Bring out your dead & Gen'l Order 2

In my journal entry I mentioned hauling out the dead and I thought I’d fill you in on some of the background on that. It’s probably not the most interesting story in the world, but the frustration level here is soaring out of control and I don’t really feel like rehashing much of my last few days. Suffice it to say we’re making progress, but it will probably take several more major arguments before things are running anywhere near smoothly here. So I’ll go with the enjoyable past. This account is from our mandatory training in Kuwait. We were there for about a month for these three days, some of us even longer. Anyway, here it is. It’s just a taste of the fun we had.

We were doing convoy training on the last day of our three-day campout in the desert. We’d learned and practiced room/building clearing techniques, detainee search and secure techniques, and all sorts of convoy issues like returning fire while driving, various methods of stopping and protecting ourselves, casualty evac and downed vehicle recovery. On our second or third practice run, the litter team - the guys responsible for sorting the dead from the casualties and getting the casualties out of the hot zone to an evac site - were really getting the hang of things. They were moving so quickly in fact, that in their quick sorting of dead vs. alive, they left a dead guy in the driver’s seat of the downed vehicle.

If I stopped the story here, anyone would be tempted to say, “so?” And I’d have to agree, but my job was to hook up that downed vehicle and get it out of there. This meant I had to sit in the driver’s seat and steer and stop the downed vehicle, while chained 10 feet behind a truck whose brake lights were covered by the tailgate at get-the-hell-out-of-here speeds over dirt “roads” to the next rally point... in this practice session that was about 5 miles.

My truck pulled up on the non-fire side of the downed truck. I hopped out and, using the downed truck for cover, guided the driver of my truck into position so I could hook up the chain, signal to the rest of the convoy, who were providing cover for us, that it was time to go, then hop in the downed truck and steer it out of the hot zone to a rally point. In our practice runs, we’d gotten this whole operation, from when we were called in to actually moving out, to under 30 seconds. (Next time you call AAA, start your watch and see how we measure up)

To their credit, the litter team had logged some impressive times sorting and loading casualties and moving out to the evac site also. Soooo to make this short story even longer, I hooked up, signaled, and went to jump in the driver’s seat only to find one of my fellow Horsemen, a Pennsylvanian in this case, sprawled out in the driver’s seat.

For those of you who have never experienced the “pleasure” that is HMMWV, there’s barely enough room in the driver’s seat for my 5’6” 165 (ok, 175) pound frame, let alone two of us. Add battle rattle to the mix and there’s no way. So, in the mid-day desert sun, though still dressed for the 35 degree morning we woke to, I climbed into the 4-seater’s cozy cabin, grabbed my fallen comrade by the shoulders of his flak vest, and,while apologizing to him in advance for any pain inflicted in the move, yanked with all my might to get him up and out of the seat. Keep in mind, I'm squatting in a space similar to the back of a small station wagon. To my amazement, the fallen airmen and his gear popped right up and out of the seat. I had only hoped to get his ass (literally) up on the the center “console” between the driver and passenger seats and this worked like a charm. From there I simply pulled his legs up from under the steering wheel and tossed them toward the passenger seat. I left the rest of him laying on the console’s rear seat area and wiggled my way back into the seat my buddy had just vacated. As I honked the horn to signal we were ready to go, I warned the fallen airmen (I mentioned this was a drill, right) that the ride behind a 5-ton was pretty rough and that he may want to actually get into the passenger seat.
“I can’t, I’m dead,” he said.

“Well then at least get your body armor between you and that radio mount” I replied. About the time I finished the sentence, the chain, with a highly revved, and recently placed in gear 5-ton on the other end of it, snapped us into motion, throwing my buddy's kevlar (with his head in it) into the back of the hummer’s cabin. In spite of his Oscar worthy efforts at playing dead, that first snap of the chain corroborated the warning I’d given him and he braced himself... but just a little, for the rest of the ride.

It was smooth sailing from that point on and by then, I’d come to enjoy, rather than fear, skiing behind the 5 ton. We reached the rally point and I covered the "body... to protect morale,” then exited my vehicle for the “hot wash” or after action critique by our instructors. They praised most of our performance, but mildly abused the litter team for leaving a body where mine was supposed to go. "You had four guys to move bodies... he only has one," the instructor scolded. He finsihed by explaining that "this is why the recovery team took so long this time.”

“It didn’t take me THAT long,” I said, still sweating and breathing a little rapidly, part from the adrenalin and part from the physical activity, but smiling now.

“It took you longer than it should have, what did you do to those guys to piss them off?” the instructor continued, finally grinning in spite of his efforts to hide it.. At that point we all laughed, but more importantly, knew what to do differently the next time.

We still didn’t know then if we were actually going to get the do the “live fire” final run since and that’s all there was left to do during our little campout. No final run meant no credit for the mandatory training. Most of us pulled out MREs while we awaited our fate. Within 10 minutes - just enough time to heat up an MRE, then put it away to get cold again, we were told to mount up and do it one last timefor all the marbles. This was it. The third day of the mandatory three days of training that caused us to spend a month in Kuwait. The practice paid off and we gave our best performance yet and were soon on our way back to the base to find out when we finally got to join in the war.

I have to admit that from a cot in the back of a 5-ton, in spite of the surprisingly cold temps at night, the desert sky was one of the most beautiful skies I’d ever seen. Extremely bright stars in a deep, velvety soft looking blue field. You have to take your pleasure where you can find it during trips like this.

OK, back to reality: before I sat down to do this tonight, I was provided with a copy of General Order # 2 which pretty much says no one in the military in [unspecified country] is adult enough to have or give the impression of having any kind of relationship with anyone, of any gender, other than working relationships (necessary for the mission) or for “unit sponsored esprit de corps activities.” Even “lawfully married couples” must apply for an exception to this policy to the Task Force Commander, and specify whether this exception is for “cohabitation” or “visitation.” FYI: General Order #1 is no alcohol.

Granted, there probably aren’t many of these “lawfully married” exceptions over here, but I can’t help but wonder whether or not that task force commander doesn’t have more important things to worry about than granting permission for married couples to “cohabitate” or even visit each other’s rooms.

As a high school teacher back home, I hear a lot about the seeming contradiction that an 18 year old can die for his country but can’t have a beer. To me, these aren’t comparable issues. I usually point out that our country provides many more significant opportunities to 18 year olds than simply “having a beer” in exchange for their voluntary service.

General Order #2 on the other hand, strikes me as just a bit contradictory. Perhaps I'm suffering from the same perspective paradigm that plagues my teenaged students, but here's how I see it: We’re asked to perform as adults 24/7/365 under conditions so bad that rectifying them justifies the loss of over 1,500 American lives, yet the order assumes we’re all horny teenagers turned loose from our parents for the first time, incapable of having social relationships with people with whom we’re forced to live in close quarters. We must be prepared for the possibility that they may die in front of us, but we can’t “participate in a relationship with” them unless it’s required by the mission.

OK, thanks for reading. Y’all have a good day.