Road Work
by Jack Lewis
I never heard the boom-CRUNCH, only imagined it later, much as you'll have to imagine the rest of this if for some reason you want to savor a little snack of horror.
There was strong braking, followed by a great deal of shouting. Our Stryker armored vehicle (Rattlesnake 33, in this case), as always moaned through its monstrous air brakes, ground its oversized diesel thoughtfully; its crew compartment clattering and roaring and stinking of JP8 fuel, akin to the engine room of a very large boat. There was bumping and grinding. There was rolling and heaving and sweating. And then it stopped.
"Six-seven's in the ditch!"
"Did they roll it?"
"No, they're up. I think they're disabled."
"Where's the colonel? Is the colonel's vehicle okay?"
The colonel's vehicle was okay.
The major said that we would need a combat lifesaver. I have that training. It wasn't combat. There were no lives left to save. But I dug out our CLS bag, because you never know, do you? And walked across a pitch dark highway. Somebody was wailing, hypnotically, repetitiously, to an Arabic rhythm.
Darkness in Nineveh on a zero-illum night has well-bottom purity. Sans NVGs (night vision goggles), every cliché applies -- forinstance, you can't see your hand in front of your face. You shuffle your feet forward, feeling your way, tentative as the blind. But there was a car headlight burning, beamed back at the road like an accusing finger.
When tactical spotlights suddenly hit the little car, we found the source of the wailing.
He was what I might have once called an old man. He wore a silver beard, a monumental, red-veined nose and a big, thick wool overcoat. He was hopping like a dervish, bowing rapidly from the waist and throwing his arms to the sky, then to his knees, over and over again in a kind of break-dance of grief. Next to most of a car. His coatwas a dark brown tweed. Herringbone pattern.
Down the road a hundred meters or so, Six-Seven's VC (vehicle commander) and air guards had dismounted and were standing around their vehicle in the ditch. Nobody had started smoking yet.
I walked to the car with the Air Force sergeant serving as our JTAC (joint tactical aviation controller), and moved the older man aside as gently as possible. He was built like a blacksmith, powerful through the neck and shoulders.
It's hard to describe the contents of the car. They had been a young man, not much earlier that night. A cop or a fireman or a soldier would have simply said, "It's a mess in there." I used to be a fireman. I'm a soldier now. It was as bad a mess as I've seen. I'm not a medic. We didn't have one with us. It's still my responsibility to preserve life.
So I squeezed into the crumpled passenger area, sat in the crumbled glass, and tried to take the pulse from his passenger side arm (nothing) and his neck (nothing). I thought about CPR, but only for a moment. His driver side arm was traumatically amputated, and that side of his head was flattened. He was going cold in the night air, and what liquid ingredients he had within him, those that hadn't congealed, were slumping and dribbling toward earth, to mix with the liquids seeping from his twisted, torn little car, which was still gamely probing its one remaining headlight beam into the night as if to prevent the next accident.
Up on the highway, GIs walked around, gave and took orders. By the car, our victim's father still capered madly, throwing his arms around, crying out to God or anyone. I asked him, in my own language, to come with me, to calm down, to let me help him. I put my arm around him. Our Air Force JTAC helped me guide the old Arab to the road. We sat him on the cold ramp of our Stryker.
Staff Sergeant R----, USAF, took my weapon safely into the vehicle, and I tried to assess the old man's injuries. It seemed impossible that he could be only as superficially scratched up as he appeared. Their car had been hit head-on at maybe 130 mph closing speed, and food-processed through the undercarriage of an eight-wheeled, double-armored RV (Reconnaissance Vehicle). His son's body was only loosely contiguous, but this man was whole.
His hand was injured, bruised or worse, and he had a cut on his left ear. Blood and brain matter was spattered over his front like Hollywood effects. I wrapped a head bandage onto him and tied it gently in back. It looked like a traditional headdress with a missing top. Every few seconds he would get animated, and I would put my hand firmly on his shoulder. He would not hold still long enough for me to splint his arm, but he let me gently wash his face with sanitary wipes. His breath was corrosive.A cavalry scout wandered up, sucking on a Marlboro Light.
"Why can't he shut up?"
"You ever lose a kid?" This is a pointless question to ask a kid, of course.
We moved him into the Stryker, assuring him that no, we weren't arresting him. But he didn't care about being detained. Whenever he started to calm down, he would look toward the car and break into wails. I sat next to him, put my arm around his shoulder, tried to keep him from jumping around enough to hurt himself or a soldier. I held him tightly with my right arm. By the next morning, my throwing arm would be on fire. This wasn't the first time that tendon had been inflamed.
The QRF (quick reaction force) brought a medic with them, about 40 minutes later.
"What's his status, sergeant?"
"He has a cut on his left earlobe. I think his hand is broken." (I think his heart is broken)
"Roger. OK, I got this."
"Thanks." (Bless you for what you do every day, doc)
I got out of the way and let the medic get to work, letting the old guy go for the first time in maybe an hour. He started wailing again almost immediately. While the medic worked on him, the colonel's interpreter came over and fired a few questions at the man. It sounded like an interrogation.
They had been on their way back to Sinjar. The younger man had taken his non-driving father shopping. There were no weapons in the car -- either piece of it. There was no AIF ("anti-Iraqi forces") propaganda, nor were there false IDs. If we had stopped these people at a TCP ("traffic control point"), we would have thanked them and sent them on their way.
The young man had been a student. Engineering. With honors. Pride of the family. What we like to think of as Iraq's future. His father now repeated his earlier, rhythmic wails in a soft undertone, staring blankly into the night. Sometimes, he would look straight into my eyes and say it louder, insistently commanding.
Finally, I had to ask, "What does he keep saying?"
The tough Y'zedi terp looked at me, disgusted, resigned, or maybe just plain tired. "He says to kill him now."
The SCO ("squadron commanding officer") came over and ordered the medic to sedate the man with morphine.
"No, sir. Morphine is for pain. Physical pain."
"Well, can't you give him something to calm him down? I mean, this is unacceptable."
"On it, sir," the medic said. He hadn't interrupted his work.
I walked away and lit a Gauloise. My ATL (assistant team leader) walked up, smoking. I didn't say anything. After a few moments in the black quiet, SGT S---- said softly, "It wasn't anyone's fault. It was just an accident."
"I know." Inhale. Cherry glow. Long exhale. "Why we gotta drive in blackout -- here -- I don't get.
"If 67 had turned on their lights a couple of seconds earlier…"
"Yeah. I know." And he went to help carry the young man's remains into the sudden lightshow of ambulances and police jeeps, surrounded by young Arabic men with steely eyes.
"Hajji," the super-sized staff sergeant who guns the truck we'd been riding, stomped down the road to kick a little ass and get 67's recovery progress back on track. Haj is due to retire soon, has a job lined up in Florida. He wears First Cav's huge combat patch on his right shoulder, one of the few men big enough to wear one without looking ridiculous. This is his second trip to war, and he doesn't need this. None of us do, I guess.
Within a few minutes, they hooked it up. It would be two weeks before that Stryker would roll outside the wire again, this in an environment where trucks totaled by IEDs are welded back together and sent back into harm's way in mere hours. I went and sat on the back gate of the major's Stryker. I felt the cold creep into me. The old man sat next to me, perhaps too tired tocontinue his tirade against cruel Fate, careless Americans, war and its accidents.
We aren't the same, that old man and I -- not the same at all. We don't share a language, clothing, cuisine or common cause. The most recent cultural touchstone we share may be the Old Testament. And I never saw my son crushed flat by a streaking steer hammer of whistling steel, never had my scion's brain flecks dabbed off my coat by an armed stranger speaking in tongues.
I haven't lost a full-grown son, only a tiny daughter. A baby. And she wasn't torn from me in a terror of rending steel, stamped out by a sudden monster roaring out of the night. Three and a half months old, she went so quietly that her passing never woke her mother, twelve feet away. I was at school that day, filling out an elective credit by making bad ceramics. I like to think our daughter kissed K--- on her way out, on her way home. I like to think, perhaps, she forgave us.
But still, sitting on the steel tail of the monster that killed his son, a father next to a father old enough to be my father, I knew. I I knew exactly.
Exactly how he felt.
"Just kill me now."
We sat and looked straight into the lights.
FEB 05, FOB Sykes, Tal 'Afar