Red Platoon

by Clinton Romesha

  Shortly thereafter, Larson and Carter whooshed through the door bearing the stretcher with Mace on board. No sooner were they inside than the medics took over. They placed him on the table and all four of them got to work.

  As Floyd started cutting off Mace’s clothes and exposing his injuries, they got their first glimpse of what they were up against. The penetrating shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and his right torso had not only torn apart a portion of his bowel and his right adrenal gland but had also shattered his pelvis. He had nine pieces of shrapnel in his lower back, and another nine had lodged themselves in his hip, buttocks, and thigh. Thanks to the gunshot wound in his left leg, he had compound fractures of his tibia and fibula. There were multiple lacerations to his legs and arms, and his right ankle was attached to his leg by only a small piece of tissue. He was barely conscious, and thanks to the amount of blood he’d lost, there was no distal pulse in either his upper or lower extremities.

  In short, he was a mess.

  When they finished removing his clothes, Floyd put a new tourniquet on his leg while Hobbs replaced the stick that Carter had placed on his ankle with a plastic splint.

  Meanwhile, Cordova and Courville were focused on the formidable challenge of getting a line into one of Mace’s veins so that they could start pushing fluids and medication into him. Unable to raise a vein in his arms or legs, they tried his hip and then went for his neck. When even that failed, they opted for a FAST1, the same flashlight-shaped, multineedled device that they had used hours earlier on Kirk, and drove it into his sternum.

  That line held up long enough for them to run almost an entire bag of Hextend into him, which would help expand the volume of plasma in his bloodstream. But just as the bag ran dry and they were preparing to put in another, the FAST1 line failed, forcing them to resume the search for a vein. Their luck was no better than the first time, so now they switched to a spiral-shaped needle that corkscrews into a patient’s bone marrow, inserting it just below the knee on his right leg.

  Unfortunately, this second line permitted only a slow drip. If they were to have any hope of stabilizing Mace, they’d need to do more. But just outside the walls of the aid station, another problem had reared its head—one that might force them, at the worst possible time, to move their patient to another location.

  The aid station was about to catch fire.

  • • •

  FOR THE PAST several hours, the intensity and danger of the fire that had started on the eastern side of camp inside the Afghan National Army compound had swung back and forth. A midmorning effort to stem the advance of the blaze by several members of Blue Platoon had had little effect. By eleven thirty a.m., the fire was generating enough heat within the ANA compound that the ammunition that the Afghan soldiers had abandoned in their barracks buildings was cooking off and exploding. Soon the flames were spreading into the American sector, first to Headquarters barracks and then to Blue Platoon’s barracks. But shortly after noon, as the frontal system that had delayed the rescue helicopters at Bostick reached the skies over Keating, it looked as if a light rain might help extinguish some of the flames.

  Within the hour, it was clear that this wasn’t going to happen. By two p.m., the flames that were consuming Blue Platoon’s barracks were generating so much smoke that Koppes, whose gun truck was stationed just outside the northern wall of the barracks, could barely see or breathe. As Stanley dashed out to the Humvee, started the engine, and moved it twenty feet to the west, the chow hall and the supply room were engulfed in fire and the flames began chewing their way across the camo netting above the alley separating Blue barracks from the command post.

  When the command post started filling with smoke, First Sergeant Burton ordered everyone inside to prepare to evacuate. With the electricity still down there was no point in bringing the computers, so the command team simply snatched up all of the maps, along with any radios that were still running on battery power. Then they jumped buildings and set up a new command post in Red Platoon’s barracks, where they resumed calling in air strikes and coordinating with the rescue team that was making its way down the mountain from Fritsche.

  When word reached the medics that the command post was going up in flames, Courville stepped outside the aid station to gauge how much danger they were in. He was shocked not only by the proximity of the fire but also by the heat that it was giving off. He noted that the flames had leaped onto a new section of camo netting, which connected the command post to the aid station.

  “It’s gonna spread,” he muttered to himself as he pulled out his pocketknife and slashed at the netting to cut it away. While he was completing that task, Burton approached with some disturbing news.

  “If we need to, we’re gonna have to push all of you guys up to the mortar pit,” said Burton. “Stand by.”

  This made absolutely no sense to Courville. Why in the world would they try to move their patients to a section of the outpost that was still cut off by enemy gunfire? Moreover, it would be terrible for Mace.

  Man, the last thing we need to do right now is to move Mace anywhere, he thought to himself as he dashed back inside.

  By this point, Doc Cordova had already ordered a partial evacuation of the aid station. While all the ambulatory Afghan patients were told to start moving toward the Shura Building, litter teams were now on standby to shuttle three gravely injured patients who were unable to move under their own steam. Meanwhile, Floyd was packing supplies they would need to take with them.

  In Courville’s mind, there had to be a better solution.

  Ducking back outside to see if he could come up with a plan, he noticed that the primary threat to the aid station was a tall pine tree adjacent to the command post that was burning furiously. Within a few minutes, it would enable the fire to jump to the aid station.

  He also noticed that there was a small orange-and-white chain saw sitting nearby.

  “Hey,” Courville called out, turning to Ty Carter, who had done some work felling trees before he joined the military. “Can you cut down that tree with this chain saw?”

  “Yes,” replied Carter.

  “Do it,” said Courville.

  With that, Carter got to work, making a series of wedge-shaped cuts along the base of the trunk in the hope that they would induce the tree to fall toward Blue Platoon’s barracks and away from the command post. As the saw chewed through the wood, burning embers from the branches overhead rained down on his head and back, interfering with his concentration. It also didn’t help that he was exposed to enemy fire from the North Face.

  In the end, Carter miscalculated badly enough that when he finished his final cut and stepped back, the tree toppled in the opposite direction from what he was intending, falling across the alley on the west side of Red barracks and clipping the roof of the abandoned command post. In the process, the branches swept across a trench that ran just outside the southwest corner of Red barracks, nearly killing Justin Gregory and Nicholas Davidson, who were posted inside it with a machine gun.

  As Gregory and Davidson stumbled from under the burning branches looking like a pair of pack rats caught in a brush fire, Carter took stock of what he’d done. The tree hadn’t landed anywhere close to where it was supposed to. But it was far enough away from the aid station that it could no longer serve as a bridge for the flames.

  Mission accomplished, more or less.

  By now it was three thirty p.m. and the command team inside Red barracks was letting our superiors at Bostick know that with most of Keating on fire, the entire troop was holed up in the last three hard-walled buildings in the center of camp.

  One of these buildings was the aid station, which Carter’s cockeyed lumberjack move had saved, and inside of which Doc Cordova and his team had resumed working on their most critical patient, whose condition wasn’t looking good.

  During the mad scramble to contain the fire, Mace had tak
en a sharp turn for the worse.

  • • •

  IT WAS AFTER FOUR P.M. when Cordova noted that, despite everything they’d tried so far, Mace seemed to be sliding downhill. His vitals had not improved, and his mental status was diminishing. All signs pointed toward one fact: if Mace was to have any chance of surviving, he would have to be evacuated to Bostick, where there was an advanced field-trauma center.

  With that in mind, Cordova sent Courville over to the new command post to press Bundermann on when he thought a medevac would be able to fly into Keating’s landing zone.

  “Bro, how long before we can get a bird?” asked Courville.

  “It’s not gonna happen until after the relief force gets down,” replied Bundermann, referring to Justin Sax’s rescue unit, which was still making its descent from Fritsche. “Plan on sometime after dark.”

  Translation: Mace wasn’t going anywhere until at least seven p.m.

  “How much longer has he got?” asked Bundermann.

  “Right now, probably two hours at the most,” said Courville as he headed back to the aid station to give Cordova the bad news.

  The challenge before Cordova and his team was to figure out how to take the amount of time Mace had left, and double it.

  Right then, Cordova knew, Mace’s most critical need was blood. He’d already lost a horrific amount of it, and he needed the oxygen-carrying red blood cells, along with their clotting agents, that weren’t being supplied by the fluids and the Hextend that they’d injected into his system.

  Fresh blood typically is not stored in aid stations at remote combat outposts like Keating, mainly because there’s no way to keep it refrigerated without a steady supply of electricity. But Cordova knew that there was one other source he might be able to tap.

  Although it’s highly unorthodox and less than ideal, direct blood transfusions from one soldier to another have been done on the battlefield since before the Second World War. Cordova had never attempted such a thing himself, but he’d been trained on how to do it. What’s more, the unit that had been stationed at Keating prior to our arrival had left behind a “buddy-to-buddy” transfusion kit.

  “Say, what’d we do with that blood kit?” Cordova asked Courville.

  “We threw it away yesterday when we were cleaning out the aid station,” replied Courville—yet another reminder that the preparations to shut down Keating had robbed them of critical supplies precisely when they were most needed.

  Cordova swore.

  “But wait a second,” Courville exclaimed. “Yesterday was Thursday, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “So that means today is Friday!”

  “Uh, yeah . . .” replied Cordova, staring in confusion as Courville disappeared out the door.

  Because Friday is the Muslim day of prayer, the local laborers at Keating weren’t scheduled to collect the trash and take it up to the burn pit for another twenty four hours—which meant that the garbage bag into which the blood kit had been discarded was almost certainly sitting just beyond the door on the west side of the aid station.

  A few seconds later, Courville was back inside with the trash bag and dumping it out onto the floor.

  No blood kit.

  Undeterred, he ran back and grabbed another bag. This time the kit tumbled out.

  Now they confronted another hurdle: what the hell was Mace’s blood type? His dog tags, which displayed the information, didn’t seem to be around his neck.

  After several anxious moments of rummaging through what was left of Mace’s clothing, Floyd managed to find the tags inside one of his pockets.

  Type A positive.

  A quick survey of the aid station revealed three people with the same blood type: Floyd himself, plus Hobbs and Cordova.

  They assembled the transfusion kit while simultaneously drawing a unit of blood from Floyd, and then they attempted to shunt Floyd’s blood into Mace using the line that they’d already placed in his right leg with the corkscrew-shaped needle. By this point, however, the flow through that line was far too slow. So they hooked up a power infuser to the blood bag, hoping it would help push the fluid through at a faster rate. When that failed to make a difference, there was yet another problem to solve.

  “We need to get a better fucking line into him,” said Courville.

  Courville looked everywhere for a vein he could tap, finding nothing. Then, by some miracle, he spotted a promising spot in Mace’s arm and got a needle in. Ecstatic, he ran some normal saline through the line to ensure that they had good flow. But just as they were switching from the saline bag to the blood bag, Mace, who had been moving in and out of consciousness, jerked his arm and yanked out the IV.

  Cursing in frustration, the whole team started looking for a new site for the IV.

  After several difficult minutes, Hobbs found the solution by getting a needle directly into Mace’s external jugular vein. And with that, Floyd’s blood finally began passing into his body.

  The effect was remarkable.

  Even before the first bag was empty, Mace’s vitals were looking better and his mental status had improved. He began making jokes and grousing about the pain in his shattered left leg. He also returned to the subject that he’d been fixated on back when he, Larson, and Carter were trapped in the gun truck.

  “Dude,” he said to Courville, “can I get a smoke?”

  “No worries,” replied Courville. “As soon as we get you out of here and you’re through surgery, we’ll get you set up.”

  “C’mon, man,” Mace pleaded. “Just one cigarette . . . please?”

  There was no way in hell the medics were going to thin his blood with nicotine in the middle of a transfusion. But they were absolutely thrilled that Mace was pestering them—although within a few minutes of the first bag finishing off, he again started to fade.

  Time for another bag of blood.

  Hobbs sat down and let Cordova take a unit from his arm. Then the same procedure was performed on Cordova, the last man in the aid station with A-positive blood.

  With each additional unit that he received, Mace would revive briefly, then start to fade as soon as the bag had drained. He never gave up on his jokes—he declared he was worried about being less of a man after having received blood from Floyd (who was often teased for being skinny and frail-looking). And he badgered anyone who would listen to give him a cigarette. The skin on his face, however, was whiter than a blank sheet of paper.

  To the medics it felt like Mace—and they with him—were oscillating back and forth like the pendulum on a slow-moving clock, swinging toward life and then back toward death on a twenty-five-minute cycle. The only thing that seemed certain was that Mace didn’t have much time left. They had to get him on a chopper and out of Keating soon.

  As the third bag was being administered, Courville dashed over to the command post to get a list of all the other soldiers at Keating who had A-positive blood. One of the names on that list was Bundermann’s, so Courville immediately sat him down and shoved a needle in his arm.

  It was 6:38 p.m. and Bundermann’s blood was just starting to draw when some news arrived from the rescue team.

  They’d run up against a few delays, but they’d sorted them out and made good time.

  They were nearly there.

  • • •

  WHEN CAPTAIN JUSTIN SAX’S quick-reaction force had departed from Fritsche at two p.m., he and his men anticipated that it would take about four hours for them to reach Keating, partly because Sax decided that for the upper part of the journey they would avoid the existing trail and bushwhack. (This would slow them down, but it would also make it harder for the enemy to set up an ambush.)

  As they launched out, the big question on everyone’s mind was whether they would encounter resistance along the way. If so, their plan was to do whatever was necessary to overcome that o
pposition and keep moving down the mountain, but it would take even longer for them to reach Keating.

  Just before they left, several of the aircraft circling above were called in to conduct air strikes in the hope that saturating the terrain with bombs and gunfire would help clear out any enemy and disrupt whatever plans they might be trying to put in place. The Apaches unloaded a slew of white phosphorus rockets to mark the area, at which point the A-10s conducted multiple gun runs across the southern mountain wall. After that, the Apaches returned to unload a bunch of their high-explosive rockets and flechettes, and then for good measure they took a few passes with their 30-mm chain guns.

  As Sax and his team descended the ridge where Fritsche was perched, it wasn’t long before they encountered evidence of these air strikes. Trees has been riddled with shrapnel or splintered to pieces by the bombs and the gunfire. There were also large, open areas where the vegetation had either already been reduced to ash by the white phosphorus or was still burning.

  Progress was slow because the terrain was so steep. The intermittent rain didn’t help either—the ground was rapidly turning slippery. But they pressed on, moving as quickly as possible while keeping a close eye for any signs of an ambush. Shortly after the halfway point, they were skirting around the edge of a piece of open ground when one of Sax’s men, Specialist Kyle Barnes, spotted two Taliban crouched behind some rocks.

  One of the insurgents, who was holding a radio, had been severely wounded—most of the flesh had been stripped from his right leg—and was in the process of bleeding to death. The second insurgent died when Barnes emptied his 9-mm pistol into the man’s chest.

  Both of the Taliban were well equipped—between the two of them they had an RPG launcher, two assault rifles, chest racks with magazines, and several grenades. Sax’s men gathered up everything they had, and resumed moving.