166 Days: My Journey Through The Darkness (20 page)

20 September 2008

I thought the last day at Firebase Anaconda would never come, but it finally had. Hal was a sweetheart and told us that even though our flight was not scheduled until midnight, he refused to let us go back down to the clinic to work; we’d been through enough and paid our dues. Instead, we stayed in our rooms and packed and talked. As we reminisced on our time there, I wished so many things. I wished we would’ve had an After Action briefing to help everyone deal with the failed mission. I wished we would’ve had the support of a chaplain. I wished we had all been more open about how the incident impacted each of us, but unfortunately the reality of the situation was different.  

In the early afternoon one of the Afghan soldiers spotted a local Taliban leader in the bazaar right outside of the firebase. After forming a plan of attack at a moment’s notice, they successfully apprehended him and brought him back to the firebase. It was a huge catch, which certainly helped boost the spirits of everyone. Once the prisoner was secured and the interrogation began, several of us decided to take a hike up the mountain behind the firebase as a symbol of my last “hurrah” before leaving. I’d been hesitant to do so in the past, but on this last day at the firebase I felt it was almost a
necessary
task to accomplish before I left. We jumped on the ATVs with our M4s and headed up the path to a point and then hiked up the rest of the way to the top.

It was a nice hike and when we got to the top, and looked out over the terrain, I realized what a sight it was; a view of the firebase I hadn’t seen before. I appreciated the size of my home for the past three months. It was actually quite small, especially when I saw how vast the area surrounding was. I was amazed so many
big
things could happen in such a small area of land mass.

“Jenn, look off to your left by that ridge line,” Hal pointed, “That’s the area of the TIC Rod was killed in.” Surprisingly I found I was actually comforted by knowing where it happened and seeing the area in a new perspective; I felt a certain sense of closure. As I stood there, with the sun setting over the mountains, I looked down at the firebase, the buildings, the clinic, and the track I ran on every day.

“Hal, can you take a picture of me with the firebase behind me?” I asked and I handed him my camera. I thought someday that picture would mean something significant to me. I had no idea at the time how true that was.

We had our final moments on the top and headed back to the ATVs. As I got on, Hal must have seen the thoughts and reflection in my face; he looked and me and gave me a hug saying, “Congratulations Jenn, you just spent the majority of your deployment in one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. How does it feel?”

The only words that I could find were, “It feels like it’s time to go home.” He agreed and we headed back to the firebase.

After we got back we had one last meeting in the dayroom where the guys presented us with Certificates of Appreciation and a team patch to thank us for everything we did, which was mainly due to Hal insisting we get recognized. It was a nice gesture. They asked us to say a few words and for the first time I was at a loss; the only thing I could manage was, “Thank you….I was honored to have been here with you.” I wanted to say so much more, but the words weren’t there.

The rest of the evening was spent with last minute packing and goodbyes. I tried to sleep before we left, but I couldn’t for so many obvious reasons. I couldn’t stop thinking about
everything
. I thought about the first day I arrived, the clinic, the people, the tragedy, the bullets flying over our heads almost nightly, the mortar attacks, the feelings I never thought I could feel, the sadness….the loss. As I lay there, restless in my reflections, someone knocked on our door. “Hey guys! Your flight’s delayed one hour!” the voice shouted. I felt my heart pounding….
what if it didn’t come? What if we are stuck here another week?
I managed to doze off for about thirty minutes, but was awakened by a loud banging on the door.

“Jenn! Becky! The bird is three minutes out! Get out to the HLZ now!” I looked at my clock; it was right on time….so much for the delay! This was typical of that place; we could never count on something happening as planned or predicted. Becky and I both jumped out of bed and had to scurry to collect our things, get our body armor and weapons on and get out to the HLZ.

As we gathered our things Kyle came in and yelled, “Later Bitches!” which was most likely his way of being “funny,” but I looked at him and felt so much anger, disappointment, and relief all at once. I was glad to be finally leaving him in my past, knowing he was someone I was grateful I would never have to talk to again.

Everything happened so fast; we barely had time to get outside, let alone say goodbye. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to Hal, the one person I knew I would miss. There were two birds, one for the passengers leaving and one for our luggage. As we finally got situated on the correct Chinook, Becky and I looked at each other in the darkness, knowing we were feeling the exact same things. As the wheels lifted up, and we began to hover over the firebase, I looked down on my home of three months that had filled my heart with some of the most wonderful and most horrific moments of my life and I felt such a plethora of emotions. The most profound was relief, I literally felt like I could
breathe
again. My eyes filled with tears, I knew I would miss the guys; my brothers, dearly. I would never forget my experience there with them, but I was ready to rise above it and move on. I knew it was time to go home.

21 September 2008

Our travel back to KAF was relatively uneventful, but lasted the whole night. We stopped at Tarin Kowt, and I was able to say goodbye to my friends on the surgical team and a few of the Special Forces guys we’d met along the way. When we finally arrived at KAF it was 0630 hours. We discovered, as we stood on the tarmac at KAF, that the luggage didn’t make it with us and was somewhere between the firebase and another firebase along the ring flight. Eventually, after several hours, we ended up locating all of our missing items, except for my hard case. All of my belongings that were important to me from this deployment were in that hard case, if it didn’t turn up I would be devastated. I realized all I could do was hope it would eventually show up. I was so tired that my fatigue took over my concern for my belongings; I had to get some sleep.

It was a hard adjustment to be back on a big base, with the big military again. All of a sudden we were wearing uniforms, saluting and following rules and regulations. Even our first meal at a real table, with real food, was an adjustment considering we had lived on MREs and the food our loved ones sent us for the past three months. It felt so strange looking at the HMMWVs and regular vehicles driving on paved roads. As I watched them drive by I remembered my last images of the vehicles on the firebase after the mass casualty; covered in bullet holes, shattered glass and blood. I felt I was in a completely different world.

We were given a key to stay at a B-Hut on the Special Forces camp at KAF, which was assigned to transient medical personnel. We crashed for a couple of hours, showered, and then went to the Med Shed, expecting we would be welcomed back. However, we both felt our reception to be quite the contrary; we were hardly even acknowledged at all. We were not part of
their
group after all, just Air Force augmentees whose services were no longer required. Not to mention the fact that we were
females
on top of it. While the reaction to our return was certainly disheartening, we were still comforted in knowing we were on our way home. During the last months on the firebase, it was so violent that multiple ring flights had been cancelled, which prevented us from receiving mail for almost two months. We decided to ask at the Med Shed to see if any of our mail was there. “Do you guys know if any of our mail is here? We didn’t get any for quite some time,” I asked.

“Oh yeah? Huh…let me think….there might be some in here,” the Doc said and pointed to a closet. As he opened it I couldn’t believe what we saw; packages upon packages of our mail from our loved ones. As I looked at all of mine, I recalled the countless days of disappointment we’d shared when our mail didn’t come. It was something we looked forward to with all of our hearts; a small piece of home arriving with the sole purpose of reminding us there was a much bigger world out there, beyond the hell we were stuck in. It hurt badly they wouldn’t have even told us about them had we not asked, but once we saw all of the packages and envelopes it honestly felt like Christmas.

Throughout the day I ran into several people I’d met along my journey and it was neat to see them again. I even met a nurse practitioner who was likely going to be my replacement at the firebase. As I talked with her I wondered what she would face.
Would she have to deal with horrific situations? Would more of the team become casualties? Will she be ok?
As we parted ways I wished her luck, truly praying she didn’t need it.

At dinner Becky and I ran into the chaplain who’d spent a couple of weeks with us at the firebase. “It’s so great to see you guys,” he said.

“We wish we could have seen you a couple of weeks ago,” Becky said as we both remembered the loss of our friend.

“I know. I tried to get back out to you guys after the mass casualty. I know you all needed the support terribly,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, ‘the powers that be’ didn’t want to risk me getting
stuck
out there since the ring flights were cancelled so often.” I felt my jaw clench as the anger welled in my gut.

“God forbid someone who was so desperately needed after a horrible traumatic event like that gets
stuck
in a place where he could be of the most use!” I snapped.

“I agree completely,” he said. “I tried everything I could to get to you guys, but I couldn’t make it happen.” Everyone on that firebase needed enlightenment and support after that day and I honestly couldn’t believe it was not more obvious to those making these
command
decisions. The more I thought about how I couldn’t believe that, I began to realize I
could
believe it. It illustrated to me just how far removed and detached from what was really happening on the ground out there these people making decisions were.

As we talked with the chaplain, he began to relate to us, and what we’d been through on a very real level, speaking from his own experience in the past, which helped comfort us. “You should expect it to be hard going home and re-entering into your old lives. No one back home will have a clue about what you’ve been through and what you’ve seen and therefore will likely not be of much help,” he warned us.

“I know,” I said in agreement. “Thankfully I have a phenomenal marriage and an extremely understanding husband who’s ready to listen.”

“Becky, what about you?” he asked.

“I’m in the same boat. Mike is my best friend and is ready to do whatever he can to help.”

“That’s good to hear. I imagine where you will have the most challenge coping will be as you transition back in to your work life.” I thought of mine and could see why he had the concern. No one I worked with had any idea what I went through and when I returned they would be expecting the same Lt. Clark that left six months ago.

“Here’s my phone number and email. I’m always available to talk if you need me,” he said as he handed both of us his information. As we talked I could feel myself becoming emotional and ready to cry. I could tell by my reaction, to my first day out of the chaos of the firebase, it would be a slow process to get over everything and get re-integrated into my normal life, but I hoped I would continue to go about it in a healthy way and would lean on my support system. I knew that as time passed the hurt would continue to surface as things became more and more “normal”. I prayed for the strength to get through it all.

24 September-7 October 2008

After being treated the way we were at KAF, we were more than ready to move on and get out of there. My hard case eventually showed up, so we decided to pursue an earlier flight back to BAF and, as luck would have it, we got on one leaving on the 24
th
. When we landed, it was nice to see friendly and familiar faces from the people we knew before. The journey had come full circle. It was, however, so strange to be back there; it was the same place, yet
we
were so different.

All of the rules that were at one time second nature now seemed ridiculous. We each responded to this change in our own way. I found that Becky and I drifted apart to a degree, not because we didn’t love each other and rely on each other anymore, but because we were both
lost
in our own interpretation of how to deal with everything that happened.

Being back at the Med Shed was certainly a new experience. Seeing how the medevacs were being handled had a completely different meaning to us, now having been on the other end of it. Listening to the radio traffic was a whole new ball game. In fact, at times it was eerie listening to the voices on the radio which were once just a voice in the air and now were the voices of our comrades. Every time I heard our team’s call sign come across stating they were in a TIC, my heart stopped. I prayed desperately I wouldn’t hear a 9-line come across with another familiar battle roster number.

Three days after returning to Bagram we walked into the radio room of the Med Shed and heard a TIC going on with another team. Unfortunately the worst of the worst happened…an IED. The 9-line was called stating there were five casualties, three of which were US Special Forces. My heart sank. As we stood by waiting for the description of the situation the medic came back on stating the 9-line had now changed from five wounded patients to two, and was now requesting three body bags. He called the battle roster numbers and we discovered the fallen soldiers were the engineer sergeant, the weapons sergeant, and the team commander. We later found out the commander just got to the team and it was his first mission. He’d come to the team late because his wife had just given birth to their baby three weeks before. Even though I was out of the “Hot Zone” I was still exposed to the awful realities of war on a daily basis. I now had a clear understanding of what really happens and found myself wishing for the naivety that I had before this trip. I needed to get out of Afghanistan and get home.

Luckily, Tony was still there and was in direct contact with the flights in and out of Bagram. He found out we could leave about ten days earlier than we had originally expected. This was the best news I could have gotten. Sadly, Becky couldn’t leave on the earlier flight because she needed to stay in country exactly one-hundred-eighty days to avoid orders to Korea when she returned home. We knew we would have to say goodbye eventually, however, we weren’t expecting to have to do it so soon; we planned on parting ways in Baltimore, not Afghanistan. It was sure to be a painful experience for us both.

On 1 October there was a celebration at the clamshell tent for EID, which is the end of Ramadan. I decided to go with the Army Dietician I met at the camp. As I was sitting at the table eating I saw Suraya again. It was so nice to reunite with her one more time before I left. She felt like a mother figure to me when I’d met her at TK during my time with the FST. I found it so easy to talk to her; we caught each other up on how we’d been, sharing our war stories….literally. She had been out to a firebase with a team for a MedCap. While they were traveling to the set-up location a tractor in their convoy rolled over and caused all of the vehicles to stop. They were stuck in that location for twelve hours waiting for authorization to demolish the vehicle in place due to its being unrecoverable. Because they sat there for such a long period of time, the Taliban was afforded ample opportunity to set up an ambush. The first night the convoy received intermittent small arms fire, but with no damage. They fought through it and got to a more secure location to rest overnight. Because of the firefight, naturally Suraya was scared. The Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) on the team noticed her unease and insisted she sit in his place inside the HMMWV, in the passenger seat, instead of her seat in the open bed of the back of the vehicle, which was ironically the same seat assignment I was assigned on our convoy. She argued with him prior to departure the next day stating she didn’t want to take his seat, but he was insistent and she finally agreed.

As they set out on their trip, they once again came under fire. The CWO quickly stood up in the back of the HMMWV to man the machine gun. As he stood ready to return fire he was shot in the back of the neck. The injury completely paralyzed him instantly. The medics had to perform an emergency cricoidotomy (making an incision on the throat, to access the trachea to provide an airway) to allow him to breath. He was eventually medevac’d out. The whole time this was happening, Suraya was locked in the front of the vehicle unable to get out and help. This weighed heavily on her heart. He was in
her
seat; that should have been
her.

The last update on his condition she heard was that the paralysis was likely induced by swelling around the spinal cord and the doctors were optimistic that he might regain some sensation. She went on to say the last time she asked they told her he’d regained some sensation in his hand. My heart ached for her, but listening to her tell her story was therapeutic. It was calming to speak to someone who had shared in similar horrors. Before we said goodbye that night we exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch. I hoped we would.

The night of the 7
th
of October I said goodbye to Becky. Words cannot describe how difficult it was for us both. We’d shared the most traumatic experiences of our lives with each other. We saw beauty and we saw horror. We were alone in a man’s world together, sharing everything with them, from their stinky toilets and showers to their triumphs and failures, and their victories and defeats. We touched the lives of the women and children we cared for in ways we both may never realize. We laughed together until we cried and at times we held each other with a raw fear that only the two of us would ever understand. We shared overwhelming sorrow that could pierce the soul. But most importantly, we
survived
….together. Now, we had to part ways and return to the lives that we had before Afghanistan.

“So…this is it huh?” she said as the tears streamed down her face.

“No…Becks, we’ll see each other again. I know it.”

“Me too. I can’t wait to meet Gerg. Give him a big hug for me; tell him thanks for sharing you with me.”

“Oh Becky!” I cried. “I love you so much. Thank you for being strong. I can’t imagine how this would have turned out without you by my side.” We grabbed each other and hugged tightly.

“Back at cha.”

“Be safe my friend.”

“Yeah...what else can happen, right?” she joked.

“Right.” I smiled. “So…see you real soon ok?”

“Can’t wait.”

We shed many tears that night. As we both turned away to begin our journeys alone. My heart ached for my friend, my sister.

When the overhead announcement finally called for us to load the C-17, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. It didn’t seem possible I was actually putting Afghanistan behind me. As the plane lifted off of the tarmac I felt relief similar to what I felt leaving the firebase, but with a finality that was indescribable. Throughout the whole flight to Manas I was in utter disbelief that it was truly
over
. No more gunshots, no more mortars, no more missions, no more fear, no more sadness, no more death, and…no more war. For the first time in six months I felt I could actually relax and just breathe; one of the best feelings of my life.

As I dozed off to sleep I smiled; just a few more days in Manas, and then home.