Ranger Medic memoir for sofrep

Hey Doc, wake up!
I wasn't...
I didn't even finish saying, I wasn't sleeping.  The door slammed shut and Josh had moved on to wake up the next chu,  A chu was an 8x8 cell like, connex box that we lived in while working in Takrit Iraq.  NCO's and officers got there own, privates typically had to double up.  Even with two overgrown Ranger privates in an 8x8 room it was still hands down the best living conditions that I had experienced on any of my deployments.  These kids today just don't know how good they have it.
This must be important, Josh usually talks shit for at least a couple of minutes.  I glance over at the clock, it's 16:00 so most of our guys were just waking up.  I poked my head out of the door to see a handful of guys headed to the makeshift plywood JOC.
What's up??
Come on Doc, let's go.  Mission brief in 5.
As usual I had no clue of what was going on.  Somehow the medic always seems to evade the chain of information passed through the platoon.  I decide that shower shoes aren't the best footwear choice for this occasion and quickly get dressed.  I walk in just in time to not get more than a dirty look from my platoon sergeant.  I half heartily listen while a certain officer that most everyone in our company had a great disdain for babbled on about two guys in a safe house that we would be our primary kill/capture objectives.  We would fast rope in utilizing UH60 "black hawk" helicopters.  He said some other things but honestly I was hungry and this was about as routine a wake up call as most college kids alarm clock.  We had only been on this deployment for a month and had already executed dozens of successful direct action missions.
Wheels up at 19:00.  So by the time that medal hungry Major finished his bloviating, we would have a little under two hours to eat and get our mission essentials together.  For me that meant making sure that I had plenty of snacks in what I referred to as my "moral pouch"  I'm telling you right now a watermelon jolly rancher is better than Christmas morning to a six year old when you've been on an objective for two days!  I will also tell you that half of being a good medic is about keeping up the moral of your guys.  When we were on the QRF for operation Red Wing I handed out a lot more candy than trauma medicine!
The boys from the 160th special operations aviation regiment (SOAR) pick us up right on time, which as usual was just past sun down.  Those guys are about as nocturnal as they come and more than once I was grateful for their outstanding ability to operate under the dark of night.  The feeling of letting your feet dangle out of the door of a black hawk helicopter a couple of hundred feet off the deck is unmatched.  On this day, however, I was pushed to the back jump seat which meant that I would be one of the last guys on the ground.  Josh takes his fire team to the front door as the black hawk pulled away showering us all with BB sized pebbles and debris from the open field that we had recently landed in.
We are less than 100 meters to the target house as we begin to advance.  Second squad was approaching from the side of the building.  Weapons squad was set in a blocking position behind the target house in the event that anyone attempted to run.  As we moved closer to the tiny house in the middle of that field it happened.....
I feel the heat from the blast from 40 meters away, everything is white, sound is reduced to a high pitch buzzing and then, silence.  There is nothing.  Time stops.  I wait to hear someone scream out for the medic.  I wait for something, anything.  Every ounce of air has been drawn from me as I wait, a lifetime in that single breath, I wait.  As my eyes regained focus I realize that the blast came from the exact position that second squad was just in.  The predator drown feed would later show the blast's heat pattern completely white out the screen and erase the six Rangers that stood within a couple of meters of the suicide bomber's position. Air rapidly enters my lungs the way it does after you've been held under water a little too long.  I look immediately to my platoon Sergeant and we run.  Not to cover, not to safety but directly at that shack of a house, in the middle of that field, in the middle of no where.  Josh's fire team reaches the front door just in time to receive a volly of 7.62 slung at them from a PRK set up on the other side of the shacks mud wall.  They do not hesitate.  They act.  They run into the throat of that monster, directly through the door that has the business end of a very large automatic weapon pointed at it, at the helm of that weapon is a man hell bent on their demise.  The do not hesitate.  They act.   At this moment I notice someone running from the objective  directly toward weapon squads position.  The only thought in my mind was watching second squad disappear at the hand of a suicide bomber just seconds earlier.  I raise my rifle.  It's dark and he's 75 meters away but the green beam illuminating from my PEC2, only visible by night vision goggles, locks on his chest.  Squeeze.  Squeeze.  I didn't even realize it but I instinctively come to a complete stop to take those two shots.  As the figure dropped I continue to run.  I'm not entirely sure why but I change directions.  Instead of running toward the front door, I begin to run to the motionless body that just a breath ago was standing.   I'm within 15 meters.  BOOM!!!  I feel it. A second blast.  This one was much closer.  My exposed face is peppered by what feels like tiny ball bearings.  I stay on my feet, my eyes never loose focus of the white tunic laying 45 feet in front of me.  I will later learn that this blast came from a frag grenade thrown by my good friend Allen in an effort to clear the back room of the shack.  The sound of controlled pairs being squeezed off hasn't stopped by the time I reach him.  For the second time in the longest minute of my life my breath is stolen from me.  He's a boy.... and he's still breathing.
I am going to be completely honest.  I don't remember the next few minutes.  The world kept moving and I am assuming that I did too because the next thing I know I kneeling over one of the members of second squad talking with my senior medic, John.  He was okay.  This guy just had a suicide vest detonate within spitting distance, how the hell is he alive?  As I look up I see Thomas, second squad leader.  He is directing the rest of his guys.  They are alive.  They are all alive! How?  I am at a total loss for words in this moment.  I am not a pious man but in this moment I would bet you a hand full of Chili's coupons that those men had were recipients of a little divine intervention.  I begin to tend to some of their minor woulds as I realize that first squad took heavy fire upon entering the building.  I hand over care to John and quickly make my way to the front door.  The mangled flatbed truck where the suicide bomber sat up and proclaimed "allahu akbar" is etched in my mind.  I see what looks like his legs and most of his body.  His head is completely gone.  My best guess is the vest was poorly constructed and the brunt of the blast traveled up rather than out. His head is found, in tact, 30 meters away; popped off like a cork on a cheep bottle of champaign.  He should have paid more attention in shit head school.  I reach the front door.  The small room had already been cleared and the guys from first squad are in search mode.  I ask if everyone is okay.  All I get is a couple of uneasy laughs.  Apparently one of the 7.62 rounds grazed one of the younger guy's helmet's.  The room is small and filled with smoke from the gun fight.  There is a hole just big enough for a man to crawl through in the back corner of the room.  Apparently several men crawled through the hole to another room as first squad made entry to the first room.  After eliminating the threat on the PRK, Allen tossed that frag grenade into the back room rather than chase the men on his hands and knees.  I joke with him that nearly blowing me up in the process will cost him a beer when we get state side, he just shrugs his shoulders.  There are a couple of lifeless bodies on the floor in the front room.  One was slumped over the machine gun, the other must have drawn the short straw.  He got to be the last guy to get to crawl through the room's only means of egress.  Just as my desire to poke them with a stick draws me one step into the room I hear my call signal called on the radio.  It's my platoon sergeant.  Second squad is chasing someone that our eye in the sky spotted fleeing the target house.   I immediately run to their location. By the time I get their the company commander is giving an order to good friend of mine named Nick.  Nick and I had recently been promoted to Sargent at the same time.  Now Nick has always been a very good Ranger.  He promoted quickly because he is smart, well spoken and well liked among the guys.  He is also very good at taking orders, normally.  They had one of the men pinned down in a sort of a reservoir.  The Company commander wanted Nick to send one of the guys on his team down into the reservoir to grab the guy and try to pull him up the side of the reservoir that was about eight feet high.  In the kind of tone you would expect a Ranger Sgt. to address a superior officer, Nick asked, "Sir, you want me to send one of my guys that just got blown up by a suicide bomber into that hole and grab another potential suicide bomber, throw him on his shoulder and carry him up that eight foot mud wall?"
"Roger," Replied the Captain. That's not exactly what happened.
Nick responds in a way that I will never forget and in a way that I will not repeat here.

Just about the time that incident is resolved another call comes over the radio requesting my presence on the north side of the target house.  As I approach I see Eric, Nathan and our interpreter standing over the boy who I shot earlier.  He is still breathing, in fact he is talking.  As I kneel down to assess his wounds I ask the interpreter what he is saying.  I notice that he has more than just two holes in him. He was hit from multiple shooters.  For some reason I now feel less responsible for his situation.    The interpreter says that the kid is 14 and came to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. I asked him what he is doing in Iraq.  As long as I live I will never forget his response.
"I have come here to kill Americans!"
"Then why did you run?"
"There are too many."
"How did you get here?"
"They paid me to come."
"What would your parents think if they knew that you were here?"
"They would be proud."
Without hesitation I turn and walk away.  I have the power to help and do nothing.  To this day I have yet to fully process this decision.  Guilt, shame, ambivalence? I don't know to feel about it. I am not sure what emotion to affix to such an event. I know that he lived because of the efforts of one of our other medics but I did nothing.  A fact that keeps me up some nights still.
As I walk back to the target house I see the severed head of the suicide bomber, fully in tact.  It doesn't even phase me, I just walk by it.  Once back in the house I link up with my friends from first squad.  They have just finished searching the house for any possible links to other cells in the area.  The place is an absolute mess.  I notice something that I can't help but laugh about.  At the feet of one of the dead terrorist lay a couple of bottles of a 7UP knock off drink called CHEER UP.  I pick it up and Matt takes a quick picture.  Someone cracks a joke, "Feeling down about getting blown the F*** up??  have a refreshing glass of CHEER UP!"
Josh takes a bottle back to the states and uses it's contents to make mix drinks in his barrack room.
Just as we are calling for ex-fill a call comes over the radio.  We are getting an add-on mission.  Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has just been seen entering a chemical wherehouse less than a hundred miles away.  We make our way back to the ex-fill point and wait for the Black Hawks to return.  As we wait, a _______ bomb is dropped on the house which on that night served as a crucible for 1st platoon; erasing it from existence but never from our memory.


*** The story can end there or go on ***
The story continues with us going to Balad to grab more ammo.  We walk into the hanger to meet with elements of HHC that watched the entire mission live on the predator feed.  None of them could believe that we all survived.  I have to give a quick refresher on the use of a atropine to our guys because they fear that  Zarqawi will use NBC against us.  Someone asks, "So Doc, our faces might get melted off tonight?"  I say, It's a possibility.  He just says, "cool"