Letter from Baghdad - Dispatch # 4
Last time, Josh wrote about a lopsided gunfight that pitted dozens of American infantrymen against one AK-47-wielding Iraqi. Josh was especially proud that his men had shown restraint and had refrained from shooting civilians. The story continues…
Dec. 19, 2006
That night, the platoon and I felt pretty good about ourselves and our disciplined actions as we returned to the battalion headquarters, briefed the commander and intelligence officer, and then returned to our staging area to continue our role as a Quick Reaction Force. That was still our mood the next morning when we were about to be relieved as QRF and we heard a loud explosion in our area of operations.
We didn’t think much of it at first—after all, explosions of some sort are routine, and I’m sure that’s the case in most parts of Baghdad. But I knew something had gone wrong when I heard another patrol from another company in our battalion request medical evacuation immediately after the blast. They said they would need a helicopter and began to move to our location, one place that helicopters are equipped to land to evacuate casualties. We prepared the helicopter landing zone, waited for the patrol to come in with its casualty ... and when it did, well, it was without a doubt the most vivid, enduring memory of my time in Baghdad so far. I can’t imagine—unless one of the patrols I’m on involves a wounded soldier—that anything over the course of the next year could replace it.
The wounded soldier was a staff sergeant from another company, and it was tragically obvious to me and I think to anyone who saw him as he was pulled out of the Humvee that there was virtually no hope for his recovery. I can’t begin to describe what it was like to prepare yourself to receive a casualty with a shrapnel wound, or maybe a half-amputated foot or leg, and then see someone in the shape he was in. His wounds were probably—thankfully, in a way—irreversibly fatal.
The trauma to his head was severe and I don’t think it would have made one bit of difference if they’d had an operating room with a surgeon standing by at the site of the blast. It seemed like a truly hopeless situation.
I say “thankfully” because I can’t imagine a more horrible feeling than that of the guilt that you could have done something to save someone’s life, but didn’t. In this case, I just don’t think anything could have been done. It was a horrible sight, one that I’m quite sure I will never forget, and a horrible reminder to everyone in the battalion—just weeks after we arrived in Iraq—that we’re still involved in a very deadly struggle, like it or not.
So you see why, although it’s been a mostly uneventful few weeks since I last wrote, that’s not to say that certain very pointed events haven’t been foremost in everyone’s mind. For my platoon, those were undoubtedly some of the most memorable hours of our lives, and I think I can speak for all of my soldiers who were there in saying that sudden change of emotions, that instant evaporation of any feeling of success or a job well done, was all too grave a reminder that our job here is dangerous and far from over.
—Lt. Josh Arthur