Medevac Line 1: Location of the pick-up site?
Any Sheriff in Baghdad, any Sheriff in Baghdad I say ino the
radio handmic, my hands shaking with adrenaline and stress
and dehydration. I give a ten-digit grid for this exact spot on the
earth's surface, the west side of Baghdad, the Highway 1
interchange we've renamed Route Victor, fifty meters north of
the overpass, on the shoulder there, that's where they are, there
in the dirt and wreckage, surrounded by tiered buildings with
balconies crowded by the curious onlookers tragedy always lures
in, and I can name this spot, but cannot make it real, cannot give
it the crackling stress of the air here, how heavy and charged it
is, or the smell of trashfires drifting noxious and sweet, or the
position of the gibbous moon overhead, too eager for night as the
sun is still slowed by the horizon at dusk, too eager to
romanticize the land and maybe even what's happening, though
there's nothing romantic about this, unless pain and sweat and
heat and blood and a grown man pissing his pants with fear
are romantic, all of this and more is where we are, the clock
stopped here, the day is yet unfinished, blood smeared on my
forehead --
Medevac Line 2: Radio frequency -- Call sign -- Requesting unit?
I tell him the frequency though I am hearing everyone
around this site now, seargants yelling for Stretchers, goddammit,
I said get a goddamned stretcher and a spine board now, and each
voice is edged with that urgent pulse of the larynx, the vocal
cords roughened by the lungs, I tell the Sheriff my call-sign is
Ghost 1-3 Alpha, which is like telling him he speaks with the
dead, and that the dead wish for his help, that the dead wait for
him in Baghdad on asphalt stretched out flat as a river of oil,
fuming --
Medevac Line 3: Number of patients by precedence?
I tell him Two, two patients urgent surgical, though that doesn't
really tell him Sgt. Randolph has four children and can't die
here, his wife wouldn't allow it if she knew, and if she knew the
shock of it snapped back his head and threw him down onto the
vehicle's troop compartment, if she knew that she'd fall to her
knees, her ears would shut out the noise of the world to complete
silence, that's how urgent this is, the Sheriff of Baghdad doesn't
know Specialist Mundy has a chunk of shrapnel in his neck, just
under the skin, and he's bleeding horribly, his eyes gone from
black to washed-out gray, the purple heart they will both be
given for this is an award no one wants --
Medevac Line 4: At least give me line 4 so I can get the bird in the
air, alright Soldier? Special equipment required?
Special equipment? Hoists? Ventilators? How do i know what
will save them? Blood. Bring them blood, especially for Mundy,
because there's more blood than I've ever seen before, spilled all
over the vehicle seats and the ramp, my shirt, my hands, wiped
onto my scalp, so much blood but I don't know what type, and
send the best surgeon there is, someone who knows how to treat that
drifting of the mind into the fizzing lights, how the mind seems
to vanish into the skull's stratosphere of bone, untethered, rising
to where thw orld ends, that edge, bring a doctor who can bring
them back from there, and quick --
Medevac Line 5: Number of patients, by type?
Which makes me pause knowing they cannot walk and are lit-
ter patients, but the pause is a greater concern -- to classify them
forces me to admit I do not know these men I've worked beside,
one I now has a bronze star for going into a mine field, and the
other I know only as being a shy and quiet one, maybe twenty --
Medevac Line 6: Security?
Look around. No one knows who the enemy is. All of it looks
like Thursday evening on a freeway cutting through town,
wedding parties passing by firing AK-47s into the air, everything
is possible here, everything...
Medevac Line 7: Method of marking the site?
The Sheriff of Baghdad needs to know -- A smoke signal? An
orange panel? How best do you mark a place of loss and pain?
This is hallowed earth, and if one of them should die here --
Flowers? Stones? Will it have mourners dressed in black to
stand by the roadside as boots and ribles are buried under the
roadbed? Will it have angels to watch over the soul of Mundy,
who believes in them?
Medevac Line 8: Patient's nationality?
If they die here, what will it matter? The plains of the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, this land of confluence and heat
will become their nation, and even if they live, it will be theirs as
well -- the land that tested their souls and changed them --
Medevac Line 9: Son, tell me the terrain, that's all we need and we'll be there for you
The land is what I need, soil gorund into the heels of my
palms, canebrakes in the canals, water buffalo up to their
shoulders in dark water, the wind that brings the dust so thick it
pales the sun dim as a daylight moon, this land, flat and hard,
where sunflower fields grow thick with yellow heads hung
down as if in respect for the losses being given and received, here
where the Black hawk flares down in a cloud of dust in the
rotorwash I run into with Sgt. Randolph's stretcher, a soldier
who will never be the same.
Any Sheriff in Baghdad, any Sheriff in Baghdad I say ino the
radio handmic, my hands shaking with adrenaline and stress
and dehydration. I give a ten-digit grid for this exact spot on the
earth's surface, the west side of Baghdad, the Highway 1
interchange we've renamed Route Victor, fifty meters north of
the overpass, on the shoulder there, that's where they are, there
in the dirt and wreckage, surrounded by tiered buildings with
balconies crowded by the curious onlookers tragedy always lures
in, and I can name this spot, but cannot make it real, cannot give
it the crackling stress of the air here, how heavy and charged it
is, or the smell of trashfires drifting noxious and sweet, or the
position of the gibbous moon overhead, too eager for night as the
sun is still slowed by the horizon at dusk, too eager to
romanticize the land and maybe even what's happening, though
there's nothing romantic about this, unless pain and sweat and
heat and blood and a grown man pissing his pants with fear
are romantic, all of this and more is where we are, the clock
stopped here, the day is yet unfinished, blood smeared on my
forehead --
Medevac Line 2: Radio frequency -- Call sign -- Requesting unit?
I tell him the frequency though I am hearing everyone
around this site now, seargants yelling for Stretchers, goddammit,
I said get a goddamned stretcher and a spine board now, and each
voice is edged with that urgent pulse of the larynx, the vocal
cords roughened by the lungs, I tell the Sheriff my call-sign is
Ghost 1-3 Alpha, which is like telling him he speaks with the
dead, and that the dead wish for his help, that the dead wait for
him in Baghdad on asphalt stretched out flat as a river of oil,
fuming --
Medevac Line 3: Number of patients by precedence?
I tell him Two, two patients urgent surgical, though that doesn't
really tell him Sgt. Randolph has four children and can't die
here, his wife wouldn't allow it if she knew, and if she knew the
shock of it snapped back his head and threw him down onto the
vehicle's troop compartment, if she knew that she'd fall to her
knees, her ears would shut out the noise of the world to complete
silence, that's how urgent this is, the Sheriff of Baghdad doesn't
know Specialist Mundy has a chunk of shrapnel in his neck, just
under the skin, and he's bleeding horribly, his eyes gone from
black to washed-out gray, the purple heart they will both be
given for this is an award no one wants --
Medevac Line 4: At least give me line 4 so I can get the bird in the
air, alright Soldier? Special equipment required?
Special equipment? Hoists? Ventilators? How do i know what
will save them? Blood. Bring them blood, especially for Mundy,
because there's more blood than I've ever seen before, spilled all
over the vehicle seats and the ramp, my shirt, my hands, wiped
onto my scalp, so much blood but I don't know what type, and
send the best surgeon there is, someone who knows how to treat that
drifting of the mind into the fizzing lights, how the mind seems
to vanish into the skull's stratosphere of bone, untethered, rising
to where thw orld ends, that edge, bring a doctor who can bring
them back from there, and quick --
Medevac Line 5: Number of patients, by type?
Which makes me pause knowing they cannot walk and are lit-
ter patients, but the pause is a greater concern -- to classify them
forces me to admit I do not know these men I've worked beside,
one I now has a bronze star for going into a mine field, and the
other I know only as being a shy and quiet one, maybe twenty --
Medevac Line 6: Security?
Look around. No one knows who the enemy is. All of it looks
like Thursday evening on a freeway cutting through town,
wedding parties passing by firing AK-47s into the air, everything
is possible here, everything...
Medevac Line 7: Method of marking the site?
The Sheriff of Baghdad needs to know -- A smoke signal? An
orange panel? How best do you mark a place of loss and pain?
This is hallowed earth, and if one of them should die here --
Flowers? Stones? Will it have mourners dressed in black to
stand by the roadside as boots and ribles are buried under the
roadbed? Will it have angels to watch over the soul of Mundy,
who believes in them?
Medevac Line 8: Patient's nationality?
If they die here, what will it matter? The plains of the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, this land of confluence and heat
will become their nation, and even if they live, it will be theirs as
well -- the land that tested their souls and changed them --
Medevac Line 9: Son, tell me the terrain, that's all we need and we'll be there for you
The land is what I need, soil gorund into the heels of my
palms, canebrakes in the canals, water buffalo up to their
shoulders in dark water, the wind that brings the dust so thick it
pales the sun dim as a daylight moon, this land, flat and hard,
where sunflower fields grow thick with yellow heads hung
down as if in respect for the losses being given and received, here
where the Black hawk flares down in a cloud of dust in the
rotorwash I run into with Sgt. Randolph's stretcher, a soldier
who will never be the same.
Comments