Ashley's War (31 page)

She returned her attention to her aging NODs.

And then, from nowhere, came the thundering boom of explosions. It was as if the ground had turned itself upside down and begun shaking.

The blast propelled Nadia some dozen feet into the air and she came down hard, landing on her head, her face now buried in the dirt.

A
shley and Kris Domeij had been standing on a pressure plate that was attached to other plates in a system known as a daisy chain, which is rigged to create multiple explosions when someone steps onto one section. Chris Horns, a young private from Colorado serving his first deployment alongside the veteran Ranger, had also been caught by the blast. The whole grounds had been rigged to light up like a firecracker. But it had been the boot of another team member, stepping onto a plate in another part of the compound, that set off the daisy chain that tore through the night. He had badly injured his foot in the explosion but nevertheless heroically proceeded to
clear the building, hobbling on his shattered foot to get people out of the way and prevent any further explosions that might harm anyone else on his team.

Just beyond the compound, Ashley lay still on the ground. She, too, had been sent airborne by the power of the explosion, and several Rangers were hovered over her, wrapping a tourniquet around one of her legs. There were others injured as well, including an Afghan translator. A medic soon ran to Ashley’s side and began asking her questions.

“Where are you from?”

“The U.S.A.,” Ashley replied.

“What state?”

“Ohio.”

Minutes later she was loaded onto a helicopter headed for Kandahar Combat Support Hospital, the biggest on the base. While the helicopter flew through the night a medic worked to give Ashley the care she needed. He tried to stop the bleeding, checked her pulse and blood pressure, tried to keep fluids moving through her system. But her vital signs were dropping.

N
adia, still lying on the patch of grass, heard muted signs of chaos in the background around her, but it sounded miles away. A concussion from the blast had blunted her hearing, and she was struggling through the haze to get her bearings and figure out what had happened.

Her first question, once she was capable of a complete thought: Where’s Ashley?

She was alone in the darkness, seemingly far from the others, and her fear was rising.

Oh, my God, they’re not going to find me, Nadia thought as the ringing in her ears grew louder. It was pitch black, in the middle of the night, and there she was, lying in the dirt wearing camouflage. The fact that she was a civilian made her feel even more vulnerable,
as if there were some invisible list of important military personnel and she was at the bottom of it.

I am never going to get out of here. The Taliban are going to find me here on this soil tomorrow and this village is going to have me for breakfast.

Just then a medic arrived. She hadn’t been forgotten after all.

“Are you Nadia, the interpreter?” the medic asked. He rolled her over on her back, so she now faced the star-filled sky.

“Are you Nadia, the interpreter!?” he asked louder this time.

On his third try the sound finally broke through to Nadia’s ears.

“Yes, yes!
” she cried.

An Afghan army soldier rushed over and asked what he could do to help; Nadia heard the medic tell him to grab the other end of the stretcher and help him transport her to the helicopter. Nadia knew she was injured, but couldn’t tell where or how. Beyond a vague pain in her arm, she couldn’t feel where the wound originated. She looked up and saw an injured Ranger and again wondered where her teammate was.

“Where’s Ashley?” she asked again. Someone replied she was okay, and then a strong dose of some sort of painkiller took her out of the moment and away from her pain. All she was aware of was the rhythmic thudding sound of the helicopter’s rotors.

K
andahar Combat Support Hospital began as a temporary facility run first by the Americans and then, starting in 2006, by Canadian forces. Constructed of plywood that presented a fire risk, the facility was full of dust; it had just eleven inpatient beds, mounted on trestles, the most basic lab facilities and a portable ultrasound machine. Over the next three years, under Canadian leadership, the hospital grew to roughly two dozen beds, three operating rooms, a blood bank, and ultramodern radiography and ultrasound capabilities. Among the staff were highly specialized neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, a maxillofacial surgeon, and mental health experts. The
hospital treated NATO patients, Afghan National Security Forces, and civilians, and by 2009 it boasted more than a 95 percent survival rate.

That same year the U.S. Navy assumed control of the combat hospital and its state-of-the-art capabilities grew even further; the expected increase in military operations in the area meant that the hospital had to be prepared for a potential rise in the number of injured reaching its doors. The hospital innovated in trauma care by developing a system in which a team of doctors, nurses, radiologists, surgeons, and staff gathered around each patient and worked together in an “assembly line-like” fashion to deal with their wounds. This strategy was so successful in Kandahar it was later applied to other crisis areas, including Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, and over time was introduced back home in NATO nations.

By the spring of 2010, a highly reinforced brick and mortar building designed by German engineers and built by a Turkish contractor under NATO supervision had replaced the original facility. It was designed to provide the most advanced care in Afghanistan, and opened just before the summer fighting season, which now included a bulked-up American force as a result of the December 2009 surge. The new combat hospital had a blood bank, imaging capabilities of every kind, and surgical, orthopedic, and critical care facilities; it looked like the kind of hospital you might find in the middle of a European city.

Even before the first patients began arriving that night, an advance call had warned the trauma team of the incoming injuries—including a number of “alphas,” shorthand to signify the highest-priority soldiers with the most serious wounds. The hospital staff immediately fell into its own formation: trauma team members gathered to wait for the injured while the team leader coordinated care with nurses, medical technicians, anesthesiologists, and surgeons of various specialties who could be activated if needed. Radiologists
often worked right there by the bedside, reading images from their patients in real time to help doctors and nurses make the best decisions in the critical minutes and moments they had available. The doctors and nurses stood in the quiet, cool trauma center and knew that their patient bays were about to turn into hell. Mass casualties like this remained a rarity, though since the surge began the hospital had seen a number of serious injuries, many of which resulted from IEDs. A medic stood with her elbows perched on an empty stretcher, staring straight ahead and waiting for the wounded.

When the helicopter landed the EVOC—Emergency Vehicle Operators Course—team was already on the tarmac, ready to move the incoming patients into armored ambulances. They rushed on board to tend to the injured. A nurse on the EVOC team for the first time that night reached a stretcher and then stopped.

There lying among the Ranger wounded was a female soldier.

The nurse tried to keep moving, tried to hide from her colleagues the look of shock she now wore as she and her combat team of EVOC professionals went about their finely synchronized movements, but this professional who had hardened herself to the many horrible things she had seen in this war now encountered something for which she was entirely unprepared: a beautiful young lieutenant on a stretcher fighting for her life.

Everyone in the hospital knew that women were out there on these operations, but they hadn’t expected to see one so critically injured as to require their care. The stunned expression on the nurse’s face made it clear that this was the first time she had attended to such a gravely injured female soldier.

The helicopter’s smell—a mixture of fresh dirt, drying blood, helicopter fuel, and layers of human sweat from the many injured soldiers flying in all at once—was something the EVOC team would never forget. In moments the wounded were in the ambulances and speeding to the trauma bays.

“There’s a female!” a medic shouted amid the chaos. Otherwise the choreography at the trauma center followed the usual script, as the ambulance’s back doors flew open and a hive of staff burst into action. Ashley lay on the first set of stretchers and was lifted by blue-gloved men; for a moment, she was suspended in air between the black of the sky and the ambulance’s glowing red brake lights as the staff placed her on a gurney. As she was rapidly wheeled into the trauma bay a Navy serviceman sidestepped along the gurney as it moved, pressing his hands to Ashley’s chest to perform CPR. The blast had shredded parts of her uniform, but the two patches on her right arm remained intact. On top was an American flag. Below it, a rectangular patch with white letters against a black background that spelled out the letters
CST.

Once inside the trauma team went to work with jaw-set silence. In each bay they drew IV lines, controlled bleeding, checked vitals, and took X-rays. They did everything they could do to find and maintain a heartbeat for each of the wounded. Under the harsh, bright hospital lights the extent of the soldiers’ injuries became starkly clear. Ashley was pale from the loss of blood. The explosion had hit her just below the torso.

In the hospital that had been graveyard-still moments before the injured arrived, the desperate bustling of short-lived hope ruled the room. But the expressions of horror that ringed every face in the room betrayed the truth. There was no hope for the three most injured soldiers, including the female whose presence had so shaken the trauma team.

Doctors and nurses stood wordless before the line of blue curtains that separated each trauma bay. A nurse approached a large whiteboard that listed the status of every patient. Under the category “Injuries,” she added three letters for each soldier: “IED.”
Improvised explosive device.

Behind one of the blue curtains Ashley lay in her uniform above a green woolen military blanket. The doctors and nurses had done
everything they could to save her, but the concussive force of the blast had proved more potent than their healing powers and all the modern technology that surrounded them.

Ashley’s heart had stopped. She was gone.

A
nne was working in the Tactical Operations Center and speaking to a group of Rangers when she spotted something unusual in the hallway. People were huddled in animated conversation, not the usual, low-key, take-it-all-in-stride, Ranger kind of way.

She asked one of the Rangers what was going on.

“The platoon got hit,” he answered.

Before she had a chance to react, another Ranger pulled her gently to the side.

“There are potential casualties,” he said. “And it’s possible that one of them is Ashley.”

Anne nodded in reply, and in a moment she was gone, racing to retrieve the keys to a pickup truck she and Ashley had commandeered some weeks before to shuttle back and forth from the DFAC. They had a variety of cuisine choices on base, from Belgian to Indian, but Ashley always favored the East Asian dining facility. Earlier that same day she had enjoyed her usual—a grilled sandwich plus her favorite noodles, which she doused in a red, sweet chili sauce she loved.

“See you in a couple of hours,” Anne had said to her partner as she walked out. Both women had expected to be on mission that night, but in the end Anne’s team hadn’t gone out. “We’ll grab dinner when you get back.” Dinner being breakfast, they often went for omelets. Ashley liked the veggie omelets in particular.

Just another night.

Now Anne was hurtling toward the combat hospital so she could be there when the soldiers started arriving—just in case it was Ashley. She hurried inside and followed the signs for the emergency room. When she bounded into the trauma center she found a scene
of quietly managed chaos. So many doctors and nurses silently hurrying from one hospital bay to another, the only sounds coming from respirators and the occasional calling out of a patient’s vital signs.

Anne spotted a senior Ranger in the hallway. She was about to ask about Ashley, but he spoke first.

“Do you want to say goodbye?” he asked.

He said no more, but handed her some of Ashley’s things. Then, taking a few steps alongside her, he walked toward the bay where Ashley lay. The blue fabric curtain hung half open.

Anne struggled to process what she was seeing. Her teammate, her partner, her friend, was gone. They had worked out together the day before, had eaten breakfast together that very evening. The letters
IED
on the whiteboard coldly confirmed the fact, but Anne couldn’t believe it.

Anne walked over to Ashley and closed the curtain behind her. She lowered herself into the chair next to her and took Ashley’s hand, then embraced her friend. Then she took her by the hand once more and bowed her head.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “Just so sorry I couldn’t protect you. I am so sorry that I couldn’t stop this from happening, Ashley.”

Her teammate was still dressed in her battle clothes and her blond hair streamed out of its ponytail. Her face was smudged by dirt but looked peaceful.

Minutes passed and Anne sat there alone with her head bowed and her hand in her friend’s. Finally, a chaplain came to say a final prayer and perform last rites. A young medic stood quietly behind the chaplain, ready to move Ashley’s body from the room. He looked uncomfortable, and Anne knew his arrival was her cue to go, but she wanted them both out of there. She needed more time. But there was none. Slowly, she stood up and said goodbye for the final time.

A small crowd of men remained in the corridor paying their respects to their brothers-in-arms: Private First Class Christopher
Horns, one of their newest teammates, who had joined the Rangers earlier that year; and Sergeant First Class Kris Domeij, their much-loved leader. Next to them lay Ashley White. Three soldiers with such different stories from such different places: Santa Ana, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Marlboro, Ohio. They had little in common other than their commitment to serving the United States. One was twenty-nine and on his fourteenth deployment; another was just twenty, serving his first. And one was a National Guard member who answered the call to join a new, all-female, all-Army special operations team. Now history would link them forever.