Today I turn 24 (yay!). So I thought it would be cool to look back at how I spent my last birthday while in a war zone. Here's hoping nothing this exciting happens today...


Originally posted here on February 17, 2007:


February 17, 2007 Local Time 1105am

I thought about whether or not to sit here and write about what happened while I was outside the wire. I discussed it with people, and the general consensus was that people at home are worried enough, so why bother them more? I have decided against the silent treatment. Why?

Well, I didn’t start writing this blog to sugarcoat everything that happens here. I wrote this blog to tell you what’s up, no bullshit necessary. If you want bullshit, you can get that from the President.

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an
army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
~German proverb



I was laying on my cot, watching a movie. I heard a few pop shots, but this was not unusual, so I didn’t make a move to get up. Before this day, such things did not worry me. They usually never amount to anything. But it did not stop here. In just a few seconds, it amounted to a firefight, people shooting at each other-this was not a one way street.

Every one looked at every one else as we started hearing booms. They started getting louder, so we all started throwing on our body armor and helmets. My guys all went outside to investigate. At this point, I was kind of scared, but I didn’t really know what to expect. This was the first time something like this has happened to me. I ventured outside cautiously to find out what was going on. The shooting, the booms, all the sounds you don’t want to hear-they just kept escalating. They weren’t going away.

At this point, it’s loud, it’s so loud, you can’t even think. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. It was like I was struck stupid for a minute. Then I heard people yelling my name, yelling for a medic. I needed to get to the CCP-casualty collection point. I was not prepared for this. The thought of setting up a CCP had not crossed my mind yet. I was still trying to get used to what was going on around me. I turned around and ran back in to our room to get my medic bag.

As I ran past the glass doors to our room, there was a huge boom. In retrospect, I don’t really even know if I heard the boom. There was so much going on inside my head. But I felt it. It was like a huge blast of air, that blew me forward. The boom made the glass doors break. It is this point that I don’t get. I feel like I watched myself when the glass broke, like I was watching from above and behind where I actually was. I saw myself get pushed forward, then I hunched down and put my hands over my helmet. Glass rained down in to my body armor and down my shirt. I opened my eyes and there was a huge dust cloud. You couldn’t see anything inside the room. I turned around and the door was blown out the opposite way. I felt glass on my neck, so I opened up my body armor and tried to shake out the glass as fast as I could. People had started coming in the door behind me, and I started shoving people out of the way. It was like I had no control over what I was doing.

I got to my aid bag and started shoving people out of the way and yelling, trying to make my way outside. I got there and people were still recovering from the blast.

People were yelling my name, telling me to go to the CCP. Some one grabbed my arm and told me they would take me. I put my medic bag on like a backpack and started running after this guy. Everything was going so fast. I was looking at the three guys who were running with me to the CCP, but who they were never registered. They were people I didn’t know. We had to run through the Iraqi bathroom. This is just a building, with a bunch of stalls with no doors, and a hole in the ground. Some of the holes don’t drain so stuff just sits there and festers. We were running through here, and I looked to my left and saw three IPs sitting, hiding in one of these stalls. At the time, I didn’t even think that there was something wrong with this. It was just funny to see this-three grown men cowering in the bathroom. So I laughed at them and kept running.

We got to a break in the wall and one of the guys popped out to see what was going on. There was shooting, but one of them stepped out to pull security as I ran across the break. I remember peeking my head out to look, but I don’t remember seeing anything. Just this little break in a brick fence to go through, with this guy pulling security taking up half of my room. I stepped back for a minute and they were yelling at me to go. And then I went. I shoved past the guy pulling security and I almost knocked him over. I got caught on him for a second and then I hauled ass and barreled in to the CCP.

I got in there and it looked like the room was hit by a tornado. I looked around at everyone who was there, and tried to figure out where to go. I was so scared, my heart was in my throat. It was at this point that I truly became scared. I just stood there, listening to what was going on around me. The Iraqis looked like they didn’t know what to do. People were yelling-my guys, the interpreters, the Iraqis. It was pure chaos. Everything took twice as long because you had to wait for the interpreter to interpret.

I dropped my bag by a pile of sandbags and tried to make my heart stop beating out of my chest, just tried to breathe. The interpreter pointed me to an Iraqi man sitting in the corner shaking. He was shaking, looking at the floor, coughing, scared like a little kid from the blast. Through the terp, I asked him if he was hurt or bleeding anywhere. He said his back hurt and I turned him around and checked for bleeding. He was fine. He wasn’t hurt anywhere else, so I told him everything would be okay, to just breathe.

I stood up and turned around to get my aid bag and bring it over in to the corner. Then I just stood there. I didn’t even think about the next step-preparing for casualties. There was no way that with the shit going on, that no one was hurt. I finally realized perhaps I could use some gloves since there was sure to be blood. I opened up my aid bag and I had forgotten where everything was. Gloves, that’s the first thing before you do anything, before you touch anybody, and I couldn’t find them! As I was searching through my aid bag to find them, the other medic came in. He opened up his bag to put on gloves too. I told him that I was scared out of my mind, and that I had never done this before. That I have never had my own casualties, that I had never been in an attack like this. He told me it would be okay. I found my gloves, and went back to my corner and waited. I stood there, feeling my throat get tight, scared to death that something terrible was going to happen. I felt like at any moment the whole building was going to get leveled, that I was going to get buried in concrete, and I thought, “what good is a dead medic buried in rubble?” The interpreter came over and talked to me, told me to take it in, and to just remember my job. How is it that this interpreter had time to sit there and comfort me during this? He had such a level head throughout the whole ordeal. I couldn’t believe it. If only all interpreters were like this guy.

One of the sergeants came over and told me that there were casualties. They didn’t know how many, or what was wrong with them, but that they were coming. And that’s when it hit me. I looked at him and out of nowhere, I just started crying hysterically. It lasted for about ten seconds, and then I got over it. My eyes were still welling up with tears, no matter how much I tried to quit crying. The other medic came over and told me not to worry, that he was there, that he would help me and we would get through it. He told me we needed to start getting things together so we could be ready for any casualties.

We started shoving tables out of the way and started calling for litters. We went in to another room and threw three beds so that we could have the cots for litters. The litters we needed were too far away. We had to have someone bring them to us. We set them up and waited.

I kept going to check on the one Iraqi man who was shaking in the corner. He assured me that he was okay, just scared. I put my hand on his back and told him that he would make it through. I started yelling for a water and someone threw me a bottle and I handed it to him and told him to drink.

In that moment, I realized just how different things were. Usually, you watch your back. I want to trust these Iraqi Police, because I think that basically, all people are good until they prove otherwise. But being here, hearing stories from people, and witnessing things yourself, you can’t help but think otherwise.

But there, in that moment in time, we needed those IPs just as much as they needed us. We had to work together in order to preserve what was left of us and our assets.

I am sure that nothing like this has ever happened at this station, and I can say with 100% certainty that it will definitely happen again. My guys stood their ground, but these guys will not quit.

Casualties hobbled in, were carried in, made their way throughout the day. We treated mostly bumps and bruises. I saw nothing too serious. But, after I went to bed to fall in to a terrible sleep, the true casualties were taken care of. No one woke me up for these. I saw no dead bodies that day. I don’t think my heart could have taken it.

I was trying to sleep but it just wasn’t working. I kept replaying everything that had happened, imagined the possibilities, thinking of how things could have been so much worse. I was in that type of sleep where you can hear what is going on around you, you are sleeping but you are not sleeping. But through this, I was still having dreams. I don’t remember what those dreams were, but I know there were stupid little things that are nothing like booms, but I woke up in a sweat, thinking I really was hearing those booms. I had a headache until the next day, no matter how much Tylenol I took. It just wouldn’t go away. My heart would be fine for a while, then out of nowhere, my heart rate would skyrocket.

Talking to people later about it, you got a sense of what every one else went through. One of the sergeants was knocked on to his chest during that boom that showered me with glass. His body armor blew open. He said that when he saw me with my medic bag going to the CCP, I looked like I was going to school, with my bag on my back. He said it looked like I was taking my time, like I was having fun, in no big hurry to get anywhere, like nothing was going on around me.

One guy who has been here for months said that was the biggest boom he had ever heard in his life. People talked of getting knocked down from blasts, being scared, the adrenaline rush, the excitement and the terror. Another sergeant said he was never that scared in his life, but when he heard the other female that was there start crying after that huge boom, it made him even more scared. He tried to calm her down to because he couldn’t stand her crying.

Another guy-who generally makes up stories that are so far from the truth it isn’t even funny, said that after the glass broke, he coughed up a big ball of spit and glass. I don’t believe that one. It’s not possible that he did not cut his mouth and it’s not possible if something like that did happen, that he wouldn’t go see a medic.

I heard another story about a sergeant running outside the CCP just before the huge blast, and his friend who had just watched him leave feeling the terror that invaded him, thinking that his friend was blown to pieces.

I have heard stories since coming back to the FOB. I heard that they thought the huge blast was incoming on the FOB and they went to the bunkers. I heard that some of our guys got up on top of their CHU and saw the mushroom cloud from the explosion and ran to the Platoon Daddy and LT’s CHU to find out what was going on with us. That they all sat there and waited to find out that we were okay. When we got back in, one of the guys saw me and the other female, and he came up to us and gave us hugs, telling us he was so glad that we were alive.

I never ever want to go through that shit again. The other female that was with me said later that she wanted to go home, that she is not made for combat. And I remember thinking that now she was just being foolish. I was miserable as could be during that thing, but I never thought about going home, oddly enough. All I wanted to do was go back to the FOB. There were only two thoughts in my head the whole time: I hope nothing happens to my guys, and I want to go back to that God forsaken FOB and I never want to leave it again.


I now know the feeling of sheer terror and hopelessness. I have seen this war that you see on the news. I know that this is NOT MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, and it probably never will be.

I had no concept of time that day. I don’t know what time shit started to hit the fan. I don’t know what time it ended. There are moments in time that are lost to me-I have no recollection of them. It was all so surreal. The more time that passes, the less I remember. And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.