Badger Christmas
Capt Murphy, the XO, was called back home to testify in a court case involving his FBI section and some informant about the Sept 11, 2001 World Trade Center bombing, so we unfortunately lost his expertise. I was glad he taught us as much as he did, the only thing I wish I had done was watch him interview somebody, it just seemed that if he was able to conduct an interview I had to be on duty. I was sad to see him go, but glad for him at the same time, he would be able to see his family for the Christmas season, something the rest of us could only dream about. I thought I would be envious, but I wasn�t; I couldn�t change where I was, and if I couldn�t spend Christmas with my family I was happy to spend it with the 150 or so brothers I had here in Iraq.
The final large scale round up of 2004, Operation Badger Christmas, saw us cordoning off South Lutayfiyah by 0500 on Christmas morning and pulling every MAM in to the FOB. We ended up with 584 guests for Christmas that day, all of whom had to sit in our LZ while a cold drizzle fell. We sorted through the men, asking for information, checking names, looking for inconsistencies in their responses, and generally trying to winnow the wheat from the chaff. Probably the only real issue we have is the continued language barrier, we can figure out how to tell the Iraqis we are taking them in for questioning, we can figure out how to tell them to bring a blanket to stay warm, how to ask where their weapons are, what their name is, and how to tell the women of the house that the men are not necessarily going away forever. What we always fail to tell them is to bring any medications they need for the day. On Christmas this almost had disastrous effect.
One of the first men in complained that he had heart trouble and needed his medication, we don�t treat these claims with much seriousness, the men are going to stay where they are until we are done, and such claims could easily be a way to simply get out of having to be questioned. We do however point the claimant out to our senior corpsman so he can keep an eye on the individual, and sometimes even place a doctor, if we find one in our pens, near him for assurance.
Late in the morning the man started to have a heart attack, he suddenly fell over on his back and started to shake, foamy spittle was leaking from the corners of his mouth and he was moaning loudly. We called for the company corpsman and started to look for a doctor in the crowd of men we had in custody. There wasn�t much we could do for the man, the corpsman had asked for heart medications, but it had been refused because the age group of the Marines didn�t warrant it. It wasn�t the age group of the Marines the corpsman were concerned about; it was just this kind of scenario. Now we had an Iraqi citizen who was going to die in our custody because the Battalion Surgeon had refused to issue heart meds based on a fear they would be used by the Marines.
The doctor asked around and found another Iraqi who had a glycerin pill in his pocket, but he refused to give it up. We finally had to hold him down and pull the glycerin pill from his pocket by force. The doctor told us to sit the man up and rub his back, it didn�t seem to me that was going to do much good, but we did it anyway. While this was going in all other work stopped; we stopped processing detainees, we stopped worrying about their blindfolds, and we even stopped worrying about basic security. All eyes, American and Iraqi, were on the man who was lying there about to die in our hands. Capt Hoffmann had contacted Maj Holton and filled him in on the situation. Maj Holton had called battalion and they said they were trying to contact the ING to get them to take him to the hospital in al-Mahmudiyah.
We put together a casualty report and sent it in over the radio of the MRC-145 (communications HUMMWV) in the LZ. I asked Maj Holton for an update on the ETA for the ING. � A half hour, at least,� was the reply.
�A half hour!� I said, incredulous, �this guys gonna be dead in fifteen minutes if we don�t get him out of here.�
�I know, but they are saying they want the ING to transport him.� Maj Holton replied.
�Roger,� was the best I could come up with.
Doc Hill came up to Capt Hoffmann, Capt Wagner, and I standing by the MRC-145. �We need to move him to decent care in the next fifteen to twenty minutes, or he�s not going to survive,� he said.
By this time Sgt Paquin had joined us; �We are almost twenty minutes into the magic hour,� he said in agreement.
�Badger Six, this is Badger One,� Capt Hoffmann called over the radio, �we need to get Medicine Man airborne for this evac, now.�
�Roger, One,� came the reply, �I will put in the request, but Mayhem is telling me they still want the ING to pick this guy up.�
I switched the battalion net radio over to the Medevac frequency and clipped the handset on the door where I would be able to hear once the helo checked in with me. I got out my colored smoke grenade to mark the LZ and started directing some traffic to ensure the LZ would be clear.
�Badger Four, this is Badger Six, over,� the CO was calling me on my ISR.
�Go ahead, Six, this is Four,� I replied.
�Mayhem says an ING patrol has left the compound in Mahmudiyah and is inbound our pos now.�
�Roger, do we have an ETA?�
�Negative, shouldn�t be long. Suggest you get a guide over to Packer to bring them right in to the casualty.�
�Roger.�
I grabbed Sgt J.B. Moore, the Machinegun Section Leader, and had him send a Marine to the vehicle entrance to our FOB. Doc Hill prepped the casualty for transport, we knew the best the ING would bring was a bongo truck and maybe just perhaps a little Nissan 4-door pickup.
About five minutes later I saw my Marine walking back with a little tan and white Nissan behind him. �That was fast,� I thought. The ING Captain got out of his truck and came over to shake hands. Through an interpreter Doc and I told him what was wrong with the man and that we wanted him taken to the Al-Mahmudiyah hospital. The Captain told us he couldn�t do that, that he had just come down to drop off food for his soldiers and that going back up to Al-Mahmudiyah the way they came was too dangerous, even though I knew he was going to go that way regardless. He simply didn�t want to be responsible for taking the man to the hospital. This is one of the few things that really bothered me about Iraq; the Americans tended to show a lot more compassion for the people than the ING. Here we had a guy who was about to die and the ING didn�t want to be bothered with him, even though they had to go past the hospital on their way to their base, because they said it was just too dangerous.
Doc Hill and I argued with the Captain for a few minutes, �Get him out of my sight, before I [bleep] shoot him,� I finally said, �I can�t believe these [bleep].� I�m sure the ING Captain had no idea what I had said, but it was obvious from my tone and utter disregard for his rank that I was unhappy with him.
�Medicine Man, Medicine Man, this is Badger Four in Lutayfiyah, over.� I called into the radio. There was no reply. I called again and again, still with no reply.
�Badger Six, this is Badger Four,� I called into my ISR.
�Go ahead, Four.�
�Any word on Medicine Man?�
�They are lifting off now.�
�Roger.�
�How are you going to mark the LZ?�
�Colored smoke�
�Roger, what color?�
Colors aren�t normally given over the radio, instead the unit on the ground says it will mark with colored smoke and the inbound bird calls the color they see, if it is correct the unit confirms it and the bird comes in. This is for security reasons to ensure the enemy doesn�t try to bring the bird in to an unsafe LZ by using the same colored smoke.
�Purple,� I muttered under my breath. Capt Wagner looked at me like I was insane for giving the color. At this time I wasn�t going to argue, if announcing the color was going to help out I was going to break the rules.
I tried to contact them again, with no luck. Finally a station, call sign �Handcuff 20�, the control station for all Medevac birds came up on the net. He relayed my transmissions to �Eagle Dustoff� the bird that was coming in to get our casualty. That it was a different unit than I had told wasn�t an issue, but I still couldn�t talk to the birds directly. Through Handcuff 20 I made sure the bird knew where we were located and that we were marking with colored smoke and got an ETA. I had given my smoke grenade to Sgt Harris and when the bird was four minutes out I still couldn�t read any traffic. I called four minutes and Sgt Harris took that as the signal to throw the grenade, I immediately started digging for a new grenade, the smoke wasn�t going to last long enough for the bird to see it at the low altitude the Black Hawks always fly at. I gave Sgt Harris another purple smoke grenade and told him to wait until I announced that the bird was one minute out. Doc Hill had some Marines move the patient over to a Scud Bunker we use for
At two minutes out I finally got in touch with Eagle Dustoff, he was coming in from the north and could see the FOB, I still could not see or hear him, but I had comm.
�Badger Zero Four this is Eagle Dustoff, we have you in sight. What is the nature of injury? Over,�
�Eagle Dustoff, heart attack. Over.� I knew that even though this was part of the casualty report we had sent to battalion to get the helo airborne it did not get passed.
�Badger Zero Four, we are one minute out, pop smoke.�
I had Sgt Harris pop the smoke and the bird appeared out of the mist coming in like all the Army pilots seem to fly, �low, fast, and unafraid� as the saying goes. He had good comm with me and circled the LZ once, making his final approach from the north. As he came in I could swear he was going to cut the MRC-145 with his tail rotor, I ducked down and kept my eyes up just in case. Cpl Henry, our Engineer Team Leader, could see that he was trying to land too far north; he got the pilot�s attention and directed him to the Scud Bunker. The prop wash was intense; papers, documents, tables and chairs started flying all over the place. One detainee was hit by a piece of plywood, another fell into the concertina wire, an interpreter was hit by a chair, and my rifle got covered in wet sand.
The casualty was loaded up and sent on his way. �Eagle Dustoff this is Badger Four, you are clear of the LZ, have a safe flight home.�
�Badger, sorry about the mess, didn�t see all the people in your LZ. Eagle Dustoff out.�
�Bullshit,� I thought, there was no way he didn�t see all the people or the vehicles in the LZ on his pass, he was showing off. �Oh well, nobody was seriously hurt. And it�s time to get back to work.� I said to Capt Wagner.
It had drizzled all day and the ground was the normal mixture of sticky mud and sand. My rifle was completely covered in mud, my chair had been blown into the concertina wire and was also covered with sand, the documents of some of the prisoners had blown into a moat that had formed just inside our berm from the high water table, and my detainee log book was soaked. A few of the Marines started to head toward the moat to get papers when we reminded them that we had been letting the detainees urinate in there, so much for that idea. I asked for a new AAL and started sorting my work area out again. By the time I had everything ready for another Iraqi the new list made it out and we started work.
The remainder of the day was rather uneventful; we sorted the detainees out, deciding which would go to Al-Mahmudiyah and which would return home. We had to skip pages in our detainee logs and request additional copies of the AAL due to the constant drizzle, and finally finished about 2100 that night. In all it had been a long day, we worked from 0500 to about 2100 that day, with only breaks to use the head or smoke a quick cigarette, there were no meals although we did grab a snack in the middle of the day, but we had to eat while working. I waited until the next day to clean my chair; it took almost eighteen hours for the sand to dry enough to be easily brushed off. I did force myself to clean my rifle immediately though, as unpleasant as it was I couldn�t imagine leaving it covered in sand and inoperable, just in case.
