INTRODUCTION: I composed this electronic mail to friends and relatives in the United States after I had been in Baghdad, Iraq in 2004 for four months. There are typoes I would like to correct and gussies-up I would like to make to render my prose as 'brilliant'. 😉 No, I will not do that with two exceptions for newer friends. The important one is a hi-lite of a few words which are, in my mind as elderly now, those of the voice of G-D. The other is removing surnames of people whom I knew at the time. At the moment in which I wrote this letter, I remember saying in exasperation, something like, "G-D, ¡there must be something I can do!" What I credited to my spontaneity was, in actuality, a higher direction from a higher wisdom. 🙏
Edward McDonnell III <nedmcd@yahoo.com> wrote:
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 12:19:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Edward McDonnell III
Subject: Week 14; Sadness
To: AuntMarion ,
Baltimoriole , Clairey-bug , MrRaven , UncleTucker&AuntKatie, CC: Barbie , Buddy&Dyane, ChrisCool , CousineNancy, Dave&Laura , David. Mark, Jimmy, Josita&Buddy, Julie, Kris, KitKat, Linda , Susie, Susan&Fred, MiaBellaHebbía, Mike, MissJune, Nancy&Ned, Nate, Nolan, Peter, Sarah, Sarah, Tom&Sara, Wendy, TomDear aunts, uncles, sibs and cousins,
First of all, happy birthday to Aunt Nancy. I hope lunch with Mrs B. and Mrs C. was a good time.
There are moments when all pleasure can leave the time I am spending here. While I am proud to be doing something to contribute to a cause that is just and right, there are points when weariness can set in. Today was like that. I am writing this note having missed dinner, but hunger is the farthest thing from my mind right now…or, at least for ten minutes. After a two week hiatus because I failed to make the time to do it, I visited the hospital this evening. I encounter a lot of hemming-&-hawing when I get ready to go to the hospital because I know that I am going to face, sooner or later, a sobering experience that will not leave you laughing when I re-tell it. Today, 'sooner' trumped 'later', nastily. While I feel funny talking about these things since, for the people involved, these matters are intensely private, I want to let you get a sense of what sacrifices people are making here.
The visit started off with some delay, because I have been the one chosen to help process a nube through the endless chain of welcome-to-Baghdad paperwork perpetrated by our foreign service. I ran into my new colleague and it was back to twenty cajillion questions…most of which were familiar since I had plagued some unfortunate with them when I got here. At the hospital, there was a little Iraqi boy whose mother was more injured than he. But his arms were wrapped up. One of the nurses got a bowl and I filled it with Lays potato chips. Apparently, “Nobody can eat just one” is a cross-cultural verity and I spent time with this eight year old boy feeding him chips and speaking on as if I were talking to a deaf-mute, only for him to answer in quite perfect English.
Well, getting a good chuckle out of that, I went on down the hallway to a ward where five soldiers, all burned with varying degrees of severity, were hanging out. They were grateful to be alive and by-and-large okay. I am not going go ga-ga over what natural class this type of dignity displays. Finally, overcoming the inhibition from asking a personal question, I asked them what happened. They were near Ramadi in a convoy. An Iraqi police car was on a median strip. It waited for three escort HUMVs to pass by followed by a seven ton truck with a dozen or more people on it. The police car then put on in its lights and siren and pulled out in front of the truck. That car exploded – a car bomb disguised as a police car.
The driver of the truck – a U.S. Marine assigned for that one trip to transport these army personnel – somehow kept the vehicle upright. As the soldiers describe it, while the truck spun a circle-and-a-half (or, as a young private said, 540o), a fireball bounced up the front of the cab and landed right on them. One sergeant, burned badly in the face, stood up and protected a few others. Two others put out the flames beginning to crawl along the flak jackets of their buddies. None of these guys took credit, chalking it up to instinct, falling over from the spinning of the truck, etc. I don’t think so. You all have likely heard about this incident by now. It happened around lunch-time in Iraq, in the wee-hours E.S.T. today, November 6, 2004.
Some of these guys were calling back to the States to loved ones on my cell-phone, with me doing the dialing. While one guy spoke, I ventured on down the hallway to intensive care for the first time. First I went to the side with Iraqi patients. These injuries were very, very grave and these people suffered terribly. The nurse told me that this was the Iraqi side. I did not know whether I should enter. The lovely lady pointed out to me that these men suffered the same pain ours do. Their wounds were truly ghastly and no more need be said. I briefly prayed for each, with spotty concentration, and then darted over to the American side. As I walked down the hallway, a nurse was coming out of a single room. I stated that I had come by to visit the soldiers and had treats to give them, chuckling that they liked me for my cell-phone but can the candy, pallie.
She answered that the young Marine in the room was dying. I said I should then definitely visit. What was sad was that this boy, twenty-three years old and young enough to be my son, was intact – no wounds visible, no burns. He seemed peacefully asleep, except for the noise in the breathing tube as liquid started, I think, to seep into his lungs. What does one do in a situation like this? Get out of the way…don’t think, just act, quietly. After I prayed for a minute or two, I figured I was the closest he had to a family member. So, I just stood there, occasionally soothing his forehead, hoping to bring some peace to a wrongfully truncated life.
I next went into the ward where the same nurse took me to another dying young man, this one from the army. He had the incomplete moustache of a late teen, and an incomplete head; the back part of his skull had been shattered. His breathing was light. I looked at his eyelashes and thought about his girl, his family, his dog, whatever. They would never see him again. The solace here would be that they would remember him whole and complete; not a face bathed in red gauze. There was blood on the floor. At least his loved ones would not have to see that.
I prayed the same prayer as I did with the first gentleman, feeling equally as futile in the effort. At that point, some mortar or rocket made a racket and freaked the staff. One orderly announced that the rocket sounded like it landed very close, a hundred yards away. I kept my mouth shut; truth be told: it was more like a quarter-to-half mile away judging from the vibrations and sounds. Instead, discretion led me to pull candies, cookies etc. out of the treat bag and say, “Who wants a granola bar or beef jerky? Nothing like a good explosion to work up an appetite is there?”
We all laughed and I headed back down the hall – minus everal goodies – by the room of the first young man. I was ready to leave, but could not find the damn cell phone making its rounds. So I went back into the room and said to the nurse if I should write a letter simply stating that I spent some time with the young man before he died; so that his family would know he was not entirely alone at the end of his life. That is when I found out that this man, a Marine lance corporal, was the truck driver in that suicide bombing I described earlier in this note.
I suggested to the nurse that I get the others so they could say good-bye. She said they had visited some time earlier. I went off to find that unpardonable phone when I ran into some of the young men with whom I had spoken earlier. They were saying to each other, in dismay, the driver’s not going to make it. I said to them, “Now’s the time to go in and say good bye to him if you want to.” Of course they went in, very sad. These are matters I can not know, and ought not be in the middle of; so I stayed outside, wondering what I could do to help. Nothing feels more helpless, in a way, than being in a position to do something but not knowing what to do to help.
Fortunately, one of those moments of spontaneity blessed me again. After getting the encouragement of the nurse, I went down the hall retrieved a pen and paper and approached the army guys. Since all of their hands were completely bandaged – one had endured the incineration of his watch into his skin – I volunteered to write down what they wanted to say to the parents of the dying Marine. Each claimed he did not know what to say since none had ever met him until today, when he assigned to transport them. Well, these guys did a pretty damn good job. The grammar within the words was at times not perfect; the grace behind their charity was. What unfolded was the story of how this driver did not bail out of the truck and kept it upright just after the explosion.
This man had had no time to think but just act, according to his character or lack of it. The instinct of honour displayed by his reaction cost him his life and saved those of at least a dozen others. As one young, very grateful sargent observed sadly, had that truck rolled over – as normally it would have – all those men in the back would not only have died but would have burned to death. I interviewed each man one-on-one and each said that he was alive because of what this young Marine did. Each man considered him a hero and noted his sacrifice independently of the others. And each one was thankful for the chance to say so to a mourning family back in the United States of America.
After that, I photocopied the two sheets of paper and gave the original to the attending physician. She was on the periphery of a group of hospital staff gathered around the bed of this Marine to review the details of his impending death; she promised that it would go onto the young man’s family. Then, I doubled back quickly to the army people, since they had given their names, to get their permission to turn this photocopy over to the senior Marine officer on duty at the Embassy so that Marine's fellows would know of his final triumph. I got back to the Embassy and gave the papers to the officer and he had a reaction that – I guess – defines all soldiers to me: businesslike in that, of course, this lance corporal acted heroically. To be honest, I do not quite understand it; but, then again, I was never cut out to be a Marine.
Another group I really began to appreciate today is the hospital crew – the doctors, nurses and orderlies – and what they must live with every day. It must be difficult to confront the waste of people’s youth and lives every day. I was only too glad for them to get granola bars, rice krispie treats, fritos and the rest. To keep one’s wits, and compassion, under these circumstances is quite and quietly heroic. My contribution there was to humour these people with flip remarks about the rocket blast, etc. (and not to correct anyone for exaggerating the proximity of that explosion).
If this note seems bleak, please bear with me. I do not feel up to reading any grand meanings into the experience I encountered two hours ago. It is more fitting for the dignity of these people – these Americans – to stand on its own. For me, I will just go onto bed; for some reason, I feel exhausted.
An excerpt of a subsequent electronic mail with notes of thanksgiving to friends and relatives, dated 22nov04:
"Laura (college pal; wife of my best friend at W&L)
"Thanks for the e-mails. My cell-phone is unlimited and paid for by the U.S. taxpayer – look at it as doing your part. Bringing solace to wounded soldiers helps but the thing that blows me away about these guys is – no matter how grave the injury – solace is not what they want. Maybe someone to tell their stories to or access to a phone home. They deserve credit. The only life-changing thing for me right now is that I am now about 15 pounds overweight instead of ten pounds overweight. Seriously, I warmly welcome the request of that Marine’s name – the one who died that night in the hospital. I did not say it before out of respect for his family. I never got his first name, but he was Lance Corporal Langley. I have some good news on that score: a Marine Colonel I am working with (a little) has informed me that there is a movement afoot to nominate him for a medal. Having visited the house of my best friend from grade school many times (thirty+ years ago), I can tell you that the medal – while richly deserved – will be of little recompense for the son and brother Lance Corporal Langley’s family lost two weeks ago. My grade school chum’s brother died heroically in Viet Nam in 1967 – one of the 58,000 on that wall in D.C. While his medals were on proud display, his absence – and I had never met him – always put him in that living room with me. You and your fellow Mormons’ prayers will reach to young Mr Langley’s family in a way that medals may not. Thank you for that, Laura. My love to you, David and my three (god-)sons…Ned McMurray…"
No comments:
Post a Comment