21 June 2008
It has been interesting lately, to watch the reality we are involved in played out on the national news. Besides the recent coverage of the mass of events in Kandahar, this morning we were woken up on a call out to an IED strike on a convoy. A couple hours later, I’m logging in to check emails and the MSN homepage is reporting an IED blast that killed two and injured 3…the same mission we were on. It was in the middle of nowhere, so there were no photos or video coverage. Just a blurb. From my perspective, it was a little bit more significant than a one-liner. Screaming along trying to keep the helicopter 100ft off the ground, flying at nearly 150 knots and screeching to a halt in a dusty landing zone beside the barely recognizable remnants of a truck. Monitoring the radios as the status of the 5 patients change; WIA count decreases and the KIA numbers increase. The convoy was a mix of US and Afghan national army. All the casualties were ANA. Luckily… fortunately? I don’t know the right way to word it. The 3 men were stable and it appeared that this was their first time flying in a helicopter. We couldn’t decide if their look was lingering from the havoc they had just survived or the apprehension of whether or not they were going to survive the flight. One became nauseous and vomited- an common medical reaction to the blast and mental/ physical stress- not my flying ;-) The sights and smells made the cabin unbearable, even though we fly with the windows off. I pulled everything I could out of those engines to get them to their hospital as fast as I could… not for their survival, but for my crew. I used to be a ‘sympathy vomiter’ but I’ve outgrown it through years of raising kids and caring for a pregnant wife. I wasn’t sure about the other guys and I didn’t want to find out mid-flight. Afghanistan certainly has its memorable smells. Every place has a unique aroma. I recall the burning trash smell in the black townships of South Africa, the similar, yet unique smell of Korea, and the indescribable stench of the open waste treatment yards burning just outside the compound at Kandahar. I realized that after all the places I’ve lived in my life and things I can stomach, the smell here is something I don’t expect to get used to.