Walk in My Combat Boots Read online

  As soon as I know he’s out and clear, I jump out and jump back over the wall. Immediately we back off enough so the birds can drop fire.

  I catch my breath and think to myself, I don’t think I can walk anymore.

  I fall over.

  I’ve been running on straight adrenaline, it was the only thing keeping me going, and now I’m starting to come off of it and my body realizes how tired it is, and I collapse.

  I lie on my back in between rows inside a grape orchard, waiting for the fire to come, and I start thinking about Kevin. I pray he’s okay, wherever he is. Safe.

  We’re going to go home, together, I keep telling myself.

  The birds arrive and destroy the trench line from one end to the other.

  JODI MICHELLE PRITCHARD

  Jodi Michelle Pritchard’s father was in the Air Force. She was born in Ohio, and when she was six months old she moved to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia—a one-horse town that had one stoplight. An only child and a self-described tomboy, Jodi loved playing in the dirt with G.I. Joe figures, and at an early age she fell in love with the military. Her great-grandfather served in World War I, her grandfather in World War II, and her father volunteered to go to Vietnam. Jodi wanted to continue her family’s military legacy and, like her father, joined the Air Force. In August of 1998, with a certification as a national registered paramedic, she attended basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. She’s a flight nurse in the West Virginia Air National Guard. Her current rank is major.

  My turn comes in 2003. I’m going to Iraq, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

  We board the C-141 military transport plane with our medical equipment bags, flight gear, and chemical gear. IV pumps, cardiac monitors, and all the critical medical equipment we need are already all laid out, but we have to configure the space by hanging straps and putting up poles for our litter stations.

  I also have my personal bag with me. It contains my death letter, my final message to my loved ones. I hope to God I don’t need it.

  I’m a senior airman but, at twenty-three, the youngest of the group.

  Tonight, we’re flying to Baghdad, which is not only the safest, most secure spot for us to land, it’s also the most central location to collect our patients: wounded soldiers, children, even prisoners. We’ll load them up and make the six-hour flight back to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

  Our pilot briefs us before we take off. “Listen, when we get into Iraqi air space, we have to go dark.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “We kill the lights and go in under night vision. You guys will have to use your goggles. Then we’re gonna do an assault landing.”

  Oh, my gosh. I’ve done a practice assault landing on a C-130. A 141 is a completely different plane. A 141, I’ve heard, has to basically do a spiral in order to get to the ground.

  When we hit Iraqi air space, everything goes black—no lights, just night. I’m buckled in. The loads block all the windows, and we can’t get up and see what’s happening outside.

  I put on my helmet and flak vest.

  The loadmaster looks at me and says, “You have to sit on it.”

  “Sit on what?” I ask.

  “Your flak vest,” he says. “When we spiral down to land, they’ll shoot at us, and the bullets can potentially come through the plane. Because of their direction, if you’re sitting on your vest, you’ll have a much better chance at not getting shot.”

  “Well, why do I gotta wear a helmet then?”

  Everyone starts laughing, including the loadmaster. It’s a comical moment, but I’m thinking: What the hell did I join?

  We’re all sitting on our flak vests when we go radio silent, though we can hear our strapped-down loads clattering against the plane floor.

  There’s no chatter among us, but on our headsets, we can hear the pilot, copilot, and engineer synchronizing, going through their checklist. “Okay,” I hear the pilot say to the copilot, “we’re starting our descent.”

  The plane starts a hard-left rudder turn.

  Starts to bank.

  Then we start to do a spiral. It’s like a huge corkscrew—a roller coaster from hell.

  And it keeps going and going and going.

  The pilot says, “Gunfire, eleven o’clock.”

  I can hear it, the gunfire happening outside.

  They’re shooting at us.

  The copilot says, “Gunfire, two o’clock.”

  Even if the windows weren’t blocked, I couldn’t see the gunfire because I’m not on night vision. But the pilots can see it, and the plane is spiraling and spiraling—

  Bam, we’re on the ground, pulling back the engines.

  I have no idea what’s about to happen next.

  They lower the ramps. A representative from the hospital and one from MASF—the Mobile Air Staging Facility—come on board, hand us paperwork, and start talking, only we can’t hear them because the plane’s engine is still running. Why haven’t they shut down the plane?

  I quickly find out why: the airport is hot. The base is getting hit by multiple mortars.

  “I can’t hear you—we can’t hear you,” I shout. “Just bring them on board, we’ll deal with it.”

  We load the patients and take off. We have to corkscrew up for the same reason we had to corkscrew down—to avoid the antiaircraft threat.

  Ten of our twenty patients are stretched out on litters. Good God, these poor things—some of them are all shot up, and some have lost limbs. One soldier is in a torturous-looking metal traction device locking together the ball of the hip to the femur bone. The contraption looks straight out of the horror movie Saw.

  We run around with rolls of white medical tape, tear off an inch or two, and stick it to each pillow. On the tape, we write the patient’s pain scale, the wound location, the medication and dosage he receives.

  We have to treat the patients while also dealing with the stresses of flying—like the g-forces which can be a detriment to a patient’s IV bag. We’re constantly adjusting IV bags—and we’re constantly looking in on the man in the traction device. His leg bones, held together by pins, rattled during takeoff, and they rattle every time we hit turbulence, causing him massive pain even though we’re trying our best to keep his leg as padded as possible.

  Someone screams to use the rest room. He wants to get off the litter but can’t because he’s missing a leg.

  Someone screams for narcotics. Beside him, another patient sits quietly, staring. With all that’s going on inside his head, he can barely answer our questions.

  I check on a soldier who is missing half of his face. He looks up at me and says, “Ma’am, I need to know when this plane’s going to land. I need to know when I can get back to Iraq.”

  “You’ve been shot, honey. Why don’t we give this some time, okay? You’ve been through a lot.”

  “No, I want to go back.”

  “I understand that. I get it. And I want you to go back. I do. But first we’ve got to get you to Ramstein so the doctors can take care of you. Let your body heal, and then we’ll get you back.”

  “I’m good, I want to go back, I’m ready.”

  He’s not the only soldier who says this to me during the flight. All the guys on board want to go back. Every single one.

  That same year, our commander brings us into a room to explain our next mission.

  “Your crew has three critical care nurses, and you’re one of the most highly qualified teams we have here at Ramstein,” he tells us. “We have three patients who are pretty sick.”

  “How sick?” I ask.

  “They’re going to die. They’re going home to die. We need to fly them to Bethesda, Maryland. You need to keep them alive until you get to Walter Reed.”

  You can do this, I tell myself. “Okay,” I tell the commander. “We’ve got this.”

  We’re given the plane’s tail number. The crew—all five of us—get out of our car and find the plane w
ithout a problem. I step on board.

  Freeze.

  What the hell is going on?

  The front half of the plane is filled with caskets. Six of them.

  Soldiers are draping an American flag on each one.

  We stand there, in shock. I take a deep breath and turn to my captain, Gino Crotchwell. “Okay,” I say to him. “Obviously, we’re on the wrong plane. I’ll call and reconfirm.”

  I radio in the tail number. The answer is quick: we’re on the right plane.

  Joining us for this mission is a critical care transport team. We get the plane configured for our three patients, who come on board unconscious and unresponsive. After we get them settled, we find out they’re being accompanied by what we call PAX—meaning passengers.

  I pull Gino aside. “Putting people on a plane with a flying ICU on one half and a flying morgue on the other—they won’t be able to handle that.”

  “I hear you,” Gino says. “But we’ve got to get these guys home.”

  “They won’t be able to sit with us, because of all the medical equipment—and we need room to move around so we can care for our patients properly. That means—”

  “I know.”

  “—they’ll have to sit close to the caskets.”

  Gino nods in understanding, takes in a deep breath. Holds it.

  “We’ve got to get these guys home,” he says again.

  Before the passengers board, I gather the small group—mostly male soldiers and one woman dressed in civilian clothing. I gently explain what to expect inside the plane and then ask them if they’re okay with this.

  The men say they are. I look to the woman and say, “Ma’am, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she replies. “I’m okay.”

  We take off. A couple of hours into the flight, some of the passengers get up and move around a bit. I walk over to the caskets to say a prayer. A soldier is standing next to one, his head down, his face etched in grief.

  “That’s a medic right there,” he says, nodding with his chin to the casket in front of him. “It was his last mission.”

  He takes a deep breath, his voice shaky when he says, “I was with him when he got shot and killed.”

  He shows me a picture of a man wearing sunglasses and his full uniform. Blond hair, just as young as can be.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m taking him home.” He swallows. “I’m just going to take him home now.”

  I quickly gather myself and then return to check on my patients. They’re doing fine. The woman in the civilian clothes, I see, is crying. I tell my crew I’m going to go up there to make sure she’s okay.

  “Ma’am?” I gently ask. “Would you like to go up to the cockpit, get out of this environment?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t need to go anywhere.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That casket right there,” she says, pointing. “That’s my husband.”

  Oh, my God.

  “He died in the UN bombing,” she says. “I had to come over and identify the body. Now I’m bringing him home.”

  I can’t even begin to imagine the nightmare this poor woman finds herself in. “Ma’am, I’m so very sorry for your loss. If there’s anything I can do—anything—please understand I’m here for you.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  When we land, we accompany our patients to Walter Reed in an AmbuBus, a supersized white ambulance painted with a big red cross.

  We arrive at the hospital, get our patients sorted out inside, and return to the bus to retrieve our equipment. We’re all exhausted. We’ve been up and working for nearly sixteen hours.

  I grab a heart monitor. I’m rolling it out of the AmbuBus when I feel a tug on my flight suit. I turn around and see a little girl with curly hair. She’s five, maybe six. It’s night and chilly out, and she’s wearing only little white stretch pants and a little white shirt.

  I also notice a frantic woman standing directly behind the girl.

  “Is this your mom?” I ask the girl.

  She nods. “Did you bring my daddy home?”

  I get down on one knee. “What’s your daddy’s name, sweetheart?”

  She tells me.

  Her father is one of the patients I brought home to die.

  “I did,” I say, feeling sick all over. “I did bring him home.”

  “Is he okay?”

  I glance at the woman. It’s obvious she hasn’t seen her husband yet but is fully aware of his grave condition.

  “Can I see him?” the girl asks me. “Can I tell him I love him?”

  “Sweetheart,” I say, “you’ll be able to go in to see him soon.”

  And then I lose it. The woman does, too. I know I’ll carry this moment with me for the rest of my life.

  The rage and everything else that memory drums up, the way it makes me feel inside—I don’t want to talk about it with anyone. I can’t talk about it even now, all these years later.

  It’s become a problem.

  A friend of mine suggests I seek counseling.

  The psychologist is awesome.

  I learn that it’s okay to feel angry. Or hurt or sad or whatever. Feeling these things doesn’t mean I’m beneath anyone or that I’m a social outcast. I’m not a detriment.

  What I am is human.

  And humans are not invincible. And while that may seem like common sense to some people, there are those of us who bury our feelings about difficult topics. Then, when we’re reminded of these feelings, we think we’re not right. We think we’ll get labeled by other people as someone who has mental problems.

  “But you’re not,” the psychologist tells me several times. “You’re human, and it’s okay to have a problem.”

  It takes me a long time to be okay with that.

  Takes me even longer to tell this story.

  And the remarkable thing? Even though I still feel the hurt as I say the words, it feels good to be able to talk about it.

  I have a full sleeve tattoo dedicated to the patients I’ve lost over the years. It’s a reminder of what I’ve seen overseas, what I went through over there. It’s also a reminder for me to remember that it’s okay to feel the way I do.

  I wouldn’t trade my life for anything in the world. I love wearing the uniform.

  DON STEVENS

  Don Stevens grew up in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. His father served in the Air Force for twenty years, first as Security Forces and then, during the second half of his career, in physical fitness, where he trained Air Force boxing teams. When Don graduated from high school in 1990, he decided to follow in his father’s and brother’s footsteps and join the Air Force. That November, he began basic training. He deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and central Africa. He is a chief master sergeant in the US Air Force’s Special Operations Command. Don is also the chief, or senior enlisted leader, for the Special Tactics Training Squadron, which takes care of training combat controllers, pararescue men, special operations, tactical air control parties, and special reconnaissance operators.

  You’ve got to be ready every day. Every single day. There are no excuses.

  When I land at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2008, I drag my boxes to my mud and rock accommodations. It looks like the Alamo. It’s got a metal door with a latch and that’s it.

  I’ve been on the ground for maybe an hour and a half when the base starts receiving 105-millimeter rockets—big, gigantic rounds that shake the earth.

  This is my second trip to Afghanistan. I’m a war-fighting singleton—a JTAC, or joint terminal attack controller. I control aircraft and, using sensors and aircraft imagery, pinpoint where the enemy is and put ordnance on targets.

  I meet my new teammates. As we go out on our mission to find these rocket cells, my lungs remind me that I’m now nearly thousands of feet above sea level. These guys have been here for four
months, so they’re acclimated.

  On top of that, I’m wearing the required plates and armor, carrying a radio and batteries on my back, so I’m not as light as the others. I’m really glad I’ve put in the effort to get in physical shape.

  I’m also thirty-seven, older than most of these guys. Back in late 2003, when I was thirty-two and working in the Air Force’s Security Forces, I decided to make a drastic career change and made the move to combat controller—a rigorous two-year retraining process.

  I’m physically and mentally prepared—which is good because these guys are watching. They don’t want a liability on their team. I’ve got to earn their trust and develop relationships.

  My vehicle rolls over an IED. The vehicle behind me gets the brunt of the explosion, but the blast still jars my skull.

  I look out the doors and hatches. Fortunately, everyone appears to be okay.

  Right now, I’m basically in a black hole, without any aircraft support. I scan for threats.

  I don’t see any.

  What I do see is a nearby hill. If I’m going to establish comms, I’ll have to make my way up the higher ground, get a signal. I exit the vehicle.

  We get ambushed.

  Start taking effective fire.

  To get out of this alive, I’ll have to run up that hill.

  I have no choice.

  I make my way up the hill. Rounds flying all over, I use my satellite radio to call our command and control (C2) node while returning fire. It’s not easy, but it’s what I need to do in this moment of conflict. Prioritizing my part in a given mission has become second nature for me—as it does for every soldier. I have to protect myself and the team.

  “You’ve got two F-18s en route,” the C2 node says. “They’ll be on station between five and ten minutes.”

  Relief washes over me.

  Then I see the enemy. They’re very close to me, their faces vivid. One of them looks like a kid. He could be nineteen, maybe even twenty-five, but to me he might as well be fifteen or twelve.