And you ruined, like the rest of us ruined, rest of us ruined

Reviewing my stories from Iraq I'm struck by how many little details they bring back that are already starting to slip away, and also by the big events I haven't written about in detail. I think I'll try to get the rest down.

First: The Rollover.



It was a late morning in March, and my platoon was the day's quick response force (QRF), the emergency backup for anyone in trouble. A platoon of engineers on a dismounted foot patrol had an improvised claymore explode, injuring several of them, three seriously.

We were scrambled and sent out to the location without any actual guidance on what to do. In the panic to get moving, I assumed we were going to help evacuate the wounded; initial reports made us think they had too many litter cases for their own vehicles. I did a very quick map check since it was in an unfamiliar part of the city, discussed the route with my platoon sergeant and lead truck and headed out way too fast, bouncing with bone shaking force over potholed roads, siren screaming from the lead truck I followed.

Half way there the situation clarified, and we understood that they were able to self evacuate; we were just to go secure the abandoned bomb site and wait for EOD to gather evidence and look for any secondaries that might not have exploded.

We didn't slow down.

We also weren't able to make it down my chosen route. We got there and found that like 80% of small to moderate intersections in Mosul it was blocked off to cut down on the routes available to car bombs and force them to go through checkpoints. I hastily found an alternate possible route and we kept going.

We slowed down. A bit.

By now we were away from the city center, with buildings more spread out and traffic more sparse than usual. We reached our turn and were thrown another wrinke; it was a quasi-clover leaf, with no left turn that we needed. My lead truck did what we usually did when traffic didn't cooperate, and drove the wrong way up the left side. In our usual city center the Iraqi police at the intersection would have stopped oncoming traffic for us; today there were neither police nor traffic out here on the edge.

We made the turn and headed back into the city on the wrong side of the road.

As we got further in the traffic picked up a bit, mostly on the right side going the same direction as us, but also a few people coming head on who saw us and pulled off to the left so we could keep going. Given the heavier traffic to the right, I didn't order us to try to merge back onto the right side. And then there he was. White nameless sedan, middle aged man, not fifty feet away, rubbernecking at my lead truck as it blazed past and he made a blind u-turn.

Right in front of me.

Vehicle rollovers are extremely dangerous and disturbingly common. The unit I joined after Iraq lost three soldiers over there to a rollover. They paralyzed another the same way before the deployment. I've read about half a dozen other fatal ones over the years.

So we practice extensively what to do. You yell "rollover rollover rollover!" and brace yourself; if you're the gunner sticking out you drop inside before you get decapitated or crushed. I saw what was about to happen, coming up on the blind side of my 5'4" and none too competent driver, so I grabbed the oh-shit-handle and screamed the only sensible thing.

"OH, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!"

My driver saw him at the last possible moment and did the instinctive and very wrong thing; he jerked the wheel to the left in an attempt to dodge. The long pole with a heat decoy extending from our bumper hit the car and suddenly our nose was pointed sharply to the left while all of the momentum of our top heavy, 9' tall, 25 ton armored vehicle was still very much going straight ahead.

I looked out the barred window of my door with what I was certain would be my last moments on this Earth and watched asphalt approach with horribly suddenly slowness. I belatedly decided there were better things to do than rubberneck at my impending demise and jammed my head into the window and pressed my body to the door, easy given that I wasn't wearing my seat belt, and had an instant to realize that no last thought of Mom, Italian Girl, Nobody Girl, or Inappropriate Girl flashed through my head. In my more morbid moments I had been given to wondering which of them would be my last thought if it came to that, and what it would say about who I really was and what really mattered to me. I think I had a moment to start hysterical, grim laughter when I understood I really was going to die with None of the Above on my mind.

Crash. Slide.

Dust. Laying on its side like that with a huge, jarring impact, every buried bit of dirt in every crevice came flying loose and landed on me where I laid on a hardened steel door separating me from the ground six inches away. I choked, I spit, I choked, I flexed, I choked, I didn't hurt, I choked, I desperately screamed out, sure the intercom wouldn't work anymore, sure no one was, was everyone ok.

They were.

Immediately after I heard a panicked call from the truck behind me telling my lead guy to stop, the LT had just flipped his truck and, his tone implied, was probably seriously injured or dead. For two or five or maybe ten seconds that took an hour I desperately scrambled with my left hand, since my right wasn't ready yet to release the oh-shit-handle, trying to find the radio switch. Success. Relieved response.

Escape.

I greatly feared we were on fire, and couldn't tell the swirling dust still obscuring my vision from smoke. Nor could I remember where the emergency fire extinguisher system handle was, but my one dismount in the back told me we weren't burning. Yet. I told my driver to turn off the engine. He mumbled something. I told him again. More mumbling. I finally let go of the handle and looked up.

Flopping puppet.

He had been wearing his seat belt, which kept his 130 lbs plus 40 pounds of gear from crashing down on me, but he'd slammed forward into the wheel and then whiplashed in suspension, and wasn't making a great deal of sense. Finally he understood and turned off the engine. A little more coaxing got him to lower the rear ramp, sideways, and my second greatest fear evaporated; we were going to be able to get out easily.

Or not.

Climbing up and over surfaces not meant to be climbed upon in full body armor after slamming into an unyielding surface isn't as easy as I hoped. I took my armor off and shot putted it to the back, where it could get dragged out. Then I reached up and grabbed my driver while my first rescuer, the truck commander who'd been right behind, climbed in and popped his seatbelt loose. He was alert and semi-responsive but of no use to himself or us. Rescue guy tried to take his armor off the same way I'd taken mine, and just got it tangled up. Yelled suggestions from the back. I was annoyed, we didn't have time for that, reached out.

Emergency release.

His armor fell off in four parts that take half an hour to figure out how to put together again if you don't have the manual in front of you, and I once again shot putted the parts to the back while others dragged him out. I followed.

Aftermath.

My guys were all alive. My driver was obviously hurting and at best mentally vague, but my gunner (who knew exactly what "oh, fuuuuuck" meant and dropped down) and dismount squad leader were just moderately sore. My right arm was a bit sore, but that was all. My interpreter, who abandoned us to slide out the escape hatch almost immediately, didn't have even a little bit of pain. My functional trucks were formed up in a reasonable defensive position around my cripple. Nothing required my immediate attention.

Which left...



The driver, amazingly enough, was alive, although probably not very appreciative of that fact. He was also very much trapped. I ordered my platoon sergeant to call for some extraction equipment to come out with the QR...

Fuck.

Who would rescue the rescuers? The Iraqis, to begin with. Of the watching crowds of at least two hundred gathered around us, fifteen of them rushed forward with makeshift crowbars and with about two minutes vigorous work, yelling their heads off the whole time, freed their countryman. My medic put him on a back board and gave me his analysis. Head lacerations. I could see the blood. Concussion. No shit. "Crushed shoulder." I didn't look. And maybe internal injuries.

To make a long story shorter, we eventually let him and the back board go into the back of another civilian car with a dude who claimed to know him and who would take him to the local hospital. No, they didn't need any more favors from Americans, thanks.

I belatedly left a claims card with an Iraqi army major who came by. He promised to get it to the man. Seven months later, back in the US, I got an email from a JAG that some guy had filed a claim for me destroying his car and putting him in the hospital. I told them they should give him as much as they could.

Our sister platoon came out to rescue us with an M88 to lift my truck up and tow it back. Another platoon from another company completed the mission I'd been sent out to accomplish. The remains of my platoon were escorted back to the FOB where we peeled off to the hospital to drop off my driver and get my other two guys, whose original "moderate" soreness had stiffened up into painful near paralysis, checked out.

On the way out we realized another of my trucks was also broken; the speed run over potholes must have snapped a spring on the axle. We limped it home. Amazingly, both trucks were fixed and fully functional just eight hours later.

My driver, not so much.

The joke about soldiers who fail the post blast/crash memory/math test is that they weren't all that good at it before. Alas, we're pretty sure that he had been previously capable of dialing a phone number if it was written down in front of him. Now he couldn't. He also was a little slow and frustrated looking in conversation. Given that and the fact he'd deployed with a torn ACL that needed eventual surgery I tried to get him sent home, but for some insane reason they wouldn't do it. He worked in the command post as a runner the rest of the deployment and slowly got better. He tells me he's fine now, although he's due for yet another ACL surgery.

There an investigation. My god, was there an investigation, the first of three that would affect me in a record setting span of 19 days. I was judged contributorily negligent in several respects, as was the driver, but my job was never in danger. The day after the crash I received the first officer efficiency report counseling of my career from my battalion commander, and it wasn't particularly awkward. A couple of weeks later I gave a well received class on roll over safety, and walked out feeling almost like that had left my overall reputation enhanced. It also became the start of my reputation for good/bad luck, one that would grow exponentially before everything was over.

And before everything was over I would twice actually come much closer to death, and once theoretically so, but that was the only day I ever really believed it was going to happen. I'm not going to die until I have a better answer than None of the Above.

Crash Years, The New Pornographers.