18 December 2003
“We stood over him and watched him take his last two
breaths.” She paused and blotted her watering eyes.
“God, this tent is so dusty.” She sniffed, regained her military bearing, and
continued her story. “We did CPR on him for 20 minutes, but it was no use. When
the medevac chopper arrived, they pronounced him DOA.” The woman talking was a
quartermaster platoon leader in her early 20s, describing an IED [Improvised
Explosive Device] attack she’d been in earlier that week.
We were sitting in a big army tent in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert at a
place called Camp Wolf. In a few hours, we’d be boarding a plane for the United
States and a very welcome two weeks leave. The entire army in Iraq was
represented in that tent.
There were soldiers wearing shoulder patches from the 1st Infantry Division
[ID], 3rd ID, 4th ID, 1st Armored Division, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment [ACR],
3rd ACR, 82nd Airborne, and 101st Airborne. There were special operations folks,
along with people from a variety of National Guard and Reserve units. There were
whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, men, women, young, middle-aged, recent
immigrants; all of us wearing the uniform of the American soldier.
One young cavalry lieutenant sporting a big black Stetson with shiny, brass
crossed sabers on the front was retelling a story to his fellow troopers about
how his humvee got shot up a few weeks back.
Fortunately for him, the round with his name on it simply passed through the
bulky left sleeve of his desert fatigues. “It pays to be a scrawny sonofabitch
every once in a while!” he exclaimed with a laugh, before spitting Skoal into a
plastic Gatorade bottle.
Another kid, maybe 19 or 20, over in another group was quietly talking about how
his MP section was hit by an IED, which flipped over his vehicle. The vertical
steel plate that protects the .50 caliber gunner up top kept the vehicle propped
up when it got turned upside down, thus preventing the soldier in the turret
from getting crushed.
A bit later, I left the tent and headed over to an Internet café on the camp run
by Indian contractors. There was a message from the mother of a friend of mine
with the subject heading “She’s Okay.”
My friend is an army scout helicopter pilot northwest of Baghdad. Earlier that
day she’d been shot down by an RPG. She and her co-pilot were able to land the
bird safely and get away from it before a mob of Iraqis surrounded the downed
prize. While the two Americans hid in a ditch, a kid on a bicycle rode up and
spotted them. He just stared at them in wonder, while they put their fingers to
their lips indicating that he should be quiet. Thankfully he was and sometime
later, the two downed aviators were rescued by Blackhawks.
I walked back into the tent and told the story of the helicopter crash to the
female quartermaster officer. “That’s amazing,” she said in an awed voice that
seemed to have forgotten about her own harrowing experience. “No amount of money
they’re paying us is worth some of the things we’ve had to go through over
here,” she concluded. “Well, it’s nice that we’re getting some leave,” I pointed
out. “Yeah,” the lieutenant replied, “I just hope we don’t miss anything big
while we’re gone.”
A couple of days later, on a couch in a friend’s apartment on 38th and Park
Avenue in Manhattan, I awoke to the news that Saddam Hussein had been captured.
Later that day, I received an e-mail from my lucky aviator friend, back on duty
and flying again in Iraq. “I bet you’re sad you’re not here,” she wrote.
I replied, “I really am.”