When Things First Got Hot (and Chilly)

This picture reminds me a lot of our team's early days in Sangin. It was taken during one of my first operations in country, or at least I think it was . . . anyway, it was mid to late September. Big Daddy, Creole, Mumbles, Doc, and I had been attached to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines for a clearing operation. The LT was butting his head up against a wall trying to get us deployed the way he wanted, but the word from higher was to get CAG "surged" (everyone loved that phrase back then) to India Company, who was the focus of effort. So the team was split up, and each of us ended up with a different element, while LT and Dominicano stayed at the main base and Doc helped out at the Aid Station.

It was a relatively uneventful start to a difficult day. The first squad LDed pretty early in the morning but by the time I stepped off with the third squad it was already ridiculously hot. Probably 100 degrees, plus all that damn gear. Sweating our way into orchards, across mud walls, rushing through danger areas - it was a long, grueling start. I amused myself during breaks with the EOD Tech with whom I'd made fast friends. Guys like him have to be a little crazy and the one thing constant across 3/7, 1st Recon, and 3/5 was how quickly I was able to make friends with EOD. They are a strange bunch. We eventually joined up with the second squad at a large compound where a family claimed their father was working in the District Center. First squad was pushed out clearing the next sector of the route, so we holed up at the compound while they swept for IEDs. It was a pretty standard scene: Marines bored as hell, kids chucking rocks at their goats and (if they also got bored) each other, women hiding in one of rooms, and me trying to figure out how the hell I could get some useful information for the Platoon Sergeant or maybe even the LT. The father returned, claimed he was an Engineer and sympathetic to the government and the Marines even though he was Ishaqzai. Big Surprise - he only had twenty-odd Marines armed to the teeth waiting for him when he got home. What else was he going to say?

We had a particularly awful terp, so I didn't get very far but the forward element was moving so slowly it really didn't matter. A few hours later we realized there wasn't going to be any further movement before it got dark so the Platoon Commander ordered first squad to RTB. On the way back their Combat Camera was shot in the side above his side SAPI plate. Creole was there, and helped bring him back to the compound where the rest of us were staying. Leatherneck (the main camp) spun up the MEDEVAC bird and sent it on its way, but it took over a half-hour. The Corpsman we had with us brought the guy back three times before the chopper touched down.

He died on the return flight.

Funny, this picture is actually from the next morning. I remember it because it was so cold on radio watch (I think I had 0200-0400) and I had only packed out my poncho liner. Solution? Burn a bunch of plastic from MREs I had eaten, staying close enough to get some heat but not so close that I was hacking constantly. It's a difficult balance.

What Is There Left To Defend?

Sitting in a coffee shop on campus with a few minutes to kill before class. Standing up to refill my cup, I see something . . . absolutely ridiculous. I don't know if you have heard of G4 TV but it's some cable channel focused on young adults. They are showing some game shop-type series with two chicks dressed up to look like a New Yorker's caricature of a trashy teenage girl: daisy dukes, midriff t-shirts, and pigtails.

This is America now. It's 11:45 on a Monday, I'm at one of our so-called "elite" institutions and the flat-screen on the wall is showing two anoxeric whores playing Marble in the Oatmeal, where they mock fight each other in a kiddy pool of porridge.

Originally I wanted this blog to be a way for me to remember and make sense of my deployment to Afghanistan. I've been afraid to write in it for the last five months and I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with the steaming, messy pile of shit that is American culture. How can you justify what our eighteen and nineteen year-olds are going through when this is what we do with the opportunities?

There is nothing of value is what we create under the logic of profit maximization. I may want to watch some girls flailing around in oatmeal (actually, I really don't but when I was sixteen I might have) but does that justify a channel dedicated to hedonism? Is it right just because they can make a few bucks on advertising?

We are lost.

It never leaves you

Occasionally you are reminded how different you are from other students at school. Most of the time you can pretend you're not but then the most random little event will trigger something inside of you. And that can scare you.

I was walking with a friend toward the Stanford Quad last week along Serra Street. It was a beautiful day, clouds playing across a blue sky while a brisk wind kept it just on the chilly side. The two of us had spent a carefree afternoon walking around the new Graduate School of Business complex looking at some of the new sculptures, discussing them (she's a writer for an art magazine), and generally catching up since we hadn't seen each other since I'd returned.

Two people crashed into each other on their bicycles about one hundred and fifty meters ahead of us while we passed the fountain in front of Memorial Auditorium. I could hear a few people yelling and sprinted over to see if everyone was okay. One of the girls was standing up and seemed to be okay while the other was lying on the pavement on her side, screaming.

The first thing that flashed in my head was how only one woman was even attempting to help. Everyone else was just standing around. I let a wave of anger pass over me and then focused on the girl. She was on her right side, grimacing and incoherent. After making sure someone called 911, I looked her over. She was unable to move her left shoulder but claimed to be otherwise hurt, which a quick scan confirmed.

Her name was Hillary. I rolled up my sweatshirt and put it under Hillary's head while we talked for the next seven or eight minutes. First the police (a wonderful deputy name Harris Kuhn who is a good friend of the Stanford veterans) and then the fire department showed up and took over, much to my relief. This should have been a pretty unremarkable event - Hillary gets hurt, gets help, end of story - but it wasn't. Not to me.

Kneeling over her, telling her she was going to be okay, telling her help was on the way - all of the sudden I was back in Sangin during a clearing op with L/3/7, watching an Afghan soldier with no legs slowly bleed out muttering "Allah, Allah" over and over again. All I could do was shout at him in English to stop moving because we were about to drop a GBU on a compound only sixty meters away. He ended up dying on the MEDEVAC bird. Did I check his tourniquets and do a blood sweep every time we moved him? I think so.

I think so. But I'm not sure. It never leaves you.