bringing a son, husband, or father home.

  I pushed Dogface aside and quickly placed a tourniquet above the wound on one of the casualties while Dogface continued to stare into the unknown. The other man had sustained a gunshot wound to his back and RPG fragments to his left side, requiring much further attention, but we needed to suppress the enemy’s fire before I could do anything more.

  “Dogface,” I said, grabbing at his arm and looking into his eyes. “Shoot! Shoot!” I kept repeating as I reached for my weapon and began pointing my rifle in the direction of the enemy. The enemy’s rate of fire had once again picked up, and we had nowhere to go. Earlier, I’d told Vic the enemy was adjusting and would soon place flanking fire on our positions. I just didn’t think it would be happening so soon. I could have moved to the ditch for protection, but that meant leaving my casualties behind, and I couldn’t do that. There was simply no way for Dogface and me to move them without getting torn to pieces, and I didn’t have any more smoke grenades to conceal us if we tried. It was either leave the men or stay and die. To some it sounds like a simple choice, especially since they weren’t my countrymen—but like many things in life, it’s easier said than done.

  The bonds that form in battle are made of steel, and since the ambush started the Afghan commandos had fought by my side. I don’t know when they were wounded; I can only surmise based on where they lay. Their wounds could have occurred when I asked for fire support, giving me the ability to reach my friend and their leader. They could have been the reason I made it that far. There was something else, though, something far bigger than any of us, and that was my oath, an oath to preserve life even at the cost of my own. I felt I had partially forgone that promise when I left Ned and helped Chief instead. Regardless of the outcome, I was going to stay with the men and fight it out. I’d like to believe any soldier in my shoes would have done the same. It is the reason we fight. Sure, politics, religion, or in this case attacks against our citizens send us to war, but when the rounds start flying and death is closing in around you, it is the calling of your fellow man that makes a soldier risk it all for another.

  Thankfully, Dogface felt the same and snapped back to the fierce fighter we all knew. He readied his weapon and looked to me for guidance. I motioned our plans with my hands, and he nodded, ready for the fight.

  “Now!” I called out. Dogface and I raised up from behind the bed of the truck and fired on the enemy. The counterattack, however, was short-lived. I had run out of magazines, and within a few rounds so did Dogface. I glanced into the bed of the truck, hoping to see the ammo boxes within reach, but they’d been lost after the first series of blasts. I was down to a couple of fragmentation grenades, which would have helped earlier in the battle but were useless now. With no ammo at hand, I flipped back to medic mode and worked on the men’s wounds.

  We were in very dire shape. Rounds were incoming from the ridge across the wadi, and the enemy was setting up a flanking attack. The thought of giving up never entered my mind. I just had to stay on point with my patients and trust in my teammates to pull me out of the mess. As I rendered aid, I could hear the helos, which were inbound and closing quickly. Through the radio, I heard Muscle Tom assault the hill out of sight to our rear. We just had to hang on a little longer, so we all huddled together in the only available corner of cover and waited as the bullets crashed into the dirt, just inches from us.

  Then, just as quickly as the ambush had started, the enemy rounds stopped. It had to be Tom; there was no way the enemy would have quit that abruptly with rounds falling right on top of us. I rose carefully and looked across the wadi, and indeed it was Muscle Tom. He had led a squad of men directly into their fire and destroyed their ranks. Concerned only about his teammates, he ran ahead of the others up the hill and flanked the enemy that had killed our men and pinned the rest of us down. He moved along the ridge, shooting controlled bursts from his M-4 while on the move, crushing the enemy shooters and saving my life and the lives of the men under my care. I radioed Vic and let him know we were secure.

  “Doc’s good to go,” Vic said to Tom over the radio.

  “Solid copy, we’re going to circle around the ridge and see if we can flush out the remaining fighters,” Muscle Tom replied.

  I watched as he signaled his men into a formation and headed into the mountain shadows across from us.

  “Doc, can you get those casualties back here? We’ve got a CASEVAC [casualty evacuation] on station in One-Five Mike, and be sure to relay any casualty updates to the bird.”

  “Roger that, and I’ll get everyone moving to your position.”

  I ordered Ali to break out the stretchers and pass word to the other ANA fighters to do the same. Otherwise they were to stay put with Ned. The second vehicle was still operable, so I had Dogface turn it around so we could transport the wounded to the CCP (casualty collection point) Vic had established near his vehicle. I then moved to the lead vehicle to assess the men.

  The lead Hilux was severely damaged and the driver dead, cut to pieces during the opening volley. The rest of the men, however, escaped with only varying degrees of fragmentation and no serious trauma. As I treated a laceration on one fighter’s arm, I shot a look at their vehicle and wondered if they had failed to drive off the X as we had rehearsed, trapping the other vehicles, or if the truck had immediately been disabled by fire. As we pulled a stretcher from the bed and started back toward Dogface, I resigned myself to the fact I might never know. One thing was for certain: I wasn’t going to question their actions. They were seasoned fighters who had proven themselves under fire, which is why they were at the front of the convoy. Combat is constant chaos; things rarely happen sequentially, and everything comes crashing in at once. This causes soldiers to react to the person, object, or activity they register as the most immediate threat. That’s why two men standing side by side firing in the same direction see and remember things differently. I experienced this myself and have listened to others debrief and describe what happened during their battle. Members of the same team often contradict one another on how things went down. On one occasion video feed from a UAV proved that two men fighting together in close proximity remembered two very different scenarios, and both of their memories were slightly different from what the video recorded. That is why our all-volunteer force continues to flourish; our critical judgment is reserved for the circumstances that led to the fight, and not the actions of men and women who were caught up in it.

  Two of the commandos carried their fallen comrade by stretcher toward a Hillux we used to evacuate the casualties while one stayed behind and pulled out anything that was salvageable. Dogface had loaded the deceased in the backseat, and the wounded were lying in stretchers placed horizontally across the bed of the truck. He stood by the driver’s door watching and listening to the fight on the far end of the ridge, then spoke to the men in Pashtu, telling them to load their KIA in a backseat. We then moved slowly toward Chief and Ned.

  Ned wasn’t doing well when we pulled up, so we placed him on the hood of the truck and prepared to move out. I could hear the CASEVAC bird only minutes away, so I ordered two men to stay with Chief and guard the convoy’s previous twelve o’clock position. We rolled out toward the CASEVAC area. Ali and I trotted next to the truck and held on to the stretcher handles, preventing it from sliding off the hood. He told me he heard over the Afghan radio channel that Muscle Tom’s te
am was following a wounded enemy soldier, but he was unsure if that was good news or bad. I didn’t answer. I knew he was talking about the fight on the opposite ridge that we’d heard earlier while tending to the wounded. Word then came over the team channel that Muscle Tom was receiving sporadic sniper fire. He began speaking directly with the pilots and told them to watch for his smoke. He popped it, then told his men to take cover. He then authorized the birds to unleash hell, and that’s precisely what they did. Seconds later, Hellfire missiles screamed from the birds and annihilated the mountain walls on either side of the wadi.

  We watched for several seconds, then returned to the task at hand. We had to get the men on an evac flight to the Combat Support Hospital if we wanted to save their lives. I could only do so much on the front lines. The badly injured required a surgeon’s knife and a sterile hospital, and any delaying treatment usually ends badly.

  We arrived at the CCP, and four commandos began unloading the wounded and placing them in an open area so that I could begin to triage, treat, and dress them for transport. Once the wounded were squared away, the commandos pulled their fallen brothers from the truck and placed them in an area designated for the deceased. Without a word, Dogface grabbed Ali and headed back to recover Chief. I then began working on Ned’s chest wound, placing IVs to dispense pain meds and push fluids. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see Vic walking down from his vehicle. As he approached, I could see pain in his eyes over the loss of our friend.

  “Good work out there. You OK?” he yelled over the noise from the approaching bird.

  “I’m fine, Vic. These guys are going to be fine, too.”

  “The CASEVAC is landing in five. We’ll make sure they take Chief on the way out.” I just looked up and nodded, then returned to my job. Vic, like the rest of us, was torn up inside. Even though Chief ’s death was a consequence of an ambush. Vic was the team leader, and leaders always seem to have a way of blaming themselves. Vic saved all our lives out there, and I just hoped he understood it. I watched him turn and head back to his vehicle to coordinate the evacuation and track on 10th Mountain’s movement. We were three hours into a very long day and still needed to get back home.