When the Smoke Clears

And no, not Valentine’s day.

Most likely if you are reading this you are part of my group of friends out there who have known me for years and are checking in on occasion, or you are some of the great people I have met through this blog and a few others. I take it on faith you know yesterday was Veteran’s Day.

Sorry I didn’t post, I was out in the field again… with many combat veterans… and many more young ones in training.

In fact for this big event, somehow I was sorta in-charge of medical along with an Army nurse. I apparently had more experience in the area and knew the terrain better along with the skills of some of our medics. It was a decent sized training battalion we were covering. I picked the medics for my group and divided everyone else up. I wanted to get some familiarity with two medics I had not seen before.

Turns out I picked out 2 really good guys. One was CJ, the young PFC (Private, First Class) who let me know he became a combat medic and even earned his EMT certification, partly because of me. I have seen him out with the elite unit again and he excelled as a ground grunt and as a mountaineer, but I had never seen him as a medic. The other was a slightly older sergeant who had his combat lifesaver certification and wanted to be out there to put in some reserve duty time. He was also a combat veteran. Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan.

Know how you can tell someone who has been through a lot? They don’t talk about it. They don’t brag about it. They don’t play it up for all the world to hear, though there is a bit of humble pride in that laurel wreath around the rifle or the caduceus. (politicians take note) This man is one I will consider a new friend, too. He never assumed he knew anything, let alone everything. He was eager to learn while interested in providing the support and care at the level to which he was trained. All in all, a pleasure to be around and well into his 30s. It’s good to know he and his wife only live a few miles away. I’m sure the Army will lose him soon, as he wants to actually spend time with his wife. He also wants to complete his business degree. He will be a great asset to any company lucky enough to hire him. How would you feel knowing your project team was headed up by a man who has even had to keep a small group of infantry safe under fire for 8 days holding out in an abandoned facility in the middle of a hostile city? It takes some digging to find out about that, but I’d want that person working with me. Talk about grace under fire.

The other one, so young, so full of life and yet I thought he was far older than he really is. CJ has an incredible maturity to him that even exceeds his peers, though he has no deployments under his belt. But he has a great desire to be deployed. I can understand the desire, though I want him to further his education first.

And he is skilled. Not only is he smart at infantry maneuvers but he has some actual medical talent, not just training. He also admits readily where he is uncertain of things… the more clinic, medical, non-traumas are a weak area he says. Weaknesses. Only a real man (woman) has the strength to point those out to his/her team. That takes courage. It also proves he’ll be learning those skills rapidly and they will no longer be a weakness.

As we wandered from training zone to training zone, leaves shifting under feet, I noticed he was just about as quiet as I, sometimes more so (a skill I picked up from lots of running around the woods as a kid playing assassin.) Observing squad attacks from a hidden vantage point, he was able to teach me things to look for. Add to that, the running commentary of our big sergeant friend and for all three of us the whole weekend was spent learning.

I was able to teach them some things about ankle assessments and how to spot problems that a soldier isn’t telling you; silent, eyes-on assessment. If you are too invasive, they will watch you with suspicion and you may never learn enough to help prevent a problem. But you can observe. You can learn to tell about a recent injury or an old injury from their movement. And you can tell if they have been drinking enough water from several signs in their face. All this without distracting them from their training mission, but knowing enough to intervene to prevent a problem. What was even more fun was that CJ knew many of the ones out training, and when I pointed out the way someone was moving and said it indicated he had weak knees and probably sprained his right ankle 3 or 4 months ago, he smiled and said, “Yeah, exactly right. Sprained it on a run. But he’s limping on his left. Usually wraps his knees, too.”

“Sort of, but it’s more that he’s compensating on his left, rather than limping. Watch how the rolling movement is actually on the right…”

Towards the evening yesterday we hooked back up with the other medical teams at the Battalion Aid Station. They were getting ready to settle in for the night and I couldn’t blame them. They were centrally located to cover all their patrol bases that they had been wandering through during the day. Only my company’s patrol base was well away, more than a mile. We communed with our fellow medics, restocked supplies, then back out in the field. We intended to sleep near their patrol base, but just uphill and away.

After a final check of each squad, wrapping a couple of ankles, etc. we headed out their perimeter to our campsite in a little circle of trees. But the night was to be entirely tactical. The companies were not even to use their headlamps an hour after sunset, let alone start a fire. Neither did we. We pulled out our sleeping bags, some ponchos and huddled up for the night in the dark, only a bit of moonlight making its way through the thick forest. Our biggest fear was someone not seeing us and using us as a late night latrine. No need for warm rain.

Throughout the day when we were moving from one area to another, CJ and the sergeant talked, CJ asking questions, eager to learn more about the sergeant’s time in theater. I learned as well. I also learned CJ is like a puppy. He slept straight through two attacks in the night on the patrol base. Slept right through the machine gun fire… granted it was only blanks… and the yelling and other simulators going off just a few hundred meters nearby. The dew fell on our ponchos after the second attack. The cold night air just a little rougher thanks to a strong wind whipping up through a draw. Lying there in the woods I could hear the crisp leaves, growing louder as the stronger gusts approached, then moved on over the hills, so much like the ocean and yet so different, while CJ and the sergeant snored lightly.

The attacks awoke the sergeant. I can’t say he wasn’t expecting them to occur, but he did have that momentary reaction that can only be attributed to someone who has spent months or years in a combat zone. He, like me, awoke on the snapping of a twig nearby just before the guns started going off. Unlike me, he rolled and reached for a weapon, only finding his medical pack at first, then realizing where he was. Eventually we went back to sleep.

I awoke around the same time as the senior leadership and started pulling all my gear together and packing it up. I wanted my medics to be able to sleep, though. Always keep your medics well rested and warm. You never know when they are going to have to stay awake for days or when their hands are going to have to perform some very rapid, delicate work. Numb hands are no good.

Even though it had rained a little to dampen the leaves, I thought for certain all my rustling and rolling up of my sleeping bag and all would wake them. The sergeant sort of opened an eye at me; CJ, yeah, not so much. When I finally did wake both of them because it was getting close to time to move out, the boy had the NERVE to bitch about my snoring. (which the sergeant slept through, I might add.)

Excuse me? you can sleep through machine gun fire but a little snoring bothers you?

“I know no one is going to attack us out here. We’re in friendly territory for humans,” he explained, “but there are bears up here in these woods. It sounded like one was getting really close.”

The sergeant laughed. I looked up at the boy (he’s taller… and was uphill) and stared him down/up… whatever… until he cracked up. You know… as much as I respected him for being able to cut me down on occasion all day, even zeroing in on my buttons, a little hero-worship wouldn’t have been such a bad thing at that point.

It was also a pleasure to drive them both home rather than making them stick around through exfiltration and weapons accountability & cleaning since we had none.

Clarity. That’s what’s coming from these weekends. Three in a row now. More clarity about what makes me happiest. What a hell of a medical team they were.

So what did YOU do for Veteran’s Day?

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