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| Articles: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired... |
Posted by
Dolorosa on Monday, April 22, 2002 - 04:17 AM PST
Alright, in case anyone was wondering where the hell I've been lately...well, here it goes. I have recently returned from a land of Camels, Caverns and Crazies... None worse for the wear, just a little weirded out. I figure it's worth telling so...here goes yah?
Day One: Sittin' on my ass at my little Okinawa Hospital, I get the call, grab my shit and hop onto a C-130 headed out. Theres a unit of mixed force military troops that need medical support. I say cool. Within thirty six hours I'm getting briefed in, and introduced to my boys. Sixteen or so Marines and Soldiers... Good folks, a few rednecks, a couple citykids, a few religious types... Your basic mix.
Day Three: Out on patrol with my guys...in the middle of the desert. We walk a lot, pretty soon they're feet start to hurt... So I break out the moleskin, one guy throws a temp so I hit him with some Motrin and everythings alright. Our first camp out was really freaky. We were all expecting Viet-fucking-nam... Instead we got boy scout camping badges. None of us could sleep, the only interesting thing that happened was somewhere, some little mouse thingie was getting it's ass kicked by something a little higher on the food chain. We just sat around shooting the shit, telling bad jokes, talking about girls, god and alcohol. For a couple hours they were trying to figure out why I wore torn up fishnets underneath the arms of my cammies... I told 'em insulation, but we know the real reason. And then the sun rose... And we started walking again.
My med-kit, or Mollybag, is really heavy... My arms were tired by then.
Day five or Six: walk... walk, walk... see something shiny in distance. Make a phone call... sit down, wait, watch... booom... walk, walk, walk. It's kinda' disgusting but the funniest and most interesting part of that time was when point man busted ass all the way up the line... the guy behind him followed suit, and so on, and so forth... I was giggling so hard I couldn't breath... finally the last guy, who'd eaten some bad MRI's just all out shit his pants. We we're laughing so fucking hard we couldn't go on any further. It was sad, very much a bunch of guys fucking around in the middle of nowhere. But it was fun. We holed up in a little box canyon after the third phonecall of the day and broke camp. By that time I could finally get to sleep.
Night Six: It's amazing what a seventeen year old kid can do to a bunch of guys sleeping in a group with a hand grenade. He had some friends I think... I don't really remember. I just sort of came to the next day while I was suturing up one of my boy's hands. I remembered this really weird feeling of my ear suddenly plugging up, and then someone started throwing sand everywhere... Some got in my eyes. it was really itchy.
Apparently we were tracked and ambushed, albiet briefly. Now we were twelve, and all in all, LT said we'd doubled their losses, not that I really cared...
I do remember doing CPR on a torso though, in retrospect it was horrible, but at that time it was kinda' funny. Lance Corporal pulled me off of him and said "Doc, I don't think CPR is gonna' help." I was laughing so hard I could hardly stand. I still can't figure out when I lost all the ammunition in my barretta, I musta' been shooting at something.
Day eight: Return to base, recover. We're local celebrities for all of a day and a night. Get plastered, tell wild made up stories. I'm still wondering if I have enough Motrin in my Mollybag to get through the night (I popped a 102.5 temperature during the patrol but I didn't want any of my guys to know). I think after my third double shot of capn' morgan I puked and passed out. Thats the nice thing about alcohol...you really don't have dreams or anything when you sleep...the only thing you have to worry about is aspirating your own vomit in the middle of the night (yuck).
Day ten: Getting ready to deploy back home, I did my job, time to go back. I'm sitting on the flight line, assorting everything in my Molly, found my missing tube of Atropine...whee. My Baretta's all shiny and new again...as completely useless as it ever was though. And then they bring in the prisoners. Six of the skinniest, sorriest looking guys I've ever seen in my life. Nothing but skin and bones... Like something you'd see in a Holocaust movie. They were bruised, ugly, and malnourished. But I have to admit it, they held their heads up. I was expecting a rain of catcalls, insults and general noisemaking hatred from our men... But instead, the prisoners only recieved long cold stares... They were going to a prison camp, wherein they would recive better food, better treatment, and better privilages than the majority of them men who are out there trying to kill them... I slept on the ground, they get a bed and a DVD. Huh... At least I have enough Motrin finally. They don't have Motrin.
And then we hear about the Canadians.
Oooh shit. How the hell does someone drop a half-million dollar bomb ACCIDENTALLY, on our ALLIES!! The sheer brutal absurdity of it smacked me in the face... And I suddenly realized. Soldier, Marine, Sailor... And, whatever the fuck you want to call an Airforce guy... Tere aren't heros, we aren't better, faster, stronger... We aren't the few and the proud. We're just a bunch of people... Some smart, most dumb... Most lucky, some dead. We're just fucking people.
Except for me, 'cause I got finshnets.
So here I am, back at my home on Okinawa Japan.
I turned twenty-one out in the desert and we had a big celebration here...April 3rd 1981 I was born, but I celebrated it on the eighteenth. It was fun.
Where was I? Ah yeah... I can now say, I have been to a war... And in all honesty I can say, for the most part it was boring. A couple hundred hours of nothing... And seventy seconds of absoloute chaos. No time for heroics, dramatic scenes or nothing... Just sand puffing around, me looking for my Molly, and Military types doing well... Military stuff.
I hate to disillusion it, no Saving Private Ryan, not even Starship Troopers...if real war was made into an accurate movie...it'd get bad ratings, at least now days.
But now I'm back, to 'cause random acts of absurdity like usual. Thank God, Goddess, Anemone, my Spiderman Underoos, the Door and that little buggy thing over there...
It's good to be back home.
Dolo
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| Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired... | Login/Create an account | 8 Comments |
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by Comedian (comedian@callatg.com)
on Apr 22, 2002 - 05:18 AM
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Drive on, it don't mean nothin' my children love me but they don't understand, and I got a woman who knows her man drive on.
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by Schizo on Apr 22, 2002 - 05:46 AM
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You can tell the face of war has changed when you hear the news bulletins every time 1 or 2 or 4 or 5 Americans get killed during this conflict. If they reported all the American deaths in, say, World War II, they'd have to do it 24-7.
Now we have wars where death is news. Wow.
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by necromancer (raina_dillon@hotmail.com)
on Apr 22, 2002 - 06:18 AM
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OMG! What an experience!
(like the fishnets)
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Reach out and kill some one.
by Dolorosa on Apr 22, 2002 - 08:45 AM
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Seriously...war now days, shit...no guns, glory and action...we don't need nukes or anything like that, we need friggin' AT&T...heh heh.
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by kat_vamp (catvamp@msn.com)
on Apr 22, 2002 - 12:53 PM
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I'm glad you're back and safe, Dolo! The God(dess) was with you! It sounded like you experienced Hell there for that 70 seconds...enough that you don't remember much! And it had to be bad enough that you went temporarily nuts trying to give that guy CPR. I am really sorry that you are over there and having to go through that shit. I hope they don't send you out again...it would be sad to lose someone that I am used to seeing write such good communication. All that stuff you tell us about is so scary to me! I think you ARE brave...and the others that are having to go through this fucked-up shit, too. I know what Vietnam did to my brother, and it was just a "Police Action" (sarcasm dripping thickly.) I'm also sorry for everyone else involved in this thing...our people and everyone else, including the small, brown, emaciated, proud men who are trying to defend their country and beleifs. This whole thing is just sad. It's good to have you home, Dolo. Keep yourself safe, and keep us informed.
With MUCH sincerety:
catvamp
PS: Keep the fishnets, they're good luck! *giggle*
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by Xaoswolf (Xaoswolf@hotmail.com)
on Apr 23, 2002 - 02:31 PM
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Good to have you back Dolorosa, and Happy Birthday. If you're ever in the Pittsburgh (I'm too poor to go see you in Okinawa, damn my inability to save money and the dvd's I waste it on) area, I'll have to throw a big bash for ya.
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Re: Back from Afghan, and boy are my arms tired...
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Apr 24, 2002 - 10:43 PM
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Dolo, I'm very sorry you had to go through that...I know it's what you're trained for and all, but nobody should have to do that or go through that.
NObODY.
I'm glad you're safe and "okay"....take care.
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