“They’re at the tunnel of death,” someone tells me.
First Sergeant Lester shows up and takes me to an arms room. He’s this giant mountain of a man who ends every sentence with “airborne” or “killer.”
I’m given a shitty weapon—a giant dirty A2. I follow him to a Humvee with canvas doors and sandbags on the floor for armor and I sit behind him, in the right rear passenger seat. I’m holding a weapon and ammunition, and I’m not on the range.
As we roll out the gate in our unarmored Humvee, I suddenly feel as though I’m so in tune with my environment that I can actually see everything around me.
First Sergeant Lester looks at me and says, “Are you gonna load that thing or what, airborne?”
I load my weapon. As we drive to Baghdad, I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.
Forty minutes later, we arrive at our destination in downtown Baghdad: Martyr’s Monument. The entire building is made of marble, and the exterior is unique, designed to resemble two giant blue teardrops.
Underneath the building is a museum shaped like a big circle. There’s a wall containing the names of all the Iraqi soldiers who died in the Iran conflict, which is why, I come to find out, the Iraqis built the monument to resemble teardrops. I also find out why this place is called the tunnel of death. The wall, similar to our Vietnam memorial, is inside a tunnel. Saddam, when he was in power, let only a handful of prestigious, powerful people see it—never the general public.
The enemy starts to mortar us multiple times during the night and during the day, when I’m out setting up antennas around the monument. When we’re not maintaining the antennas and radios for when guys are going out on actual combat missions, we’re the communications support for those missions.
We’re also going out on convoys.
It’s confusing, these convoys, because our lead changes day to day—who we’re supposed to shoot, who we’re not supposed to shoot. When we go through cities and get to areas of congestion, we have to dismount and walk alongside the truck.
One time I’m walking and, without warning, everyone is jumping back on the trucks. Before I can figure out what’s going on, the trucks take off. I’m standing there watching the taillights and suddenly realize I’m surrounded by hostile people glaring at me.
I’m dead, I tell myself. I’m dead, I am so fucking dead.
The fear is intense, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
I see the trucks stop. I catch up to them and jump in.
It isn’t the fear of taking a bullet. It’s the fear of being taken.
Right before I leave Iraq, I see this big, heavily decorated Iraqi soldier standing inside the tunnel of death. I’m curious and go up to him and talk. He speaks English.
“This name here is my uncle,” he says. He’s a little teary-eyed as he points to another name. “This one is my brother.”
“Have you been inside here before?”
“No. This is the first time I’ve seen this.”
Shortly thereafter, they open up the gates to the Iraqi people, so they can come in and see the names of their dead fathers and sons written on the wall.
DAVE KINSLER
Dave Kinsler grew up in Morristown, Tennessee, a small town east of Knoxville. He graduated from high school in 1999 and, after playing college baseball for a couple of years, joined the Army because he wanted to go out into the world and make a difference. He completed five deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan—a total of fifty-seven months spent overseas. He’s a staff sergeant, 11 Bravo Infantry.
In late 2002, after Airborne School, I’m assigned to a mech unit in Friedberg, Germany. In-processing is going to be a two-week deal because of all you have to learn—the culture and some of the language, how to use the train system.
When I arrive, I’m asked if I’m ready to go to Iraq.
“Don’t you mean Afghanistan?” I ask. We’ve been over there only seven, maybe eight months.
“You’re going to Iraq. We have our DCUs in now.”
“What the hell are DCUs?”
“Desert combat uniforms, Private.”
I head to Iraq for a six-month deployment, nervous as shit. President Bush has been talking a lot about how the US is going to invade this, that, and the other. I’m being told the attack plan is for 1st Armored Division to come into Iraq through Turkey. The 3rd Infantry Division (ID) is going to push their way into Baghdad, which is roughly located in the middle of the country.
My unit, the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, is a good three to four weeks behind 3rd ID. When we finally link up with them in Baghdad, in late April of 2003, some feel like the war is over. A couple of weeks later, President Bush delivers a televised speech aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln. Behind him is a banner that reads MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
We soon find out that the war is far from over.
Five months into my six-month deployment, we’re told we’re going to be there for nine months. The Iraqi Shia cleric and militia leader, al-Sadr, shows his ass and starts creating all sorts of havoc and problems. Then nine months gets extended to twelve, and then fifteen, so we head down to the city of Karbala, located southwest of Baghdad.
It’s an absolute shit show down there. Al-Sadr is holed up in mosques. The military drops leaflets that basically say, “If you’re innocent, get out of the city now, because we’re going to come in and destroy it.” Our mission is to go into Karbala and kill al-Sadr.
We’re two hours from executing our kill mission when al-Sadr decides he wants to negotiate. The military, from my understanding, ends up doing a big deal with him—trading arms for money. The Iraqis turn in enough arms and munitions to fill a bus. We give them a little money.
IEDs aren’t a thing in 2002. They don’t exist yet. That year, we roll through Baghdad in Humvees with no doors, our feet hanging out.
That changes in 2007 and 2008. We learn a lot about IEDs—what to look for, what to do when we think we encounter one. The problem is, the Iraqis are so good at disguising them.
IEDs change the whole spectrum of the war.
I’m on a resupply mission to a very small town called Jurf al-Sakhar. I’m driving in a convoy, on an elevated road, when the enemy fires an RPG. Fortunately, the road levels out, and an RPG misses my vehicle and ends up exploding against the tree beside me.
On the way back, they go at us again. We’re about to take a right-hand turn into an intersection when the whole median to my left blows up. The explosion rocks our truck, and we can’t see shit through the thick blackish-grayish cloud outside.
“Push it,” I tell the driver. The standard operating procedure at the time is to keep moving through a kill zone because it could be an ambush. “Push it,” I tell him again.
Later, I find out that when the IED blew, it blew the wrong way, which is why no one got hurt or killed. We got lucky—real lucky.
When the enemy isn’t attacking our little outpost in Jurf al-Sakhar, trying to overrun our base, they’re coming up with ingenious ways to blow us up. One of my guys, a gunner, gets out of a Bradley to move the coiled concertina wire, or C-wire, away from the road so the convoy can leave our outpost and go out on patrol. This kid looks down and sees a heavy plastic US MRE food pouch. He moves the C-wire back, not knowing the pouch has explosives in it.
It blows up and he bleeds out before we can medevac him out.
The enemy runs an IED wire across a river and connects it to a pressure plate. One of our trucks rolls over it. Everyone inside the truck is killed.
On Father’s Day, we go out on a three-day mission to clear villages. It’s all desert. A minefield of IEDs is buried deep in the ground.
We lose four tanks and two Bradleys.
The Bradley I’m in drives over an IED. It blows up right underneath the driver’s seat. This kid gets out and starts running. He’s so pumped with adrenaline he doesn’t realize chunks of his leg and arm are missing. We have to tackle him in order to patch him up.
; The commander tells us to halt movement. We’ve lost too many vehicles.
The Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) guys have to come in and clear a path for the Black Hawk that will be coming to airlift us out.
I look across the desert, thinking about all these deep-buried IEDs that have been strategically placed out there. They’re buried so deep that when we roll through with our tanks and Bradleys, the IEDs respond to the pressure and explode. But we can walk across them because our bodies don’t apply enough pressure to make them explode. These guys can take a simple AAA battery and make it into a lethal weapon. They hide it in trash because in Iraq there is trash everywhere.
The enemy is smart.
JUSTIN BROG
Justin Brog bounced around quite a bit as a kid before his family settled in Eugene, Oregon. He joined the Army at twenty-six. He’s a master sergeant and a 68 Whiskey, a combat medic.
I quit college after two years and start working at a local pizza parlor. Gradually, I become a manager because I need a full-time job. I’m unhappy and unfulfilled even though I’m paying the bills. I explore the idea of becoming a cop.
One early morning at work, I open up the back door for the delivery guy. He comes in every week and I barely say more than two words to him. This morning, though, he’s very talkative.
“You hear what happened?” he asks.
“No. What are you talking about?”
“A couple of planes crashed into the World Trade Center.”
I turn on the radio and learn about what happened in New York. It upsets me, but I also have an epiphany. I now know what I want to do with my life. I’m twenty-six years old.
I visit a recruiting station. Shortly thereafter, I sign a contract.
I go to the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) and take the ASVAB—the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery placement test. I get a high score. The recruiter tells me I can do pretty much any job I want.
I’m thinking either military police or maybe counterintelligence, because that sounds really cool. I’m thinking I can be Jack Bauer from 24, running around and fighting terrorists. When I move to the next testing station, I’m shown these wheels of color with numbers written inside them. I can see only half.
I fail the test. They make me take a different one.
“Remember when I said you can do pretty much any job you want?” the recruiter tells me. “Now you’re qualified to do maybe nine, because you’re color-blind.”
She tells me about these jobs. Only two sound interesting: signal—a communication specialist—or medic. I choose medic because it’s the closest you can get to being on the line. That’s where I want to be—helping people.
Six months after 9/11, in March of 2002, I head to Fort Hood, in Texas, for basic training.
Basic is tough. I’m skinny and not strong, and it’s nothing but constant exercise. I feel permanently smoked and get pneumonia about halfway through.
The docs want me to stay in the infirmary. But if I do that, I’ll get recycled—and there’s no way in hell I’m going to recycle. I decide to embrace the physical challenge and go forward. I tell myself it’s all a game—the worst mental game imaginable. But I graduate, and then I’m off to Fort Sam Houston for advanced individual training.
The following year, in April of 2003, I’m sent to Kuwait. The scheduled six-month rotation turns into a deployment as a medic for Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment. We’re heading straight to Iraq.
As soon as we cross the border in our Humvees, I see berms and wire—and people. They’re crowded here in the middle of nowhere because they want the soldiers to throw them an MRE or trade a US dollar for an Iraqi denar. A kid reaches inside my window and tries to snatch my sunglasses.
It’s pure chaos.
Charlie Company has a little checkpoint on a busy road outside Tikrit. As we head there, coming up through the road marsh, I see all the destruction along the highway—abandoned fighting positions and abandoned vehicles engulfed in flames. Saddam is still on the loose, but his army has been crushed. Defeated.
For the next three weeks we do these twenty-four-hour ops—stop vehicles on the road toward the city and do quick investigations. The Iraqis are always asking for a doctor to examine their sick kids, so I’m not surprised when the guys in my squad call for me, sounding alarmed and frantic.
I find a parent holding a baby with a hospital IV still in his head—a common practice for starting IVs on very young infants. The child is nearly naked, wearing only a makeshift diaper.
“American doctor,” the parents say, over and over again.
The Iraqis see American medicine as the gold standard. What they don’t understand is that if they’ve been treated and released from one of the local treatment facilities, then there’s nothing more I can do for them. I’m carrying only a basic aid bag, the contents of which are primarily used for managing trauma.
I evaluate the child and don’t find any signs of trauma. We don’t have a translator, so I do my best to try to find out the medical reason for why the kid has an IV in his head—and fail because of the language barrier. I keep telling the family to take the child back to the hospital. They finally leave, clearly frustrated. I stand there, feeling helpless.
We stop a small pickup holding eight people. There’s a goat and three kids in the truck bed. We have everyone get out. I open the glove box, see what’s inside, and shut it.
“Sergeant,” I say.
He hustles over, looking alarmed.
“Look in the glove compartment,” I say.
He does. His eyes narrow.
“The hell’s a chicken doing in the glove box?” he says, more to himself than me.
The enemy engages in a lot of guerilla warfare–type stuff—pop a shot or fire an RPG and then go run and hide. IEDs are everywhere. Identifying the difference between the enemy and a friendly civilian is difficult. The guy who’s smiling at you and acting real nice, wanting to be your friend, is probably the same guy who, at night, is taking shots at you or firing rockets or indirect fire into our little compound.
One day we get a call and go to full alert—to REDCON-1, which means the unit needs to get ready to move out and fight. A Black Hawk was shot out of the sky by an RPG. When word comes down for us to move out, we hop into the BFVs—Bradley Fighting Vehicles—and drive out to the location. The ground is on fire, and I can see pieces of the helicopter—and body parts. We secure the perimeter and get out.
The area the Black Hawk is in is big, bushy, and overgrown. Guys are busy trying to police the crash site. We head toward it and smell burning flesh, stopping to gather the downed soldiers’ personal effects, anything we can find.
I find a charred torso missing an arm and a leg. As I check the body, I see an NCO staring that blank, thousand-yard stare. I walk up to him.
“What are you looking at?”
He doesn’t answer—doesn’t even appear to have heard me. I follow his gaze, to the cockpit of the Black Hawk. There I see the pilot and copilot buckled in their seats, their bodies on fire. The copilot looks female.
I look back at the NCO. He’s clearly rattled. Shaken. I’ve got to get him to focus.
“Shouldn’t you be pulling security?” I ask, trying to get his mind off what he’s seeing and doing something else.
He doesn’t answer. I wait.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “I’m going to go check over there and then pull security.”
There are men and women here who in training could handle anything, but when they get into a stressful situation like this, they shut down. I have a whole platoon counting on me. I can’t afford to shut down. I have to turn off my feelings in order to function and do my job.
The aftermath of the explosion is a nightmare. I find a guy with both arms and both legs blown off, along with half his head. One of my battle buddies shows up carrying a leg.
It’s ugly stuff.
I’m not overly emotional or affected by emot
ional things, so maybe that’s why I’m able to flip the switch.
I just don’t know how to flip it back.
When I arrive home a year later, in March of 2004, my folks are at Fort Hood to welcome me back. We’re all on buses, and they drive us into the gym while playing “Eye of the Tiger.” All the families cheer and rally us. It’s a pretty cool homecoming.
When it comes time for me to reenlist, I do, and I go to Fort Lewis to work at the hospital. I want to see the other side of the medical field. I work in the emergency department for a year. I end up meeting Carla, who is on active duty.
We marry.
Have a daughter.
Move to Hawaii.
There, in April of 2011, I find out I’ll be heading out to Afghanistan. A platoon sergeant who crashed his motorcycle and broke his leg can’t go, so I’m going to be the platoon sergeant for basically an entire company, at FOB Fenty, in Jalalabad. I’ll be gone for one year.
“Look,” Carla says to me. “We’re not both going to stay in the Army, because that’s hard, especially with kids. You’re either on the same deployment cycle and need someone to watch your kids for a year or you’re on opposite deployment cycles, and you don’t see each other for two years.” She tells me she’s going to get out and go to school.
My son is born one month before I deploy.
Afghanistan is built-up now. FOB Fenty is the complete opposite of my time in Iraq. It has all the creature comforts of home: a Green Beans coffee store, a barber, dining facilities, and a shopping area. I have a room with a mattress, and I have electricity. We get indirect fire and rockets once in a while, but I’m way safer than I was in Iraq.
I spend pretty much my whole deployment on the FOB. If a helicopter pilot comes in nice and cool, deliberate, it’s pretty much a standard casualty. But if a pilot is flying like a bat out of hell, I know I’m dealing with a really urgent casualty. In a case like that, we need to go out and grab the wounded, drop them in the ambulance, and drive them straight to the forward surgical team.
Walk in My Combat Boots Page 15
