Lest We Forget (8 page)

“Fuck Doc!  I feel like I just got arm raped!  Do you even know what the fuck you are doing?”

I wanted to tell him how good I did on my trauma lane in SOMC but none of that shit matters here.  I’m fucking this up bad.  I wrap his ankle the way that you would expect a monkey to if you threw a splint and a couple of bananas in his cage.  I was a fucking soup sandwich.  The only thing that saved me in the long run was I ended up getting attached to a different platoon and forward deployed the next day to another outpost.  If I had to work as that man’s medic for the next three months I’m pretty sure that I would have been fucked. 

I arrived at what would be my home for the next few months.  I recall standing in a formation with a dozen or so guys.  The process of deciding which guys would go to each platoon was not quite what I had imagined it would be.  The platoon Sergeants stood in front of the wide
-eyed new Rangers and began a selection process that I can only compare to a game of kickball in grade school.  There was no inquiry or interview at all.  “He looks strong, I’ll take him.”  Really?  Like cattle at a livestock auction.  I was beginning to get incredibly self-conscious about not getting picked in the first three rounds when I realized that all of the non-infantry guys had been put in the back row for a reason.  Our fate had already been decided.  We would become the property of our section leaders.  Mine was a six-foot tall gentleman with a shaved head and a full leg piece tattoo.  Awesome, another Runza.  In the deepest voice that you could possibly imagine he yelled my name.

“JENKINS over here!” 

This guy was going to be whom I reported to from here out and he looked like the poster child for the Aryan race.  Dano, as he was known as to everyone that wasn’t a cherry fuck, was the epitome of what I had always imagined a Ranger to be.  His demeanor was beyond intimidating.   

There is a very real learning curve to being a Ranger.  I had 18 months of training but no real perspective as to what day
-to-day life looked like.  Minutes after meeting my new senior medic I learned that what it looked like was four cots in the back of a tent that also served as the medical facility to two platoons of injury prone guys thousands of miles from their moms.  I was shown which one of the “bunks” was mine, dropped the single bag that I would be living out of for the next few months and given a short tour of the base.  I believe that the other new Rangers that I came over with were not having such an easy introduction into the Regiment but most of them had only been in the Army about five months.  The look on some of their faces at the chow hall later that first day resembled the look a dog has right after it has been kicked for shitting in the house.

My first week seemed to be a series of tests.  My senior medic quizzed me randomly on drug protocols and assessment techniques.  He took me out on a couple of death runs in hopes that I would fall off of his pace.  The fact that I had been obsessed with physical fitness before this and spent at least a couple of hours a day training truly paid off.  By showing that I was fit to fight on my first few days I showed that I was responsible and partially trustworthy.  The military works differently than the rest of the world.  I have always said that success really only relies on three things
: be in good shape, always be early for everything and always have a clean well-groomed appearance.  It wasn’t long before I fucked one of those three things up.

A few weeks into my first deployment and I was coasting.  I had done some cool guy CQB (Close Quarter Battle) training with my platoon. I went out to the range and shot every piece of weaponry a kid could dream about.  I rode in helicopters and even did a couple of missions.  I was finally a real Ranger.  I was watching a movie on a shitty 13
-inch TV in my tent when a young private ran in.  Out of breath he told me frantically that Dano was looking for me and that I was late for a training meeting.  Training meeting?  No one told me about a….

“Doc
, come on!”

When I arrived at the
headquarters tent everyone seemed to be on a bit of a study break.  My boss looked at me like he was trying to melt my face with his eyes.  He was fucking pissed.  The First Sergeant told everyone to take their seats.  Apparently we were half way through a two-hour PowerPoint presentation that I was unaware of.  You see, the military has a very deliberate chain of command.  The First Sergeant tells his platoon sergeants something, they tell their squad leaders, the squad leaders pass it on to their team leaders, the team leaders scream it at their privates while making them do push ups.  It’s highly effective except no one ever thinks to tell the medic what the fuck is going on.  I hadn’t blown this training off; I simply didn’t know it was happening.  That didn’t matter.  When the training ended everyone else left the tent to go on with their day.  Myself and the other platoon medic, who was also unaware of the training, got to stay back for some “extra training.” 

We tried to explain that no one had told us what was going on while we were sweating buckets in the front leaning rest position.  Our senior medic said something that was very simple yet has stuck with me to this day.

“This is your company.  It is your responsibility to know what is going on without someone telling you.  You have to be proactive not reactive or you will not survive here.”  It was one of the most valuable lessons of my first combat deployment.

Another highly valuable lesson that I learned was that, under no circumstance, should you ever let someone know that it’s your birthday.  One of the privates in my platoon made this mistake and paid for it dearly.  He found himself drenched in water and shaving cream, zip tied to a chain link fence for two hours in the middle of the night in the middle of December.  As tough as he was, he was no match for the six Rangers dressed in all black with night vision goggles waiting to ambush him on his way back from the
porta shitter.  A cold, lonely, miserable birthday present that would likely get the gifters demoted or worse today. 

             
To be honest, that first deployment was not what I was expecting from a combat standpoint.  There was a few missions, one or two guys got shot but for the most part it was more about finding a way to spend our days without going crazy than it was about finding and eradicating the enemy.  I remember watching all three Godfather movies in a single day while eating six whole boxes of thin mint Girl Scout cookies that someone’s mom had sent.  I went to the gym at least twice a day and jerked off in porta potty.  Not the high-speed life that I had expected.  By the end of that deployment I was deadlifting over 600 pounds and still running a sub 13-minute two mile. 

When it was time to come home I envisioned the scene that I had watched time and time again
on television where a group of service members land on some runway and were greeted with crowds of loved ones waving flags and welcome home signs.  That didn’t happen.  Not even close.  We landed on a military base in the middle of the night, walked into a hangar where three medics were giving guys shots, took a short bus ride to our company area where guys turned in their weapons and went home.  It was the most unceremonious thing imaginable. 

For a few of us it was our first time coming home but many of these men were already on their fourth or fifth deployment.  Several of them made the initial jump into Afghanistan.  My company was the same one that executed Operation Rhino on October 19th, 2001.  By 2004 they were already battle
-hardened men and I had a lot of catching up to do.  Sure, I now had a combat scroll and a CMB (Combat Medic Badge), but I still didn’t have my trial by fire.  I still didn’t feel like a real Ranger.

The aid station in Salarneo forward operating base.

Aziz, the local bread maker and me.

Cool Guy training. Salerno forward operating base

…..

Chapter 7 - Welcome Home

              Coming home from war was a very surreal experience.  Citizens have a preconceived notion as to what goes on “over there.” Sadly, however, these notions are often based solely on the latest Hollywood blockbuster that they shelled out nine bucks to see.  People treat you in accordance with their inaccurate beliefs as to what occurs during war.  At this time, everyone in the country still conveyed a great deal of support for our efforts overseas.  Everyone back home seemed so proud of me yet I didn’t feel like I had done anything.  Sure there had been a couple of small exchanges but I was expecting Black Hawk Down level action and to be honest, I think that is what the majority of people that knew me thought that I had gone through.  Friends spoke to me differently and men that I looked up to growing up in the fire station gave me a great deal of respect.  I felt honored by the experience but I also felt like a bit of a liar.  I was no war hero I was just happy to be home.

             
While home on leave I told my dad that I needed him to teach me how to drive a motorcycle.  He had just purchased a brand new Harley Road King and still had his older Honda.  He seemed to be having a blast watching me struggle with the clutch in a parking lot near our house.  We spent a couple of quality hours laughing at my lack of coordination.  There was so many things that I had never done, so many places that I hadn’t been.  Returning from deployment opened my eyes to that.  I wanted to experience all of life. I wanted to see it all, touch it, smell it, and embrace all of what life has to offer.  When we got home I told my dad, “We should go to Vegas!”

“What?”

“Yeah Dad, you and me should take the motorcycles to Vegas after your next shift!”

“You don’t know how to ride a motorcycle.”

“The fuck I don’t, you just taught me.”

I knew that Bruce wasn’t in a position to turn down such a request from his son
, the war hero.  I had never been to Vegas and I wanted to check that box in an epic way.  When Jess and I were freezing our stones off during RIP we started talking about all the places that we had been.  I said that I had drunk a beer in 7 different states, a fact that I was proud of at the time.  I made a short list and decided that I wanted to take a run at the entire country.  I set a goal to drink a beer in every state in my four-year enlistment. Nevada was next on my list.