It's nearly impossible to explain just how sudden, how quickly it happens. As a result, it is equally as difficult to really understand what it's like, unless it's happened to you.
I've regaled many a soldier with the story, each time finding myself pausing and searching for the right words, the correct language to use. I am still certain I haven't figured it out yet.
I am talking about March 4th, 2011, the day I was blown up.
First off, let me calm any panic by saying I am totally fine, healthy, etcetera. As are all other soldiers involved in the incident. Some headaches and sore muscles, the result of a mild concussion and being flung about a vehicle like a rag doll, are all I suffer from, and that will be short lived.
With that out of the way, I'll get into the juicy part. It was a calm, sunny day, beautiful really. Springtime weather, enjoyable stuff. Of course, we had a mission that day, a big one, so there wasn't going to be time to enjoy a game of basketball or volleyball as I would have liked.
We were to be clearing a route ahead of another unit, so that they could push through and make contact with village leaders. U.S. forces had not been down this route since April of 2010, so it was well known before hand that resistance was expected.
I was the gunner in the lead vehicle, the tip of the spear as they say. Fortunately for myself, I am a CROW gunner. This means I sit inside the vehicle, controlling the weapon with a joystick, using cameras for visual images and what not, as opposed to the traditional gunner, who is up in a hatch manually controlling the weapon. The CROW is a much safer option, though a bit more finicky.
Some more in depth mine clearing vehicles, two of them, pushed ahead of my vehicle before the road got too narrow, as they were primary vehicles that would be needed up front instead of being in the middle of the pack. After a few hours of smooth clearance, nothing to be found, the ground gave way by a ditch and one of those vehicles became stuck. My vehicle pushed forward, parked, and my vehicle commander and one of the dismounts exited the vehicle to go assist in recovering the stuck one in front of us.
That is the last thing I can remember, and even that is relatively vague for me. A few minutes later, I am told, is when nearly one hundred pounds of homemade explosives, HME, sitting a few feet under the road as a defensive IED was set off. It was seated, and of course blew up, directly under where I sat in the vehicle.
I was knocked unconscious for approximately 30 to 45 seconds. I awoke with my eyes still clenched shut and my head ricocheting off of the roof, my CROW screen, probably a few other things. This is the memory that sticks out the most because of the suddenness of it, as I stated before. To be sitting, scanning my sector as two people exited the vehicle, and then waking up to complete chaos. A few hours after all this, I sat thinking about that moment. Is that what death would've been like? A sudden blankness, no memories flowing through my brain like the movies always said? It's a long, long road of thought with no end in sight, one that is best not taken I suppose.
Back to waking up. My eyes were still clenched shut, as I said, and I felt like I was in some no gravity zone, floating around. I was totally confused as to what was happening, until I finally took a big deep breath. I assume the blast knocked all the air out of me, and when I took that breath I could feel the sand and dust rolling over my tongue, I could taste the smoke. My hearing returned, and I heard the buzzing sound the vehicle was making, like the driver had forgotten to put his seat belt on, except in these vehicles that noise means something is messed up. That was when it dawned on me, that we had been hit.
So I opened my eyes, the insides of the vehicle looked like a storm had flown through it. I turned my head to look behind me, and saw that the back door had blown open and was flapping around, a door nearly three hundred pounds just waving like an old screen porch door. The vehicle was rolling back into the blast hole, I saw the dirt and sand coming closer.
I threw the cooler that had flown open and landed on my chest off of me, and my attention went straight to my CROW system. I knew that if we had been struck by an IED then an ambush was likely imminent. It wouldn't have mattered, because my weapon system was down. After fooling around with it for a few seconds and getting no luck, I made contact with my driver, who had been in the vehicle with me, to make sure he was okay and quell him of any fears regarding my health.
After confirming this, I looked him in the eye and asked a question I knew the answer to. What did we get hit with? We laugh about it now, asking such a stupid, obvious question. But in that confused state, it just popped out.
The radios had gone down, I discovered that next when I tried to make contact with the rest of the convoy and the dismounts. For at least ten seconds I could think nothing else save the thought of those dismounts being pink mist. It was a horror that rose up in my gut, and swirled around until I spotted my vehicle commander, eyes wide and face red, beating feet around the vehicle to check on us. He stuck his head around the corner and asked me if we were alright. I'm fine, I said, but my fifty (M2 50 caliber machine gun) is down. When he tells this story, he always mentions the look on my face, my eyes the size of dinner plates.
The driver and I dismounted and spread out to pull security. This is when the fear and shock started to dissipate, replaced by anger and sheer hatred. Someone had just tried to kill me. They tried their damnedest to make me dead, and I hated them so much for that. I hated every local national I spotted through my weapons sights, on one knee scanning. Seven hundred meters away, school children were fleeing into a building and all I wanted to do was put bullets in them.
I am not proud of this fact. But I dare someone to go through that experience and have even a morsel of serenity and peace in their hearts. These are the situations that reach down and pull the basic animal out of you. For that short period of time, I didn't know what innocent and guilty meant. I knew simply that I didn't want to die, someone else did want me to die, and that was bullshit.
In the days following, my mind saw no rest. Every "what if" scenario flooded through me. What if I had gotten out to take a piss? I would've been standing on top of the damn thing. What if we had spotted it sooner? What if it had gone off later, under another vehicle, a lesser one? It is enough to drive a man insane. In speaking to veterans of the unit's previous deployment, I knew that no "what if" scenario happened, and it was a waste of time and energy thinking about it.
Days later, I play the scene through my head, and am surprised at my feelings, my nerves. I'm not afraid to go back, it's the opposite. I want to go back, I need to go back there. Part of it is vengeance, I'll admit that. However, it's mostly the want to finish the mission. That route needs clearing, and my platoon and I are the people to do it.
God, I do love this job...
So check your worries at the door, and keep on keeping on.
*Pictured above; Myself and my vehicle commander Sgt. Dustin Whitaker standing by my vehicle and blast hole.
