We Two Soldiers by Mark Schafron

I’d never been blown up before.

We were patrolling in the middle of nowhere during the late afternoon of another 110 degree day, with nobody around except a goatherd in the distance, tending a few scrawny goats. The IED must have been under a pressure plate in the road.

A slow-motion movie sort of thing is how I’d heard survivors describe explosions. Not me. One minute, I was in the Humvee’s right rear seat behind the vehicle commander, Staff Sergeant Bennett, getting my kidneys pureed on the rough road. Then I heard a roar like the sound of a passing locomotive. A white light filled the cabin like some nuclear camera flash and I felt a searing wind on my face. Then I was somersaulting through the air with my synapses flashing, envisioning how hard I might land. Pretty hard, it turns out. The ground rushed towards me, and I heard a crunch as I landed face-first in the dirt. And then the lights went out.

I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute. I came to face down, rolled over and sat up, panting and spitting dirt. I thumbed off the safety on the M4 across my chest and scanned for hostiles. The air was still acrid with the fertilizer smell of the IED. The goatherd and his mini-flock had disappeared. I saw nothing but a flat plain of sand and jumbled rocks, with shimmering heat waves rising through the dull orange glow of the sun through the dust. Not a breeze, not a sound, not a bird. It reminded me of the backdrop for some stranded-on-a-hostile-planet movie. I had an earthquake of a headache, and when I moved my head, it felt like my brain was tumbling loose inside my skull. Probable concussion. I shrugged my shoulders and felt a wave of pain and then nausea that brought back, of all things, a memory of my grandmother talking about morning sickness. My right arm was good but I couldn’t lift my left arm—probable broken clavicle. And I had a stabbing pain on one side of my butt—I’d caught a piece of shrapnel. I dropped my head and dry heaved between my knees.

Except for the concussion, my injuries were minor. According to the book, anyway. Still, I was a lucky woman.

I rubbed my eyes, let my brain roll forward to where my eyes were and focused on the Humvee.

It was trashed. The front wheels splayed to the sides while the hood and fenders had flown off to parts unknown. The engine sat a few yards away, upside down in a spreading pool of oil. The doors were hanging cockeyed from their hinges, and I could see the driver and gunner. Even from a distance, I saw that assessing them would be pointless. I had only been with the unit for a week and couldn’t remember their names.

Then I saw Bennett. He was sitting up with his back against a boulder maybe ten yards from the Humvee and he was moving.

I ran—hobbled—to the Humvee to find my Unit One Pack. It was in the back seat, sticky-wet. I thought for a second that the saline bags had busted, but then I realized it was someone’s blood. I tried to keep my eyes down when I yanked the pack free. I didn’t want to look at those guys inside. They were strangers, but not strangers, because they wore my uniform. Not long before we blew, the driver shouted out a lame knock-knock joke that made me smile. The fifty-cal gunner standing behind me nudged the back of the driver’s seat with the toe of his boot, and even Bennett shook his head. Now, there they both were.

I choked all that down like so much vomit and focused on my training. I had a live staff sergeant, and I needed to triage him.

Bennett was peppered with small shrapnel, but at first glance, I saw nothing catastrophic and he was breathing fine. No choking or gurgling. But he was oozing blood everywhere and looked like someone had smeared him with raspberry jam from his neck to his knees.

“How we doing, Sarge?” I asked while I scanned him for signs of shock and arterial bleeding.

Bennett looked up at me and made a face that said something like, “You’re kidding, right?”

Then he shifted his gaze, his eyes widened, and he whipped out his sidearm and leveled it.

I’d heard of wounded guys flipping out, thinking they were still in the hot zone, and I grabbed at the weapon with my good hand, saying, “No, no, no, no!”

I was squatting and off-balance and he shoved me into the dirt with his free hand, while firing three rounds right over my head. I rolled to my side, my ears ringing, and looked toward where he had fired. There lay the goatherd, sprawled on his back a dozen yards away. Beside him lay an AK-47 and a satellite phone. Bennett had put two rounds center mass, and the third through the phone. He was a hell of a shot.

“He was their eyes,” Bennett said. “I should have realized it as soon as I saw him way the hell out here, goddammit.”

Then his chin dropped to his chest and he fainted.

****

Fortunately, my IV bags were intact. I slashed open Bennett’s sleeve and got an IV going as best I could one-handed, to compensate for some of the blood he’d lost and beat back any oncoming shock. I loosened his body armor, got his tunic open, and could feel small bits of metal, like broken glass, sticking from his chest. Not deep, but metal where it shouldn’t be.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “It went right through the armor.”

“Low-bid junk,” Bennett said, waking, picking up his head. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and spat a dry spit. “Or some company with friends in Congress. There have been rumors all over the zone that you might as well stick a sheet pan down your shirt.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Lacerated. How about you?”

I made him cough into a piece of gauze. No blood, so that was good.

“My collarbone is broken,” I said. I pulled a sling from my pack and he tied the knot for me. I tried to get him to lie down so I could elevate his legs, but he refused.

“I can’t shoot flat on my back.”

“Do you want anything for the pain, Sarge?”

“No. I want my head screwed on in case that guy over there called his playmates. What time is it, Doc? My watch is smashed.”

“Sixteen thirty.”

“I was supposed to check in a half hour ago. Someone will come looking soon. In the meantime, we have some cover, our small arms, and it looks like the fifty-cal in the vehicle is in one piece. The other guys?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t look at the Humvee.

Bennett took a deep breath and exhaled, making a sound with his lips like a horse blowing.

We were quiet for a moment and then he said, “They’re your first real casualties, aren’t they?”

I was still squatting in front of him with my eyes in the dirt. I nodded.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I’m going to introduce you. Our driver was Private Henry Ardith, Aurora, Nebraska. Age nineteen. Corn-fed farm kid more than a little spooked being here. I think that’s why he was always making goofy jokes. The gunner was Corporal D’Shawn Williamson, Montgomery, Alabama. Age twenty-one. Quiet man, serious. He enlisted for the GI Bill because he wanted to go to Tuskegee when he got out.” Bennett picked up a handful of powdery dirt and watched it flow through his fingers like water. “Both of them are in pieces thanks to my tunnel vision, because this is my hundredth-something pointless patrol in this pointless war.

“And you, Pappas, with an unpronounceable first name. Specialist Four—Combat Medic. So your name is automatically Doc. You’re fresh out of medic school, making this your first forward deployment. I read everybody’s service record when they transfer in.”

“Cleo is my first name. Short for Cleonike. I’m twenty and I’m from Chicago. I wanted to be a doctor but my family couldn’t afford it, even with scholarships. So I enlisted and became a medic.”

“Cleo what?

“Clee-oh-nee-kee. It’s Greek.”

“No kidding? I never would have guessed.”

“Why are you telling me this? About them?” I bobbed my head toward the Humvee and felt my brain roll again.

“Because they’re your first and they certainly won’t be your last. Here’s how it works for most people: you’ll sleep with them for a while. Maybe weeks, maybe months. They’ll come in flashes. You’ll hear their voices, or remember minor encounters—memories of them you didn’t know you had. One guy who always smacked his gum. Another who tore the filters off his cigarettes. The one in the chow hall who ate like there was a prize at the bottom of his plate. Then they will fade and you won’t think about it.”

I pointed toward the goatherd. “What about him?”

“Forget about him. He’s my problem. He was coming towards us with his weapon at the ready, but …”

“But what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Bennett dug a furrow in the dust with his boot heel and studied his work.

“Why are we alive?” I asked.

“Were you belted in?”

“No.”

“Me neither. We’re alive because of disregarding safety regs. And, I suppose, dumb luck.”

I started a second saline bag, laying it on top of the boulder. It wasn’t an IV tree, but it worked. Then I sat in front of him, with my weight on my hip. We were both scanning for hostiles and jumped a little at every puff of wind. My shoulder and head were killing me and the small shrapnel wound burned. I could only imagine how he felt, aching from scores of razor cuts.

“What’s your first name, Sarge?”

“Staff Sergeant. Sarge to my friends.”

I felt like he had cuffed me. “Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” I said, in my best lower rank tone. Geeze, what a hard-ass, I thought, until I saw one corner of his mouth turn up.

“My name is Rudd,” he said.

“What? Rug?”   

“Ha, ha. You heard me the first time. It’s short for Rutherford.”

“Rutherford? My goodness. How … elegant?”

“Don’t make fun. At least someone named me for an obscure president, or I think they did. What were you named for? A dessert?”

I knew what the bastard was doing. He was trying to make me laugh, or at least smile. It didn’t work.

We kept scanning and waiting. He swept the one-eighty behind me, and I the one-eighty behind him. against my advice, Bennett struggled to his feet, tucked the IV bag in his breast pocket, and walked stiff-legged to the Humvee to retrieve extra ammo. I suspected he did it so I wouldn’t have to look inside again. I felt a little patronized by that and told him so.

“Leadership lesson number one, Doc,” he said. “Never order a soldier to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself. I also have two functional arms and you don’t, so spare me.”

I took a breath and held it, afraid to ask, but did anyway: “They aren’t going to fade away, are they?” It came out fast, like an accusation.

Bennett dropped the ammo cans, with the now-dead saline bag dangling from his forearm.

“Not … completely. I mean, does anybody, ever, Clee-oh-nee-kee? Parents, siblings, lovers, friends.” He looked skyward, squinting in the light, as if he were searching for something. “After a time, they’ll become part of the landscape and you won’t mind them so much.”

His face was gray from the exertion, and he took his seat against the boulder.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I said.

“It’s my job. Sometimes, I do it well.” He glanced at the Humvee. “And sometimes I don’t.”

The sun disappeared behind the horizon and, just like that, it was colder than my Chicago. We were strapping on our night vision gear when we heard it—the whistling turbines and rotor thump of a Blackhawk helicopter. A dustoff coming for us. They circled, strobe lights flashing, using their night sun to light us up and scan the surrounding perimeter. Bennett shaded his eyes while I held up two fingers. Two alive.

They landed, sandblasting us. Four flight medics jumped out and ran toward us, looking like space aliens in their flight suits and big aviation helmets. A Stryker rolled up with a powerful smell of diesel smoke and the deep-throated grinding of a massive transmission. Ten guys piled out and formed a perimeter around us and the dustoff. I learned later that they brought Ardith and Williamson back with them. I guess the goatherd stayed put. I didn’t ask.

Bennett and I moved to stand, but one medic motioned with his hands, palms down, that we were to stay on the ground. The others grabbed two stretchers and rolled us onto them.

Bennett squawked a little, but let them strap him down. I didn’t mind being carried one bit. I was so friggin’ spent from hyper-vigilance and pain.

Once they’d slid us in side by side and locked our stretchers down opposite the open door, a medic gave the pilots thumbs up. The turbines whined from low to shrill, and I felt my body press into the floor as we jerked into the air. Then the medic in her bulbous alien helmet turned to us again, took our vitals, then scrubbed the crook of my arm with an alcohol wipe. She tapped at my median antecubital vein and gave me a blast of morphine. She did the same for Bennett. I felt my eyes get droopy, and I sank into a warm, comfortable bath where I still hurt, but no longer cared.

The Blackhawk picked up speed while the stars slipped by the open door, looking like jewels floating on black water. I used to believe that the night sky was the place where the gods lived. I don’t worship gods anymore, but I still like to hope they’re out there, somewhere, waiting for us. Maybe they will explain the point of it all and release us from the aching of one person alone. People like me, Bennett, Ardith, and Williamson, whose life stories could be written on the back of a fallen leaf.

The wind coming in washed my sweaty, dirty face with clean, cold air. The door gunner scanning the ground beneath us glowed green from the right-hand navigation light. Bennett rolled his head to the side and looked at me. He tapped my hand with his fingertips and nodded. Then I realized I wouldn’t be the only one sleeping with our dead. But I wish he hadn’t told me their names.

We flew on, toward home and safety, we two soldiers, with Ardith, Williamson, and the goatherd in hot pursuit, bodysurfing our tumbling wake.

Mark Schafron

Image from Wikicommons – Public Domain. Task_Force_Falcon_UH-60_Black_Hawk_helicopters_transport_personnel_in_eastern_Afghanistan