The Taliban Don't Wave (33 page)

“Omer,” I said as I quickly began wrapping the bandage tightly around the top of Hassan's wound and the back of his neck. “You're going to stay here with Hassan, okay?” I ordered Omer, “Keep talking to him, keep asking him questions, and don't let him fall asleep, okay? Can you do that?”
We have to get going; there's no time for this!

“Yes, sir.”

“Whatever happens, don't leave this bunker until you're told it's safe, okay? Don't poke your head out—wait until someone comes to you. Stay here!” I shouted. I started running up the stairs as I told the two Canadians “Let's go, on me!” I ran out of the bunker and took off around the corner at a dead sprint, hoping we'd get to the ripped-apart soldier before he bled out.

He was right where I had abandoned him, his body horribly twisted as he coughed up pink froth and started to spasm.

“Sergeant, grab his legs. You, grab his middle. I've got his feet.” We all squatted down around him.

“One, two, three, lift!” We hoisted him up as gently as we could. I felt his legs twitching and my hands quickly became soaked with blood.

“Around the corner, go go go!” Even though he probably weighed only one hundred and thirty pounds, in his near-unconscious state he was incredibly hard to carry. His body was completely limp and no matter how hard we tried, he kept slipping out of our arms. I had to keep my TCCC bag scrunched under my armpit as I carried the Afghan, but I was struggling to do both.

I suddenly heard myself shout, “Medic!” but then realized,
The doc's busy; I'm TCCC qualified—I just became the medic!

“Careful, careful,” I said as I walked backwards to the nearest ANA bunker, next to the destroyed truck. Shamsallah ran over to us, carrying extra bandages.

“Open the tarp, move the tarp out of the way,” I said and motioned with my head, pointing at the bunker entrance. He ran down the steps and pulled the tarp back so we could enter. I went down the steps as carefully as I could, but only got a few feet into the bunker when my legs rammed into something. It was dark and my eyes were having a hard time adjusting from the brilliant sunlight to the pitch-black bunker. I strained to see what had stopped me and realized it was an American cot in the way.

“Shamsallah, please move that, quickly,” I said and again motioned with my head at the cot. He took a few seconds to figure out what I meant, and then—

“Holy fuck, get in there! WE'RE STILL EXPOSED OUT HERE!” the sergeant roared down at me.

I wanted to shout back, “I'm fucking
trying
!” but knew that wouldn't be helpful, so I took a quick breath and said in a calm voice, “Sergeant, there's a cot in the way. Shamsallah's moving it. He's shifting the cots as fast as he can. Please don't shout at me, okay? That's not what we need right now.”

“I . . . I'm sorry, sir,” he said, shame resonating in his voice as he realized panic had made him shout.

“Don't be sorry, it's okay. You're not the only one . . . I'm scared shitless right now! But we've got to get a grip so we can help this guy, because fuck me, he's in a bad way.” Shamsallah had finally gotten the last of the cots out of the way and I was able to walk backwards all the way into the bunker. We entered the bunker and slowly lowered the wounded man to the ground. I started pulling out the bandages from my pockets and ripped open my TCCC bag to get at my scissors.

I looked at the sergeant, who was gently holding the Afghan's bleeding head in his hands. “Sergeant, you take care of the wounds on his head. You,” I said to the young Canadian, “what's your name?”

“Pastel, sir.” He looked a helluva lot calmer than I felt.

“You're gonna take care of the wounds on his torso. After you've done your anterior primary, let us know and together we'll roll him so you can check posterior, okay?”

“Yep,” he said, and began unbuttoning the Afghan's shirt to get at his chest.

“I've got his legs,” I said, and swallowed nervously. They were bleeding heavily and obviously shattered. As I took in the scope of his injuries, my mind started to unravel.
Ah . . . I can't see, there's no light. Why doesn't someone get us a light? Where's the doc? Why can't they just open the tarp? I don't have my flashlight, this isn't fair. THIS ISN'T FAIR!

Sergeant MacVitty's cruel, hard voice took command and shouted over top of my smaller, panicking voice.
“Oi! Cunty!”
he raged.
“Stop whinging and moaning about what's fair and what ain't, and git to fuckin' work! Shut up and do the job!”

I took a few deep breaths, and then once I'd regained some calm, I took my scissors and began cutting the injured man's trousers from the ankle, all the way to his hips on both legs. I looked at his shins. The blast had broken his lower legs and thrust both his tibia bones out through the skin to the front. I quickly made two donut bandages and placed them over the protruding bones.

As I was prepping the bandages, I looked at the Afghan's torso. Pastel opened up his shirt to find two small holes above his left lung.
Entry wounds.

I looked at the Afghan's face, where the sergeant had begun applying bandages. The sergeant had to pull back a long, loose flap of skin and then bandage it back in place. I went back to his legs and started applying bandage after bandage to his numerous wounds. Some entry wounds were the size of a quarter, others the size of a penny, but he literally had about thirty holes peppered all over his legs. I looked at his upper thigh and there was a fist-sized chunk of flesh missing, right over the femoral artery.
Why wasn't that squirting blood? Must've just missed the artery.
I knew shrapnel could migrate, and I was afraid any second he would start shooting blood across the room, so I got out a tourniquet and began to apply it to his leg, going a few inches above the wound. I started cranking it and cranking it until I couldn't anymore, then locked it off in place. I looked for a pen to mark a “T” for tourniquet on his forehead, along with the exact time I put it on him, but I didn't have one.
I'll just have to remember and tell the doc.

As we worked feverishly to stop his countless wounds from bleeding him to death, his friend was right up close to his face, talking to him the entire time. At the start, the wounded soldier was muttering things back, but now he was becoming less responsive.
He's fading. What've we missed?

I feared he would soon become fully unconscious so I got out the pharyngeal airway from my TCCC bag. I applied the lubricating agent just like I'd been taught, and then put the long, rubber airway hose into his nose and down his throat. It would keep his airway open if he passed out.

I looked at Shamsallah and pointed to the bandages. “We need more bandages. Please, go and get more bandages.” He quickly grasped what I meant and ran out the door with no thought for his own safety. I hadn't heard any more shouts of “Incoming.”
Maybe the Brits had killed the enemy mortar team with their counter-fire. I hope they killed all those bastards, for what they've done!

Pastel said he was ready so we tilted the Afghan gently onto his side and saw two small holes on his back, over his other lung.
Entry or exit wounds? Damn it!
I got out the clear Asherman chest seal bandages and quickly sealed the wounds off so no air could get in. If he had a sucking chest wound, and it certainly seemed like he did, the bandage was designed so the air that was building up inside his chest cavity could escape through the plastic valve on the bandage.

Sergeant Park, the doc, poked his head into the bunker and asked what we were dealing with. I spoke for the group and said, “One ANA, multiple shrapnel wounds to his legs, two protruding tibias, and two entry wounds over his right lung anterior, two entry wounds left lung posterior.”
Did I say those backwards or was that right?
“Multiple cuts to the face and neck, we put a pharyngeal airway down his nose. Was semi-conscious five minutes ago, but now seems fully unconscious.”
Did I forget something? Oh yeah
—“And I put a tourniquet on his upper thigh.”

“Okay, good work guys,” the doc said, “but what about his eyes—are his eyes gone?”
Good question.
We all looked at each other. The doc waited.

“Have you checked his eyes?!” he asked, more agitated now.

“We don't know, we haven't checked,” I said. It was obvious none of us wanted to do it. The thought of peeling back his eyelids to find nothing but empty holes filled with muck was a little too much to bear.

“Oh, for God's sake,” the doc said and came down the steps. He gently nudged the soldier's friend out of the way and then deftly peeled back his eyelids. “No, they're still there.”

“Doc, with those four entry wounds, should we do a needle decompression?” He looked at me and then leaned closely to the soldier's mouth, listening carefully.

“No, he's got a good airway. Best to leave it, for now. Good work, I'll be back.”

Before he left I asked, “How many wounded have you got?”

He turned back to face me and used the nine-liner code. “So far, one VSA or Echo, two Bravo, five Charlie, one Delta.” That meant one guy was vital signs absent (dead), two guys were in need of urgent surgery, five guys were priority cases, and the last guy was considered routine.
Probably Hassan
with his head wound.

The nine-liner was the medical evacuation request form we used over the radio. Obviously, it was made up of nine separate lines that would have to be filled out accurately and sent up properly if we wanted the medical evacuation choppers to arrive on time, in the right spot, and carrying the right gear.

I couldn't help myself; I had to know. “Any Canadians?” Pastel and the sergeant both looked up at the doc.

“Negative, all Afghans. I gotta go.” He turned and pulled back the Hessian flap and walked back into the bright sunlight. Shamsallah came running back in and handed me more bandages. I was sweating like a madman, racing against the clock. I worked feverishly to seal off the soldier's leg wounds, and by the time I thought I'd gotten them all, I had applied twenty-seven bandages to his legs. Shamsallah had made three bandage resupply runs, just for us.

Ginge poked his head into our bunker and said, “Doc wants all the wounded outside, where he can see 'em.”
Fine, but
where are the damn choppers?

We looked at each other and then on my three-count we gently lifted our patient up into our arms. Shamsallah and the wounded soldier's friend helped us, and together we carried him outside and laid him down on one of several cots that someone had placed in a row. I looked around to take in the damage.

The Ranger was still smoking from under its hood, and the tent next to us was pockmarked with hundreds of tiny holes where the shrapnel had perforated it. Someone was shouting in the distance as Canadians and Afghans began to walk around the corner and come out of the nearest bunkers, carrying the wounded. Some of them were crying out in pain; some were unconscious. One Afghan had sat down by a tent and was crying into his hands.

The wounded were gently laid on the cots as the doc walked up and down, looking at them and making notes in his FMP.

He approached the soldier we'd been trying to save and told me to put him on his side, with his good side up, and place a sandbag under him to keep him in that position. I motioned to Shamsallah, who grabbed a sandbag, and together we put the soldier in the position that would help him the most. Canadians were running around and I could hear the THUMP from the other side of the wall as the Brits continued firing their mortars at the Taliban.

Sean walked over to me and asked if I was okay. He had looked at my uniform and saw that it was completely soaked in blood from my ankle up to my ribs from where I had been leaning over the bleeding soldier and pressed up against him. I told him I was fine, and asked if he needed help. I realized I'd been more of a labourer and less of a foreman, but he said there were more than enough chefs.

“Keep doing TCCC,” he said. “I'll let you know if I need you.”

“Fine. What's the ETA on the choppers?” It had seemed like a long time had passed since the call for a chopper would've gone up the chain.
Where were they? Why was it taking so long?

Sean shook his head in disgust. “They won't launch until we've given them the MIST!”

“Who gives a shit about the freaking MIST? We need those choppers, now!”

“I know, the warrant's giving them hell for it, we're trying to get them here . . .”

The doc was doing the best he could, but he was only one guy, so I ran over to help him collect the all-important MIST [method of injury, injury, signs, treatment given]. I started going from wounded to wounded to see if I could help, or if the guys needed bandages or tourniquets. I saw Stamps and my heart filled with pride—I knew he'd been working hard all afternoon, running around to help out where he could. All of the Canadians had been going above and beyond. Some of the OMLT guys had been out at the vehicle leaguer, and when they'd heard the FOB was being mortared, they'd put on their PPE and ran over to help, dodging incoming mortar rounds as they sprinted into the FOB.

A young soldier I'd never seen before ran up to us, holding a pen and paper, and asked about the MIST.
Again with the damn MIST!

“Hey!” I shouted at him. “Every single guy here got wounded by mortar rounds, that's all they need to know! We can send them the MIST when the birds are in the air! Get back in there, and tell them to launch,
now
! Stop waiting for the fucking MIST!” Everyone looked at me and then went back to work.
I shouldn't have snapped like that; that's not helping anyone.
I made a mental note to find the guy and apologize later.

He was just doing what he had been told to do. It wasn't his fault the choppers weren't taking off until they had every single tiny piece of information.
What happened to “As long as you send up lines one, three, six, and nine of the nine-liner, they'll launch, and you can give them the rest while they're en route?” Where the hell are they? My guy's fading, he's slipping away—and we're just standing here, helpless to stop it!