CAS3
01-29-04, 09:56 AM
Leaving combat area means new battles, now with ‘real Army'
Thursday, January 29, 2004
By Sherman R. McGrew
© 2004 Republican-American
One of the ways to tell you are leaving a combat theater and getting back to "the real Army" is the way things are done. The farther away you get from where the bullets are flying, the more the military mindset changes. The common sense index goes down and the stupidity index goes up.
It started changing in Baghdad and kept getting worse.
I was taken to Baghdad International Airport, formerly Saddam International — it's now under new management. At the medical holding area, an army nurse informed me that because I was on crutches, I had to be taken by stretcher. My protests that I could walk pretty well with crutches were deemed irrelevant.
This being the case, I was moved from the ambulatory patients to the litter area. Obviously these soldiers were much more severely injured. To tell the truth, I felt a little ashamed to be among them as mine was a non-combat injury from playing rugby in the desert.
A young private first class was on the stretcher next to mine. His leg had a huge bandage and splint on it from foot to thigh. He was still holding his helmet on his chest as he lay there.
After some awkward minutes for me, I just had to ask him, "How did you get hurt?" He looked over at me and said, "I was sliding into second base, sir, and my leg got all tangled up and I broke it." I hope he didn't misinterpret my laughter.
Then it came time to load up the C-141 military aircraft. We had been told that we could take only one duffel bag and a carry-on per patient. No problem. Or so I thought.
Before we were carried aboard the aircraft, our carry-on bags were taken from us.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked.
"Sir, commander's orders. No carry-on bags due to the hijack threat." I thought about making an issue of it and pointing out that the only passengers were soldiers, we were on stretchers and probably couldn't move all that fast even if we were so inclined as to attempt a hijacking, and we were leaving Iraq.
But I kept my mouth shut and hoped for the best.
Being carried felt like something out of a Cecile B. DeMille movie. Six attendants saying in unison, "Prepare to lift. Lift! Forward!" All I needed was another attendant with a fan and a bowl of grapes.
Once aboard the aircraft, I got the coveted top tier position. We're stacked like cordwood and everyone gets about two feet of room. When you are on the top of the stack, you get three to four feet to the top of the aircraft. I was in fat city.
After our little roller coaster take off, we were finally out of surface to air missile range. It felt a little strange to be completely free of the threat of enemy fire after so long.
Upon arrival in Germany, we were off loaded from bottom to top. They finally got to me. The attendants had a huddle. I heard wisps of the conversation: "He's a big guy," and "I'll bet he's heavy." There then was a consensus of wise head shaking. One of them approached me and said, "Sir, do you think you can jump down?"
Before I could reply that my leg was in a splint, and I was eight feet up in the air, Einstein and Co. decided that jumping down wasn't, perhaps, such a hot idea.
Carrying a stretcher is a team effort, as I learned. Everyone needs to be on the same sheet of music. If one person doesn't lift in unison with the others, interesting things can happen, like being upside down. OK, OK, it was only a 90-degree turn and I was strapped down and not in all that much danger of falling, so maybe my display of vocal displeasure was a little much — then again, maybe not.
We then arrived at the overnight medical holding area. Our bags arrived shortly thereafter. There was only one problem. My non carry-on carry-on was missing.
Imagine putting every important document you own in a small bag and having that bag misplaced by a well-intentioned, but not too swift bureaucracy and you get the idea.
It's kind of like entrusting your tax return that you have worked on for months to your paperboy to deliver to your accountant on April 14. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated NCO, it was found 14 hours later.
If I'm having this much fun getting to Germany, I can only imagine the laughs I'm going to have on the road to recovery with the Army Medical Corps.
I think life was easier in Iraq. Bullets and all.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
By Sherman R. McGrew
© 2004 Republican-American
One of the ways to tell you are leaving a combat theater and getting back to "the real Army" is the way things are done. The farther away you get from where the bullets are flying, the more the military mindset changes. The common sense index goes down and the stupidity index goes up.
It started changing in Baghdad and kept getting worse.
I was taken to Baghdad International Airport, formerly Saddam International — it's now under new management. At the medical holding area, an army nurse informed me that because I was on crutches, I had to be taken by stretcher. My protests that I could walk pretty well with crutches were deemed irrelevant.
This being the case, I was moved from the ambulatory patients to the litter area. Obviously these soldiers were much more severely injured. To tell the truth, I felt a little ashamed to be among them as mine was a non-combat injury from playing rugby in the desert.
A young private first class was on the stretcher next to mine. His leg had a huge bandage and splint on it from foot to thigh. He was still holding his helmet on his chest as he lay there.
After some awkward minutes for me, I just had to ask him, "How did you get hurt?" He looked over at me and said, "I was sliding into second base, sir, and my leg got all tangled up and I broke it." I hope he didn't misinterpret my laughter.
Then it came time to load up the C-141 military aircraft. We had been told that we could take only one duffel bag and a carry-on per patient. No problem. Or so I thought.
Before we were carried aboard the aircraft, our carry-on bags were taken from us.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked.
"Sir, commander's orders. No carry-on bags due to the hijack threat." I thought about making an issue of it and pointing out that the only passengers were soldiers, we were on stretchers and probably couldn't move all that fast even if we were so inclined as to attempt a hijacking, and we were leaving Iraq.
But I kept my mouth shut and hoped for the best.
Being carried felt like something out of a Cecile B. DeMille movie. Six attendants saying in unison, "Prepare to lift. Lift! Forward!" All I needed was another attendant with a fan and a bowl of grapes.
Once aboard the aircraft, I got the coveted top tier position. We're stacked like cordwood and everyone gets about two feet of room. When you are on the top of the stack, you get three to four feet to the top of the aircraft. I was in fat city.
After our little roller coaster take off, we were finally out of surface to air missile range. It felt a little strange to be completely free of the threat of enemy fire after so long.
Upon arrival in Germany, we were off loaded from bottom to top. They finally got to me. The attendants had a huddle. I heard wisps of the conversation: "He's a big guy," and "I'll bet he's heavy." There then was a consensus of wise head shaking. One of them approached me and said, "Sir, do you think you can jump down?"
Before I could reply that my leg was in a splint, and I was eight feet up in the air, Einstein and Co. decided that jumping down wasn't, perhaps, such a hot idea.
Carrying a stretcher is a team effort, as I learned. Everyone needs to be on the same sheet of music. If one person doesn't lift in unison with the others, interesting things can happen, like being upside down. OK, OK, it was only a 90-degree turn and I was strapped down and not in all that much danger of falling, so maybe my display of vocal displeasure was a little much — then again, maybe not.
We then arrived at the overnight medical holding area. Our bags arrived shortly thereafter. There was only one problem. My non carry-on carry-on was missing.
Imagine putting every important document you own in a small bag and having that bag misplaced by a well-intentioned, but not too swift bureaucracy and you get the idea.
It's kind of like entrusting your tax return that you have worked on for months to your paperboy to deliver to your accountant on April 14. Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated NCO, it was found 14 hours later.
If I'm having this much fun getting to Germany, I can only imagine the laughs I'm going to have on the road to recovery with the Army Medical Corps.
I think life was easier in Iraq. Bullets and all.