It’s a sunny, getting hot morning probably around 1000, July 2nd day. Normal activity is going on around a OP (Observation Post) that we have affectionately dubbed “OP 88” or simply “Aiming Stake” (as best my depleting memory will serve me). We dubbed it this simply because the insurgents of Iraq in 2004 seemed to be using it as an aiming stake for their mortars for a couple weeks or so up until this particular day. They were sporadic, a couple one day, none for a couple of days then one. Never developing a pattern nor accurate with the mortar fire. Some would be close, others nowhere near us. They had made impact on the OP one time before this date, no major injuries, and it was in the evening time so they undoubtedly had no clue they had made impact. But today, today was different, there was an uneasy “peace” with the morning. There hadn’t been any mortars for a couple of days, looking back, it was a strange sense that morning and no one had the slightest clue. I even believe a comment had been made about them giving up or was slacking on showing us their marksmanship. You got to understand, if you’re not a GRUNT, we have a very twisted sense of humor. At this point in time my company and battalion had so many Purple Hearts awarded that we started calling them “Iraqi Marksmanship Badges”. There was good humor in the air this morning though. We had all been out of the FOB for 2 to 4 days and was finally getting to go back with a chance of an actual shower, not a baby wipe shower, and some half assed slop they called food in our chow tent, if the fobbets didn’t eat it all up and use up all the water before we got back. Our gear was half ready to pick up the moment the trucks got there and half ready to deploy in case of a firefight. We were there, we were ready, or so we thought. I can’t tell you what time it was, I can’t explain to you the sinking feeling when you hear the sudden THUD of a launching mortar that you KNOW isn’t your own mortar sections tubes firing. But I can try.
The first THUD sounded, we all knew what it was, so we ducked inside of the bunkers set up on each corner of this OP. BOOM, first impact, probably 50 meters or so away. Time had ceased to exist after the first launch, and hindsight being 20/20, I knew something was going to change that day. The air seemed to grow stale and sounds seemed to be louder and bass’ier than any other time. BOOM! Second impact, those sons of bitches were walking them in on us! I, to this day, have no clue how many mortars dropped on us that day but I just know the ones I remember. We’re all in our bunker now, half thinking this is a normal shoot and miss like usual, and half thinking “Is this our number?”. Then BOOOOOOMMM!!!!!! IMPACT INSIDE OP and the dreaded, unnerving, familiar voice scream out…..”I’M HIT, I’M HIT, I’M HIT!!!” I remember the impact, it was so close, seemed to hit right on the bunker door. I remember it rocking me harder than any close explosion had a couple months prior inside of Fallujah. I remember taking a step towards the door because that was a fellow Devil Dog that was hit and hurting out there. What I don’t remember, is what happened next. I’ve been told that I went out there to pull that Devil Dog into our bunker. I’ve been told that when that mortar landed beside me within 15 or so feet, it threw me up against the HESCO barrier like a rag doll. I’ve also been told that shrapnel impacted that HESCO all around me but left me mostly untouched. I’ve been told that the Marine hit first had ended up in a rut or something and that shielded him from the last mortar. What I do remember though, is coming to with my squad leader looking at me with a look of sincere concern and asked me, “ARE YOU HIT?” I know that sounds ridiculous, but honestly looking back, I wasn’t rattled with holes, my gear and cloths weren’t ripped off of me, and for all I knew I was just hit in the head with a rock. We began working on the hit Marine. Hole in the arm, torso punctures, and leg entry wounds. His arm was unusable, he was terrified, he was human. Let me say that again, HE WAS HUMAN. I know that sounds pointless, but you just don’t understand if you think that way. We had just come out, months earlier, of some of the bloodiest house to house fighting seen since Hue City, Vietnam. We felt inhuman, invincible even. Even though we lost a lot, we had survived, I’m speaking solely from my own thoughts here, but that’s how I felt over all. This young Marine was injured, no one knew how badly, all we knew, MEDAVAC was happening and it was happening yesterday. We have lost to many to let another one go. Then, out of nowhere, BAM! A sharp searing pain in my leg like I had a piece of molten steel hop out a weld and into my leg. “DAMNIT!!! I’M HIT”, pulling down my trousers there it is, a hole about a half inch around right in my upper left thigh. All I could think was “You mother fuckers, gave me the damn Forrest Gump wound!” Oh I was pissed, and hurting. I had no idea what lay in wait for me, but I knew this...I’m not sitting down for the MEDAVAC ride. Not with hot steel in my ass. I stood the whole way to the RAS (Regimental Aide Station), got seen by a nurse while lying in the bed next to the Marine that was hit before me. For a skinny dude he was stout, he was giving those Doc’s a work out trying to calm him down and asses his situation. They hook up the good ole morphine to me, but it’s not working, touch my leg and now I’m feeling EVERYTHING! “OUCH!” Nurses can’t figure out why I’m able to feel them poking and prodding me. They realize my arm was up and not allowing the medicine to flow, straighten out my arm and BAM a sea of numbness washes over me. It seems 2 seconds later I feel my body moving and look down to see a nurse full length finger deep in my leg trying to feel for the shrapnel, with no luck. Wouldn’t you know it, surgery here I come. In the end, I find out it missed my sciatic nerve by a half inch or so and months later after getting state side I had small fragments working their way to the surface of my skin. The Marine that was injured before me, he made a full recovery and is living a full and vibrant life, I think he is even going for his PhD is a field of science.
After it was all said and done, all the brothers we lost, all the blood that was shed in that god forsaken sand box, what did we really leave behind. I know my injuries were nowhere near the extent most others were. But a big piece of me stayed there when I came home. We left a job undone because politics became more important than seeing our task all the way through. We left a city unsecured and a worse place to go for the next wave to go through it later that same year. But that day, that fateful day of July 2nd, that was a rebirth and a death of me. I knew and know I am lucky to have been spared and unscathed as I was. But at the same time a large chunk of my personal motivation and drive died that day. It has sense began to return, but at night, when it gets really quiet, and I am in that magically deceitful hell in between sleep and awake. My mind relives that point over and over and over again. To the point I swear I can hear the primer striking before the explosion. Time after time I hear that scream, “I’M HIT”, I feel that concussion wave, and I feel myself tell myself goodbye. It’s taken me years, to be able to put all this into words and I know there are a great number of people out there that understand what I am saying without the little explanations I’m putting out as well. But to come to the realization that a large chuck of me has separated from myself and I will never be the whole man I was when I left to go on this deployment is something that I have struggled with for a while. It wasn’t until I talked to an older Marine who was a Korean Vet that pulled my head out of the water and let me see a light. He said to me very short words but struck chords within myself that will forever be ringing. “We all see battles and actions that should have been done differently, those of us luck enough to come home owe it to those that wasn’t to live our lives as fully and wholly as we possibly can. Got it lil brother?”
In the end, I leave you with this. A lot of us have some sort of survivor’s guilt in one way shape or form. But Odin didn’t see fit to have his Valkyries call us to Valhalla. Instead he seen fit to let us roam the lands for a time further. Our battles were not over then, nor are they now. As a veteran, it is our duty to keep in contact with our brothers and sisters. We all fight demons in our own way, but we never fight them alone. Do a buddy check on the 22nd of each month, or on a time that you see fit. But do one, you never know what the phone call or text message may be the stopping someone from doing. Semper Fi family, we are the 3%, we have to watch each other’s 6’s.
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