Lest We Forget (14 page)

"Sir," I reply, "I'm sure that there are plenty of things in this world that I find funny that you don't.  This is certainly one of them."  Well that pissed him off just right.  Fortuitously enough, a
police officer was walking by at just that moment.  The volunteer hall monitor in the borrowed yellow security shirt informs the officer that we need to go.  I just nod my head as I am being flexed cuffed by officer friendly.  Hmmm so this is what this feels like.  I’ve snapped flex cuffs on so many terrorist assholes in the past that having them cinched around my wrists was pretty ironic.

As the officer escorts us to the in
-stadium holding cell, which was about a three minute walk, we get hooted at by several of the games patrons.  Patrick holds his hands in the air and yells, "I guess we love the Irish just a little too much!  I guess we cheered just a little too loud!"  The people we pass go crazy and cheer for us.  I just shake my head and think, please Patrick shut up.

When we arrive at the holding cell the officer asks us what happened.  Patrick explains with amazing inaccuracy about a half of what actually took place.  At some point he says that I had just returned from Afghanistan a couple of days prior, a fact that the officer takes great interest in.  He asks my unit and my rank, my job and my time in service.  I am candid and forthright with my answers, a
fact I believe he appreciated.  He says that he was formerly in the 101st Airborne Division.  He administers a Breathalyzer test.  Now I hadn't failed a test probably since grade school but this one was sure to mess with my GPA.  We started drinking at 7am and it was almost 3 in the afternoon.  .07? How the fuck is that possible I thought?!  Even the officer is shocked.  This goes against what the hall monitor told him, that we were wasted.  He begins to believe Patrick's story a little more.  Paired with the camaraderie of being paratroopers he decides to let us go. 

"So we can go back to our seats then?" 

"Hahaha, not a chance," he replied.  "You can go home." 

"Just so we're clear here officer, right now what you are telling me is that I am not too drunk to drive home, but I am too drunk to go back to the college football game?"

"Yep, but I don't suggest you drive right now."

As Patrick and I have our cuffs removed we are released directly into the parking lot.  The first thing that we see is a bar called Legends that shares the parking lot with the stadium. 

"Well Patrick, he said not to drive right now.  We should probably go in there and sit down for a little while, what do you think?"

"Maybe get a cocktail or two?"

"You read my mind buddy."

             
Two weeks later we both received certified letters from the University of Notre Dame stating
:             

             
“Dear Mr. Jenkins,

Based upon a report by Notre Dame Security Police, I have determined that your presence on the grounds of the University of Notre Dame can no longer be permitted.”

It went on with some other legal jargon but I took it as a big joke.  That letter hangs framed above my toilet to this day.

Matt and I at the foot of the giant penguin.

              The next six months of training were considerably more exciting than my first cycle.  There was a lot of the same stuff that we did before but I was able to get away a few more times on this go around.  I talked my way into a couple of schools out of town, one of which being a tactile fighting school called Vanguard.  About a dozen of us showed up in Chicago to spend two full weeks learning advanced hand to hand striking, knife fighting and advanced tactical firearms training.  It was two of the most valuable weeks of non-medical training that I received as a Ranger.  We were put through several scenarios each day that would mimic situations that we were likely to find ourselves in.  We were made to walk from one side of a large room to the other, through a crowd of a couple of dozen individuals.  Two of them were previously given the direction to attack whenever they wanted.  There was no way of knowing who the attacker would be.  “Embrace the violence!” was all the instructor shouted as two men pounced strategically from behind.  I already had a broken nose and a large gash over my eye from an MMA bout that I competed in the night prior to coming to the course.  The super glue that held my eyebrow together was torn apart multiple times during the two weeks.

             
The course concluded with an opportunity to go head to head with MP5’s retrofitted as paintball guns in the shoot house of one of our government agencies.  I’m pretty sure that I learned more about close quarter combat on that one day than I had over two deployments. 

             
Other training trips on this cycle included a trip to Tacoma, Washington to cross train with some Air Force Pararescuemen and Seal Corpsmen.  Also in attendance were a few corpsmen from the regular Navy.  Training with other special operations medics from various units was not abnormal but I hadn’t really had much interaction with conventional forces since going through RIP a few years earlier.  I had grown to expect a certain level of experience and knowledge from guys that we went to schools with.  It was really interesting seeing how they responded to the amount of and advanced nature of the information provided at the course. 

             
By civilian standards, the procedures taught at this course were incredibly progressive.  In addition to the shock lab that I described earlier we did nerve blocks on one another, learned advanced surgical techniques for field operations and started intraosseous infusion on each other. Getting a fast one is like getting punched in the chest with half a dozen needles, actually getting a fast one IS getting punched in the chest with a half dozen needles.  The primary needle punctures the sternum so that fluid can be absorbed directly into the bone.  This is necessary if a patient has lost so much blood that getting an IV started on the vein is not possible.  The two-week course concluded with another live tissue lab that was significantly more comprehensive than the one that we did at SOMC.

A couple of months later I would have the distinct privilege of attending my second hospital rotation, this time in Atlanta at Grady.  There
were only two of us this time and we were only the second group to come through.  As a result most of the hospital staff didn’t really know how to treat us.  Most of them treated us like paramedics and had no clue the level that we had been trained.  Being a special operations medic is very much a double-edged sword.  Through the course of your training and experience you become one of the most capable, well rounded medical personnel in the world yet no one outside of your tiny community really has a clue as to what you are capable of.  As a result you are treated like an EMT basic and told to hold the patient's head when they come in with multi-systems trauma. 

There are exceptions to this, however.  Our preceptor for this rotation was a brilliant surgeon named Doctor Jeff Salomon.  He gave us reign to do whatever procedures we felt comfortable
doing.  I had the opportunity to treat more gun shot wounds during those three weeks than I had in the collective previous three years I had been in the Army.  Those 14-hour days at Grady Hospital would prove to be priceless for what was about to come. 

It was early 2006, I had just been promoted to Sergeant and my platoon had earned the top spot as the primary battalion effort after a top
performance at platoon evaluations.  Platoon evals was a three day training event that tested every aspect of a platoons combat effectiveness and capability.  With the exception of a couple of brand new privates that just joined our platoon, our entire element had several combat deployments.  We had refined our ability to communicate with one another and had become a very well oiled machine.  We would need every bit of that proficiency as we stepped of the back of that cargo plane for the third time.  This time we would be stepping off into Tikrit, Iraq at a time that was approaching the most violent in the history of the war.

At the FBI shoot house during Vanguard.

Vanguard training is as real as it gets.  My boy Josh “embracing the violence”

Tactical knife fighting at Vanguard.

……

Chapter 10 - Grave makers and Gunslingers

“Hey Doc, wake up!”

I wasn't...
I didn't even finish saying, I wasn't sleeping.  The door slammed shut and Josh had moved on to wake up the next chu - an 8x8 cell like, connex box that we lived in while working in Tikrit, Iraq in the summer of 2006.  NCO's and officers got their own rooms, privates typically had to double up.  Even with two overgrown Ranger privates in an 8x8 room it was still hands down the best living conditions that I had experienced on any of my deployments.

This must be important, Josh usually talks shit for at least a couple of minutes.  I glance over at the clock,
its 16:00 so most of our guys were just waking up.  I poked my head out of the door to see a handful of guys headed to the makeshift plywood Joint Operations Center (JOC).