Blood, dust, and beatdowns

It was a dark and stormy night.  

But not really... it more like your average dusty afternoon, with rapidly decreasing visibility.  Weather in Iraq seemed to be either wide open VFR conditions, or widespread areas of blowing dust, with no in between.  This afternoon was definitely more the latter.  

I was the Air Mission commander of a two UH-60 Blackhawk MEDEVAC team on second up duty.  A call came in, and it fell into second up's lap.  A wounded soldier was going into surgery, could we take a shipment of blood to the hospital in Tikrit, around a 40 minute flight north?  Certainly we could... but with the dust getting worse, and nightfall rapidly approaching, we would have the weather to fly OUT during the day, but not the weather to come BACK after it got dark.  Did battalion understand that by sending us on this mission that they were effectively throwing away their second up crew, we asked?


"Check the weather when you get there" was the answer from battalion.  In other words, maybe the weather that has been deteriorating all day will be better in 40 minutes, after it gets dark!  


No matter the idiocy of higher command... wounded GIs, we launch.  We did, and dropped the blood at the Tikrit hospital shortly thereafter.  Not surprisingly, the dust had gotten much worse, night was falling, and we were stuck on base in Tikrit for an undetermined period of time.  We refueled and parked at our sister MEDEVAC unit on the airfield, who were kind enough to have us over for dinner in their unit's dining facility tucked into their hangar, and also let us use their phones.  Now we just had to wait for the weather to clear, which was not realistically expected until the next morning.  


But with nothing to do but wait out the weather, and freed from our second up duties, we elected to hop the bus to the Post Exchange.  At this point, I became just a dumb W2 along for the ride. Since we were on the ground now, I was relieved of any mission responsibilities, and command was relinquished to the senior officer on the ground, in this case our captain and Platoon Leader.  


This is where things got interesting.  Since we had departed our own base in such a hurry and expected to be back right away, several of us had no headgear or reflective belts on our person (mistake #1).  While you can get away with this on an airfield where nobody wears headgear, being "out of uniform" without your reflective belt is a most heinous sin on a base in Iraq full of bored sergeants major.  If you think that such infractions would not be prosecuted because you are in a "combat zone", trust me, enforcement of uniform standards is as stupid in a mature theater overseas as on a stateside parade ground, if not more so.  


So being a band of brothers who would all go down together, we ALL took off our headgear and reflective belts and boarded the bus to the PX, hopeful that we would not be caught (mistake #2).  


The PX at Tikrit was wonderful and featured many outside vendors for watches, electronics, and souvenir items that we could not find at our own base.  We planned to meet up in the courtyard outside in an hour or so, after our coffee, shopping options, and petty cash were exhausted, before returning to the airfield to wait out the weather.  


But when I rounded the corner to meet our captain and lieutenant, I was horrified to see them, hatless and reflective belt-less, speaking to a Command Sergeant Major right in front of the PX.  Not only a CSM, but the DIVISION CSM in charge of the entire installation, and doubtless taking them to task on being a bunch of slob aviators out of uniform... a CSM's dream.  


This is where things got strange.  


When they explained the whole story of how we came to the base on the blood mission, the CSM was taken aback, as he had just come from the hospital where he had visited the very soldier who was in need of the blood.  Even stranger, he had a nephew who was currently in our very own guard unit.  Now the CSM who was going to hang us out to dry for being out of uniform suddenly changed his tune and asked we eight slob guard aviators if we would accompany him to the boxing smoker at the base gym, which had just started.  


Who were we to refuse?  Our new friend the CSM commandeered a vehicle or two from around the PX and we were off to the boxing smoker as division's guests.  


Once again, at the entrance to the event, mature theater problems cropped up again.  We had plastic bags from the PX in hand, another heinous sin.  Plastic bags are banned from any dining facilities, recreation centers, and the like, which no doubt saves thousands of lives if not providing job security for a bunch of bored SGMs and security details.  Welcome to today's Army, where everyone is required to carry at least one semi automatic weapon with ammo, but where plastic bags are viewed as a threat.  


The crew chief with me, a rather large guy, simply stuffed a souvenir decorative dagger in his cargo pocket, stuffed a souvenir plate down the front of his pants, discarded the plastic bag, and walked right in.  Security seemed satisfied.  Things just got stranger and stranger.  


 Arriving ringside, the CSM continued his hospitality by throwing several division staff types out of their ringside seats and replacing them with our flight crews.  By now my head had pretty much spun out of control from the changes in our fate over the last few hours.  


The boxing smoker did not disappoint.  The gym was packed with soldiers and the smoke of a thousand cigars and cigarettes, and before we even got in the parking lot, the first among the vanquished competitors were being carried out past us to waiting ambulances.  This was the first boxing match I had ever attended, and apparently that was the case for a lot of the guys fighting too.  The arena was dark, the music was loud, and the reactions of these guys as they actually got hit, HARD, for the first time was priceless.  I don't think any fight went longer than three rounds, and knockdowns and knockouts in the first round were common.  After a fight or two, it was apparent that the high speed infantry types, waving their unit guidons and bringing their platoons along for moral support, did not always fare well against the hospital medics who spent the whole war inside the wire... apparently with lots more time to train.  It was an eyeful.  


After the fights wrapped up, our best friend the division CSM was kind enough to give us a lift back to the airfield, where the weather (surprise) continued to stink all night long.  After several cutoff times for weather expired, our sister MEDEVAC unit gave us some transient space to bed down for the night, which we gratefully accepted.  Very early the next morning we had a break in the weather just before dawn, and we made it back to our base just in time to cover the shift change the next morning as scheduled.  End of mission.  


There were many long and boring days and nights spent in Iraq... but that was not one of them.