Some Personal Experiences in the Army…

“What is something that happened to you in the military that would shock a civilian?”

This is somewhat of an unfair question. I know some pretty intense civilians which would be more than capable of dealing with some of the things I have experienced; for the average person, however…

Performing CPR on someone who you strongly suspect isn’t going to make it to the hospital…
Dealing with vomit, blood, and very questionable whitish debris when turning a duty Medevac bird around for subsequent missions after they transported a patient with a gunshot wound to the head (it was a quartzish pebble… but still…)

Medevac crew chief Octavio “Chad” Orozco, 25, catches his breath (and his thoughts) after struggling to keep two mortally wounded American soldiers alive on the flight to Kandahar Airfield, in southern Afghanistan. Orozco performed chest compressions for much of the flight. One soldier lost two legs in an explosion which sent shrapnel through his comrade’s legs and chest. Both men were declared dead after medics stretchered them into the miltary hospital, just a few hundred metres from the runway.

Not my picture, but the evidence and posture are all too familiar (Image by Jerome Starkey via https://www.flickr.com/
photos/jeromestarkey/5362709067)

The chaos of 4 radios giving distinct and unrelated information, three other people speaking rapidly amongst the crew, 2 pairs of Apaches and Kiowas orbiting the intended landing zone for support, worse on the approach to landing, a sloping landing area which may or may not contain secondary IEDs, and several patients in varying needs of care… all at 3am, and not too long after the radio roused you up from a dead sleep…
The look of dread and frustration when your medic finds out they lost a patient after doing everything they could to save them…
The dark and/or raunchy…inappropriate… foul… brutal… humor that was casually thrown around…
The dread of leaving for another deployment…
Finding out you have been extended in theater for an indeterminable time when you were looking forward to being home in a month or so…
The heat of Iraq… or the cold of Afghanistan…
15 hour days, 14 day duty cycles with only one day off, and not going home until the job is done…
Leadership who is not “leading” as much as they are trying to slowly drive you insane, kill you, or both…
Night vision goggle training/door gunnery/dust landings… all at the same time…
Dunker training…
Those damn nasty eggs served in the field…
Porta-potties in the field…
The back pain years after you retire…
Most importantly, the camaraderie from sharing all of the experiences above…