Peter van Agtmael

American Wars: 9-Line: Ravages of War

A medic in a helicopter evacuation unit of the 4th Infantry Division (medevacs) rests in his hooch between missions. His girlfriend in Texas sent the teddy bear to him, and he had another one hanging in the chopper next to his seat. The medevac mission demands long hours of monotony, waiting in small huts next to the helicopters. When the call comes in on the ‘9-line’ that there are casualties in their sector, the crew scrambles to the ‘bird,’ usually getting into the air within 10 minutes. They hurtle to the site of the injury, landing just long enough to take the casualty onboard before flying off to the nearest Combat Support Hospital or Forward Surgical Team.
  
A grim-faced medevac pilot prepares for a dusk flight to evacuated a wounded American soldier from the battlefield.
  
A U.S. Blackhawk helicopter comes lands at Aranas, a small American outpost in Nuristan province that’s considered to be the most remote in Afghanistan. Established by the 10th Mountain Division in 2006, it clings to the side of a mountain overlooking a primitive town. With no roads larger than a donkey trail leading to the area, all medevacs, re-supply and transport must be done by helicopter. Often, the helicopters are ancient Russian models affectionately called 'Jingle Air,' which are subcontracted by the U.S. military because of a shortage of helicopter assets in the region.
     
  
Baird drifted out of consciousness for most of the flight, finally awaking about fifteen minutes from the base. His groggy and placid featured quickly turned to panic as he realized he was unable to move his fingers. While Julio stroked his face and reassured him above the din of the fast-moving helicopter, Baird continued to look at his unmoving hand, until finally his fingers stirred slightly. At the movement he dropped his head, exhausted, but with a look of enormous relief. He went into emergency surgery, and a surgical team managed to save his arm from amputation.
  
  
SGT Jimmy McReynolds, a medic with the 10th Combat Support Hospital on his second tour to Iraq, carries a horribly burned U.S. soldier to the gator, a golf cart sized vehicle for carrying casualties from the helicopter landing zone to the hospital entrance. The soldier was burned over 90% of his body when a roadside bomb hit his armored vehicle, igniting the fuel tank and burning to death two of his comrades. Dangling from either side of his stretcher was his camouflage uniform, ripped open by the medics on the helicopter. He lay there, thin and exposed in playfully patterned boxers, skin peeling away in clumps, deep red welts where the burns were deepest. He was drifting in and out of unconsciousness, his eyes sometimes stabbing open for a few seconds. He woke up again in agony when he was transferred from the stretcher to the ER bed, screaming ‘daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy’ then ‘put me to sleep, please put me to sleep.’
     
  
   
  
     
  
Joshua Jump of Laramie, Wyoming, shortly after being wounded by an Improvised Explosive Device in Baghdad. Shrapnel tore through his face, chest, and leg, but he was quickly stabilized by medical staff. He was sent back to the U.S., where it was expected he would make a full recovery.
  
Jason Thompson waits to have his wounds cleaned after his humvee was hit by an IED in Baghdad. He was returned to duty within a few days. Another soldier injured in the explosion was filled with bitterness. After having his light injuries treated, he joined the rest of the crew outside to smoke a cigarette. He told them that he was supposed to have been on leave in the U.S. that week, but that it had been cancelled. Earlier in the deployment, his father had died in a plane crash, and he flew home from Iraq for the funeral. When he requested his normal leave, the army refused the request because he'd already been home when his father died.
  
Medic Jeffrey Smith ('Smitty) cradles a young Iraq girl injured when a rocket explosion sent shrapnel through her home. After digging the pieces of metal from her back, he gently picked her up and and carried her to the intermediate care ward, where she rested for a few days before being discharged to her family. After a year as a medic in Baghdad, Smith returned home deeply troubled. Although he helped save hundreds of lives, he was deeply troubled by the ones that were lost. One of his first duties as a medic was to help treat seven marines wounded in a suicide bombing. Between them, they only had seven legs and seven arms, and five of them died on the operating table. Smith never quite recovered from that day, and upon returning home to Colorado Springs, he began heavily self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. He ended up in a psychiatric ward, and after testing positive for drugs, was discharged from the army. Although he had been slowly improving thanks to counselling, when he was kicked out of the army he lost all benefits, and will have to manage his psychological wounds on his own.