Like many Americans, my wife and I spent several evenings last week (and the week before) watching the Winter Olympics. It was enjoyable, and frankly one of the few commercial television programs that the two of us spend time watching together. Some ice dancing, some downhill. Then some luge, bobsled , etc. The places that heroes and icons are made. Frankly, I took it at face value and didn’t over analyze after having spent repeated kick-butt days at work. I just watched and smiled and cheered.
Yesterday morning I spent my usual half hour driving into work, and as usual, I was listening to NPR. Halfway through the drive, there was a ten minute segment in which Renee Montagne interviews reporter Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who had recently been embedded with Marines attempting to re-take Taliban controlled areas in Afghanistan. As I’m driving in on pastoral rural roads, I hear:
SARHADDI NELSON: You have to picture when this happened, the patrol, it had been three hours of really intense pressure. We were constantly under fire. I think at that point the platoon officials or leaders had decided that they were going to stop for the night. It was just not safe to push forward anymore. And so we started to approach this field, and it was at that point that these gunmen, you know, jumped up and started firing – or at least it was described as three gunmen to me. I never saw them, I just heard the bullets.
And so everybody dropped down, squatted down, but we were exposed. We were all just behind these mounds of dirt. And Lance Corporal Yazzie, who I’d gotten to know over the last previous days – I didn’t realize where he was standing – and I just, I mean, I saw him get hit, and certainly the captain next to him realized that he’d been killed. And it was just, there was nothing anybody could do, because at that stage the gunfire was so heavy.
I mean, I just put my tape recorders where I knew I could capture what was going on. But then I just sort of curled up as much as I could under my vest and just prayed – I mean, ’cause I really thought this might be it. And I kept thinking is this worth it? And then at some point when, I guess, the gunfire died down a little bit, they carried Corporal Yazzie to – sorry, give me a second here.
(Soundbite of sniffling)
SARHADDI NELSON: Anyway, there was just nothing they could do. I mean, you know, it was that fast.
MONTAGNE: If everyone had a job to do at that moment, and your job was recording it, did it hit you right then or was it…
SARHADDI NELSON: No, it hit me pretty fast, especially when I saw who it was. And the Marines – I mean, at that point they didn’t know. There were people crying and – I mean, I really wanted to portray this. I felt it was very important to chronicle what sacrifices these guys make. I mean, I felt it was part of this story of this patrol that had such a hard time just taking less than a half mile of land.
MONTAGNE: Lance Corporal Yazzie was laid to rest over the weekend. He’s from the Navajo Nation, so the flags of the U.S., the Marines and the Navajo Nation were flown. How much of that did you know in those days you spent with him in this offensive?
SARHADDI NELSON: I didn’t know what his ethnic background was, but what I can say is I thought he had the coolest name of the guys that I was with. And one evening, sort of part of the comic relief, I was telling Yazzie, I said, you know what, Yazzie? I said, you have got the coolest name.
And there was another – what I’m assuming is a Native American, just based on his name, his name was Corporal Birdchief, and he’s like, hey, wait a minute, what about my name, Birdchief? You know, and Lance Corporal Yazzie was like, no, she said it was my name, sorry. That’s my title or whatever.
And so what struck me about him, unlike the others, he was a little quieter, he was a little shyer, but very sincere, very nice, and just – I could tell when he would just mention that he wanted to talk to his wife, his eyes would just light up in a way that I knew he was very much in love with her. And I know he was trying to call her on Valentine’s Day on my phone and couldn’t reach her and he had planned to call her that night again. But he definitely was thinking about her and their unborn child.
MONTAGNE: Are you okay?
SARHADDI NELSON: Yeah, I’m fine.
Yes, there is a lump in my throat. Yes, there are tears in my eyes. I grew up as the son of a career Army man. A Sergeant Major. A veteran of two wars. A Bronze Star recipient. This hits home.
The day that followed was ten more hours of my droid job. Better paid than my father could dream of. After a long day, I’m back in my car for the drive home to my rural sanctuary. A twist of the wrist and it’s NPR for the drive home, but by this time of the day it’s “Fresh Air”. The interview is with journalist and former soldier, Kelly Kennedy, describing her time with the “Hardest Hit Unit in Iraq” in 2007. I’m driving home, trying to clear the drudge of the day, but I’m drawn in and in awe of the sacrifice and angered by the waste of it all:
Ross McGinnis was 19 years old. He had big, brown eyes and this huge grin, and he was silly, just kept the guys in giggles all the time.
And about a week before December 4th, they’d been out on patrol, and someone threw a grenade into a truck, and everyone jumped out, and it turned out to be a dud. So everyone was safe. And then Ross kind of made jokes about it, like no way, man, I’d be jumping out. I’d be the first one out of the truck.
So they spent the next week kind of practicing, you know, throwing tennis balls into the trucks and then diving out. And then on December 4th, they’re out on patrol, and the grenade came right in through Ross’ turret, and he was the gunner. And he sees it. He tries to catch it. He’s chasing it around the turret, and he’s yelling grenade, trying to get the guys out of the truck.
And no one really understood what was happening, and they didn’t have time to react, but Ross knew what was going on. So he chased it all the way back down into the truck. And then one of the other guys, Ian Newland, saw the grenade and watched as Ross McGinnis threw himself against it and took the brunt of the force of the grenade and died instantly, but saved four of his friends.
And later in the interview:
So on the morning of June 21st, we were actually sitting out on some picnic tables talking to the guys about combat stress when we heard an explosion. And what had happened was a Bradley, a 30-ton vehicle, had rolled over a massive, deep-buried bomb, and it was so big that it flipped the Bradley over and left a hole the size of a Humvee in the road.
And an interpreter, an Iraqi interpreter, and four of the guys died instantly, and then a fifth guy was caught underneath the Bradley and couldn’t get away as it was burning.
And back at the aid station, all the guys knew was that this Bradley had been hit. They didn’t know who was in it; they didn’t know how bad it was. They knew it was on fire and that the guys were trapped inside, but they weren’t hearing any more information than that.
And we sat there for about an hour, just waiting. It was the worst hour ever, waiting to hear what had happened. And then one of the guys heard over the radio that they’d all died. And then as they were as another unit, the 630th MPs were responding to June 21st, to that Bradley explosion, one of their female MPs was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and it decapitated her in front of four of her teammates in a Humvee.
I arrive at home in the same shape as I drove in twelve hours earlier: safe and well-paid, but with a lump in my throat and tear in my eye. After dinner and an evening of mindless TV, it was probably no surprise that I awoke at four AM on Friday from the midst of a really bad dream. An illogical dream in which I watched a large military chopper attempt a rescue at a local highway overpass, only to look on helplessly as a Humvee full of troops plunged into a large, water-filled culvert, drowning all aboard as we civilians stood around waving our hands.
Yeah, I woke up. And started thinking. We are so off track.
Never, ever honor war. But honor warriors, who deserve far more than medallions of gold or silver. Or bronze. And only ask of them the ultimate sacrifice when it is truly a moral request; a just sacrifice.
Posted on March 6th, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
Very powerful words, and I am in full agreement. Whenever I hear “Honor our troops,” it makes me a little angry. That may sound odd, but when do we ever not honor our troops? I honor them all the time and am forever grateful for the sacrifices they are willing to make. Seems to me that of late, it’s our own government that has been dishonoring them by sending them into senseless wars, sometimes with inadequate protection.
We continue to act day-to-day as if America is not at war. I’m not seeing the body bags come home; I’m not reading the battle accounts on the front page. If the young Americans in Marjah had been drafted, there would have been no Marjah offensive. Most of them weren’t drafted by their government; they were drafted by their circumstances, by happening to be the children of our country’s working class poor, or by happening to be the children failed by our broken education system. Or by happening to come of age when even the well educated cannot get full time jobs with health care benefits. How many of these young adults do you know of, personally? I’ve begun a count, starting within a couple of kids in my extended family…with their friends and classmates. They will not be volunteering for duty by any possible definition of the word.
We happen to be in San Diego, a military town full of the sons and daughters of active duty parents, the kids most likely to be drafted by circumstance and a culture of service. As we drive to pick up our grandson at daycare, we pass the high school juniors and seniors walking home from school. We see them holding hands in the park where we take our grandson to play. There are big signs in red, white, and blue on the front of base houses that these kids walk home to “Come Home Soon, Daddy!”
I began crying right below the picture of the pretty blonde athlete and I’m crying, still. I’m sorry to write a post on your post.
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I heard the first one on NPR, but not the second. I think they do a great job. As for the Olympics, we watched every moment we could.
Way back, when the Iraq atrocity began (so different from Afganistan),The yellow-ribbon gambit was a brilliant PR move. In effect, those of us who despised Bush and his war were put on the spot: “where’s your yellow-ribbon decal? What’s the matter, don’t you support our troops?” Yes, I supported them. I supported–and support– every effort to keep them from being pointlessly maimed and killed, by bringing them home. Which has yet to happen.
As for the Olympics, a great deal of the pleasure this year can, I think, be attributed to the Canadians. The very air seemed more free, the crowds more civilized, a truly proud people happy to be hosting the event.
Nance,
Apologies for making you cry. One of my few objectives in life is to not make people cry. Sometimes that conflicts with another goal: making people feel. The readers here need no help in that category, so it really is all about me. I needed to write this post. It illustrates one of the largest frustrations in my life, which Barry also described. The difference between supporting a war and supporting the men and women who society puts in harm’s way is clear as a bell to some of us, but apparently we’re not the norm. So, this proud liberal is also an unabashed supporter of those making the sacrifice, even while the politics behind the war make me crazy. But thanks for letting me vent.
Thank you for publishing this.