Tears the size of boiled sweets

A weather-beaten 55-year-old goat herder tends to his flock on the side of a jagged mountain in the Pech Valley, Afghanistan. To the East, 10 kilometers away in the Karangal Valley, a teenage farmer ploughs his father’s fields. They only have one thing in common in this cold misty day; both are ordinary hard working Afghans trying to ignore the wars that have been raging on their doorsteps for decades. They do however share the same destiny. Both will be medevaced by Charlie and Blue Max Company in eight hours time.

Fifty kilometers South in Jalalabad, the never ending 24-hour day that is the life for Charlie and Blue Max Company is humming with well oiled efficiency.

7 am: Pilots.  The crews of Blackhawk and Apache helicopters check their “birds” for any leaks or cracks that may upset their day. Sergeant Shaun Ochsner is solemnly monitoring banks of computer monitors in the operations room. The computers are logging and disseminating all the chatter from various platoons in the field—nothing yet. Shaun kicks back and goes back to watching James Bond kill enemy agents and having sex that he won’t have for another six months. All the while, one professional weather eye is scanning mission computers.

9 am: Apache Co pilot Liz Kimbrough, Call sign Blue Max 23, is in deep thought glued to her computer studying for yet another ‘No No’ (no notice) aviation exam. “I have to move, can’t stand the foot.” Another pilot is checking his e mail with one smelly trainer plunked on the table, inches from her nose. “Jeez the foot, it’s in my face”.  At least five ‘no no’s’ will pounce on Liz while she is stationed here in Jalalabad. She takes these exams very seriously. She will be grounded if she fails. Liz ignores the loud banter of several pilots and the foot. Two years ago Blue Max 23 was waiting on tables to get through college.

Blue max 23 is as a very pretty petite 5 feet 3 blonde with piercing, but at the same time very kind, green eyes. Waist-long hair when it’s not tied up in a bun (to U.S. Army regulation height of an inch above the collar line). When flying, her hair is in a long neat plait running down the centre of her back. She would not be able to wear her flight helmet with hair tied in a bun. Its quite a sight to see this little power house running at full speed across the flight line to her Apache attack helicopter with the plait swinging to and fro.

Blue Max 23 may be very pretty and have kind green eyes but as the co pilot/gunner of a deadly Apache gunship she has more ‘kills’ than any other pilot/gunner here. This combination of warrior and beauty may be some men’s ultimate fantasy. For my part, I must remember to keep my feet out of her face.

I also kick back with the U.S Forces newspaper, the Stars and Stripes.

President Obama has just announced that an additional 4,000 troops will be deployed in Afghanistan. That is on top of the 17,000 promised at the beginning of his administration.

The main focus of this new deployment is to take away the safe havens and bolt holes of Al Qaida on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan and make the world a safer place for Americans and the rest of us in general. Admirable intentions. I can’t help thinking that the White House and No. 10 Downing Street are a history free zone. Since the time of Alexander the great just about everybody and his brother has tried to beat Afghanistan into submission for one reason or another, failing miserably. No, we certainly don’t want the Taliban’s vile and grotesque interpretation of the Koran to govern the good people of Afghanistan. Or, God forbid, outside its borders. The price of Operation Enduring Freedom is getting higher. In the last three years 3,780 Afghan civilians have been killed along with 710 U.S. service men and women.  . 

The Afghan people just want to be left alone and all the serving coalition service men and women want to go home to their families. Scrap Operation Half-a Job. Invade Afghanistan and claim it in the name of Americastan, Englandstan, or whatever. We will get over our righteous indignation of the invasion in time. Take the gloves off, wipe the country clean of a corrupt government, religious nut jobs, and let NGO’s rebuild the country without the fear of having their heads cut off. No one wants Operation Perpetual Suffering

12:30 pm.  I’m passing the coffee machine by the ‘ops’ room. The tail end of manly banter wafts with the aroma of coffee. “I would split everything I have with you sir.” “What’s that then huh—mmm.” “My personality—ha.”

12:45 pm. I run to the DEFAC (military speak for dining facility) and cram a few pieces of rather delicious French toast down my throat followed by imitation Cranberry juice. Isn’t that good for Cystitis! This is a real treat as normally I run to the DEFAC and get ‘take away’ bladder remedies. When medevac is called I have approximately three minutes to get myself, cameras, and all my shrubbery into the Blackhawk. So normally I eat 50 meters from the helicopter. In fact, my life is fifty meters from the Blackhawks. So to sit for five minutes at a dining table is bliss but risky.

12.55 pm. Four soldiers run around the perimeter of the base singing a new rendition to the Banana Boat Song.

Come Mr. Taliban, rid me of Osama
Air force come and it flatten me home
Cruise missile
Tomahawk, Half-ton bomb
Air force come and flatten me home

I put my flak jacket and my survival pack in the ‘first up’. The Blackhawk is ready for the next mission. I feel very privileged to be able to waddle across the flight line to what now feels like my very own Blackhawk. The crews have bestowed on me, without saying a word, their complete trust. I am flattered.

Closing the portside lightweight magnesium door to the helicopter I notice what I think might be a technical problem. The rear taxi wheel appears to be flat. Should I say something? Maybe they are supposed to be like that. Will I just show my complete lack of aviation knowledge and look like an idiot by mentioning the wheel.

Walking towards me is Sergeant Graves a very knowledgeable Blackhawk mechanic.

“Sergeant Graves can I ask you a stupid civilian type question?”
“Yes Sir, please do.” Graves looks quizzically.
“Sergeant, the rear wheel on the back of the ‘first up’ seems to be flat, is it supposed to be like that?”
“Damn! Not again. Thanks sir, I appreciate it.”

Proud as punch that I had made my contribution to the war effort in Afghanistan I strode with posture, ramrod straight and chest out across the flight line to the ops room as if I owned the place. Pulled the door with far too much cockiness and new found military swagger straight into my nose with a loud smack.

2:15 pm.  Medevac medevac medevac!

Groundspeed 140 miles per hour up the Kuna valley and then into the ‘bandit country ‘of the Karangul valley to pick up the 55-year-old goat herder who has fallen off a mountain and split his head wide open while tending to his herd.

I could not resist it .Unbeknown to the flight crew, I am not connected to the Blackhawk’s internal communications system. I am plugged into my ipod with Herr Wagner’s. Ride of the Valkyries is blasting my eardrums apart. It had to be done at some point. The Apache gunship escorting us steep turns to starboard and lets loose with a hell fire missile as the final strains of Wagner’s famous Die Walkure come to fruition. Absolutely brilliant. You can take men and boys out of war but you can’t take the war out of boys and men.

The goat herder is unconscious and his vital signs are not good. Medic Sergeant Smoots clears his airway and pumps his lungs as best he can. I get a glimpse of the poor man’s head injury. I wish I had not. His injuries are serious enough for the U.S. base in Bagram to send another Blackhawk to meet us in Jalalabad and make the transfer to the better equipped hospital in Bagram.

3:00 pm

“What’s the cost of a Hellfire missile sergeant?” 
“You don’t want to know sir.”
“Actually I do.”
“Mmmm, I don’t know sir.”

That’s what Google’s for. It’s $68,000.

Medevac medevac medevac!

A farmer has been caught in a mortar attack while working in his field just near a U.S. FOB (forward operating base). Our Blackhawk noisily spits out an array of hot counter measure flares. Its’ on board computers have detected a threat. No incoming, just the smoke of the flares dissipating. The Apache attack helicopter is circling low above our pick-up point like a growling vampire poised to strike at anything that may cause us harm. Our Blackhawk steep turns to starboard, flares out and touches down in the FOB kicking up a wall of stinging dust.

The farmer has most of his top lip missing and a chunk of shrapnel in his chest, but nothing life threatening. Again, I witness the pain threshold of the Afghan people. The boy has been given no pain medication whatsoever and is in relatively good spirits. His only concern is my camera two inches away from his face. The pain must be excruciating. Sergeant Smoot has to stop the boy, taking off the temporary dressing to show him the injury. It’s an injury that would send any one else screaming for a pint of morphine.

I end my day watching a pirated copy of “The Curious case of Benjamin Button” a story of a man born old. I’m beginning to know that feeling!

The Next Day

I am having a pleasant, if not slightly odd, conversation with a young pilot about being shot down but surviving the crash.

“What do you think sir; will the locals kill us or help us?”

I was just about to go into my usual tirade of how lovely and hospitable the ordinary people of Afghanistan truly are when the last few words of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Young British Soldier’ came to mind.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Soldier-of-the Queen!

“I am sure you would be fine, must go for a piss, see you later.”

Medevac medevac medevac!

Must piss first, have to piss! Not getting caught up like that again.Three hours slamming around the skies bursting for a widdle before I got on the last mission.

Mixed messages are coming in. A three-year-old girl is either the victim of domestic violence or has been hit by a car. There is some suspicion that she may have been hit by a U.S. Humvee. Fog of war and all that, perhaps.

The little girl looks so tiny on the green stretcher made for a soldier five feet bigger than her. Just one eye, very nervously, stares out of a swath of bandages that cover her head like a giant cotton bud. She has multiple head wounds and an open fracture to her left arm. She has been mildly sedated and is not aware of what is going on. Huge men with huge green helmets peer and fuss over her. One of these aliens appears to have just one huge glass eye in the middle of its head that constantly moves around her body. I finally realize what I must look like to this frightened child and back off with the camera.

Medic Sergeant Emmett ‘The Goat” Sparaktes comforts and checks all her vitals signs. As the little thing is sedated there is not that much to do apart from keeping an eye on her for the journey. As we land in Jalalabad she starts to stir then erupts into a screaming fit. The sedation has obviously worn off and the pain has kicked in with a vengeance. We come to a halt on the flight line rotors still roaring above us. Doctor Brendan McCriskin runs to the helicopter and jumps in. Brendan tries to comfort the little girl to no avail. Gently they hold her down while Emmett injects her with another sedative. In the short space of time it takes the sedative to work I am shocked at the power of the little girls screams. You can’t hear a gunshot in that bloody helicopter but you could hear this little girl howling her tiny heart out

I had a huge close up of her face in my view finder. Tears the size of boiled sweets rolled down her cheeks. I found something else to photograph.

The goat herder is holding his own—just.

The farmer has been patched up.

And the little girl is doing fine.

The next day is a little interesting

“If you see them doc shoot them but don’t hit the fucking rotors, look for the muzzle flashes.” Screams Crew chief Kevin Duerst to Doc Brendan McCriskin as the Blackhawk violently veers to the left and gains altitude very fast. We had just lowered by hoist Medic Sergeant Mark Dragony to pick up two wounded U.S. soldiers injured in an IED blast when we came under fire. I could see Sergeant Dragony on the ground pulling one of the wounded behind a rock for cover and was returning automatic fire into the hills. There is a loud ‘thunk’ somewhere in the helicopter. No sooner had we got to a safe altitude, we came straight down again to 20 feet. The Doc hanging out of the door scanning the ridge line through his gun is looking for muzzle flashes. We are in a nasty cul-de sac of a deep valley. The rotors are just feet away from either side of the mountain walls in three directions. There is little leeway for a mistake by the pilots. We hold our position and hoist up one at a time the two wounded soldiers. Both have shrapnel wounds in the legs and feet.

There is no time for niceties the wounded and bloodied men are quickly dragged into the Black hawk with minimum fuss. One of the wounded uses my foot as a pillow. A smiling Sergeant Dragony is the last to be pulled into the helicopter. A deafening roar and a stomach wrenching accelerated lift sucks us to the floor as power is thrust into the two turbines by pilots Brandon Erdmann and 1st LT Marko Acevedo pulling us urgently out of the valley. We are a jumble of bodies. But in the seeming chaos Doc McCriskin and Sergeant Dragony are going about their business as if they were in the calm of a London tea room. 

This is my penultimate day with Companies Charlie and Blue Max. In the last couple of weeks I have chosen largely to forget about the bigger political picture of Afghanistan. I have chosen to bring this story to a very personal level where it just might be understood a little better. The only thing that’s been important to me recently is the man to the right and the man to the left of me and how we survive the whims of our masters.

Goodbye Charlie and Blue Max Company and may your God go with you.

Afghan farmer caught in mortar attack

Afghan farmer caught in mortar attack

Two wounded. Chopper takes incoming.

Operating theatre

Sebastian Rich on Medevac

Skull helmet medevac crew

Medic Emmet (call sign the Goat)

Medic Emmet (call sign the Goat) and three-year-old child

Three-year-old child on medevac

Three-year-old child on medevac

Charlie Company’s War

It’s 6:30 am. Heavy, grey storm clouds are hanging low over Charlie Company’s flight line in Jalalabad. It’s a wet, cold, miserable day. However, I am experiencing, far against my better judgment, a rather feral pleasure in listening to heavy metal music very loudly. Mix this with the roar of a medevac Blackhawk helicopter completing its early morning pre flight checks. This is the “right stuff” of boyhood dreams. I bathed in a wash of testosterone all the while stuffing a breakfast of flapjacks, maple syrup, and what looks like and tastes like gravel into my mouth.

I should have been drinking manly flagons of piping hot thick black coffee with caffeine the strength of aviation fuel like my new best friends. Not gently sipping a lukewarm Chamomile and ginger infusion grown on implausibly pretty Tibetan foothills as advertised on the packet.  

On Charlie Company’s flight line is ‘hooch’.  The hooch resembles a log cabin from early pioneer days in the wild west of America. The ‘first up crew’ were drinking their rocket fuel and mulling over the foul weather. 

“Jeez we aint flying shit today, just look at that fucking weather.”

“Aw fuck it” a pilot spits onto the flight line. “Did ya see those Marine pilots in Iraq, man there was zero fucking visibility, and ya couldn’t see shit. I mean nuthin, those dudes were hammering.”

A waft of sweet hot aviation fuel assailed my nostrils to complete the Hollywood fantasies. I really did expect to see Robert Duvall in his Cavalry hat to appear any moment and quote that immortal line from the movie, Apocalypse Now: “I just love the smell of Napalm in the morning.”

And there he was, Robert Duvall in all his cinematic glory. A flight medic wearing a tan flight tunic, a little too snugly across his buttocks methinks. His chest blazoned with colorful flight badges striding purposefully across the flight line. Perched firmly on his shaved head, a black cowboy hat with two yellow oak leaf clusters of the U.S. Cavalry dangling on the brim. Exactly the same as Robert Duvall’s. The far too cool and rather handsome medic swaggered up to the hooch, squared himself in front of me. “Morning sir what’s up”? Me –he is talking to me. I have to get used to listening to ‘American’. “Mmm nothing.” I said looking like I had just farted and wasn’t going to admit to the offense.

What’s up in American really means ‘how are you’, or ‘is everything ok’. We truly are divided by a common tongue. “Oh good morning I am very well thank you and how you are this fine morning”.  I am gibbering nervously, its pouring with rain.

I really must stop being so British, using far too many words stemming from an insecurity complex born from being the only person in the 2nd Platoon Charlie Company with a funny accent and no cool flight suit. Robert Duvall’s retort was lost over the roar of the Blackhawk and he went back to his home somewhere in the central casting flight line.

“Welcome to the real war” is 2nd Platoon Charlie Company’s reply when asked about the difference in flying medevacs out of a FOB (Forward Operating Base).

Jalalabad is just such a base. Charlie Company in Bagram flies what they call tail to tail, which means transferring the wounded from positions were the patients have had some frontline treatment and are then needed to be taken to better care in Bagram. Charlie Company in Jalalabad has a very different modus operandi.

The atmosphere here is almost palpable. A mix of heightened relaxed tension. It’s a bit like sitting with an unpinned hand grenade in the middle of a crowded room. I witnessed and became part of that hand grenade yesterday afternoon.

In the middle of idle manly banter, “Medevac medevac, medevac” scream ten walkie talkies. The room emptied before you could say ‘the room emptied’. I found myself running across the flight line to the medevac Blackhawk clutching my flak jacket with the chief medic’s growly words still in my ears from yesterday’s flight briefing. “Just sit there and don’t fucking move. There will be blood everywhere and I turn ugly, fucking ugly.”  The Crew Chief had whispered, “I hope you have thick skin.”  That mission was cancelled before I got strapped into my seat and things got ‘ugly’.

Second Platoon Charlie Company flies fewer missions than their cohorts in Bagram but the missions they do fly are bloody, grisly, and very dangerous. They fly POI (Point of Injury) and they have lost aircraft in just about all the valleys and mountains in their area of operations. Nine times out of ten they will take incoming fire as they pick up the wounded. “You don’t get much closer to the guts of war than this.” These are very brave, kind, and funny men and woman—there is only one female pilot here in the Jalalabad medevac unit.

The ‘Chase helicopter’ is a very different beast, flying at all times with the medevac Blackhawk. Instead of a standard Blackhawk as in Bagram—with two door gunners and nothing else apart from a few handguns—2nd Platoon Charlie Company’s Blackhawk is protected by the menacing and heavily armed Apache AH-64 or quick reaction force helicopters of the Blue Max Company. Named after a WWI combat aviation medal made famous by the notorious Red Baron (aka, Baron Von Richohoffen).  The Apache just looks mean and nasty. Sparkling new out of the showroom, this beast costs $18 million and a bit of change. This bird of prey comes bristling with M230 Chain Gun 30 mm automatic cannon with 1200 rounds, plus 16 Hellfire missiles, 2 anti-tank missiles, or up to 76 FFAR (folding fin aerial rockets).

I finish eating my last bit of gravel, trying desperately to look cool hanging half in half out of the rain soaked ‘hooch’ wearing very old and broken national health glasses. I am joined on the flight line hooch by Mickey Scott, a helicopter maintenance Sergeant.

Mickey is the spitting image of Mickey Rouke! I am getting a little bemused with all these Hollywood look alikes operating out of Charlie Company.  Mickey even sounds like Mickey.  We chat a while about how much leave he has got owing. I ask if anyone told him that he looks like Rouke. “Hell yes” and this huge man blushes profusely.

Splaaat! My scribblings are interrupted in the operations room by an Apache pilot noisily trying to swat flies. “Oh yeah good job” a passing medic shouts as the pilot kills a fly with a two dollar swat.  The Apache pilot bears a passing resemblance to John Goodman from the film “The Big Lebowski.”

The rain is relentless. No calls, no flights, just more rain, and now mud.

“Medevac, medevac, medevac!”

My boredom is broken and so is a young soldier as a result of an IED. We fly into a small U.S. outpost at a location that I am not able to name. The soldier is stabilized but is in a great deal of pain with a broken arm. The juddering of the Blackhawk is not helping. Chief Medic Sergeant Dragony gives the boy a goodly shot of morphine and winks at me. The young soldier’s eyes turn from pain to bliss in a few short seconds.

 

Chief Medic Sergeant Dragony treats a young U.S. soldier on board a blackhawk.

Not so long ago I was that boy stoned out of my head in a British Army Chinook  medevac Helicopter being plucked out of the war in Beirut to be put back together again in a Royal Air force Hospital on the Island of Cyprus.

1983.  A mortar lands just a few feet from the APC (Armored Personnel Carrier); the blast lifts the whole thing in the air. Probably only a few inches. But as far as I was concerned I thought I was going into outer space. A wall of shrapnel then slammed into the APC making my head disappear into my shoulders. The level of noise inside was a bit like being inside a fruit blender, which itself was inside another fruit blender being smashed full force against every side of your head every second.

The APC’s ramp smashed into the ground and a frightened platoon of kindergarten aged Lebanese soldiers dashed out into hell. I ran with the young soldiers in their lemming like quest for martyrdom only to be met with a rake of machinegun fire a few inches from my feet. 

I ran with the young soldiers in their lemming like quest for martyrdom only to be met with a rake of machinegun fire a few inches from my feet.

I ran in a fast zigzag across a piece of open ground to a rather nice leafy villa veranda perched on a picturesque mountainside. I tried unsuccessfully to catch my breath. High velocity bullets disintegrated one of the fake marble colonnades in an explosive cascade of sharp concrete around my head.

Running, sliding, scrabbling I managed to get to the corner of the veranda where my detachment of the Lebanese youth army were trying to shoot at Druze militia, dug in like termites into the mountainside just meters from our position.

I could not determine any sort of coordinated strategy for ousting the enemy. It seemed our platoon was shooting everything with a firing pin. Machine gun, hand grenades, RPG, pistols, and a rather odd looking thing with an absurdly long barrel that was making one hell of a noise and smoke.

I started to lift my camera from floor level. All I had so far were some really great shots of running feet. If I could just muster the courage now was the time to get pictures of these soldiers fighting.  The young soldier squatting next to me took a bullet straight through the head. This did not go down to well with his friend.  He jumped up yelling Arabic obscenities with a machine gun gripped tightly in his hands. He emptied the gun into the bushes just in front of me. The soldier fell to the floor to reload.

Something white caught the peripheral vision in my left eye. I realized in horror that a Druze militiaman was standing 25 meters away from me in open ground with a rocket propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. As my thumb went to the record button a huge ball of white and orange smoke erupted from the exhaust of the RPG. The missile covered the short distance before my thumb made contact with the record button. The force of the impact blew me through an open doorway and into a crumpled and broken heap on the floor.

As I rubbed the dust out of my eyes I found my hands covered in blood. I looked down at my white T-shirt, which had pools of blood all over it. But because there was no pain I assumed that all this blood was from someone else as there were body parts everywhere… I tried to lift myself up but the lower half of my body refused the command. My stomach then started to hurt a little. I tentatively lifted a corner of my T-shirt which read on the front PRESS DON’T SHOOT in French and Arabic and revealed a gaping red ragged gash in my stomach about fifteen centimeters long and ten centimeters wide. I screamed so hard and loud that just for an instant in all that bloody messy chaos I was genuinely embarrassed. There followed a few moments of rather grisly fascination as I gingerly poked and prodded at the pieces of metal staring back up at me out of the wound. And then it cut me in half, the pain. Jesus, the fucking pain. Great fingers of fire shot from my abdomen to my throat and into the back of my head.

“Come we must go” a Lebanese captain suddenly appeared at my shoulder. The captain winced as another deafening RPG hit a wall and exploded somewhere in the villa.

“We must go back down the hill, this house will be destroyed.”
“I can’t move.”
“You must.’’
“I fucking won’t.”
“Then I must make you.”

With that the Captain bitchslapped me hard across the face (I thought they only did that in the movies) and picked me up by the shoulders dragging me half stumbling—half crawling to the open doorway at the back of the house. In the dust I could see that the APC had repositioned itself  twenty meters from our position with the rear ramp open.

Royal Air force – Sebastian Rich wounded.

The captain roughly manhandled me across open ground. We reached the ramp and he pushed me into the back of the APC. An injured soldier was unceremoniously thrown on top of me and the remainder of the platoon clambered on board after him. A screaming soldier clutched what remained of his lower leg—there wasn’t much to clutch, just a nub of bare bone and some stringy stuff hanging out of the bottom of his knee. Between us we provided a most unholy chorus of screams and abuse. The APC came to an abrupt stop which catapulted all of us wounded and the like into a ball of blood and screaming flesh smack into the front of the APC. A chink of light came from the rear ramp of the APC then the ramp fell to the floor blasting with daylight.

Miraculously we had reached the mountain town of Souk El Gharb. Lebanese soldiers rushed into the APC and scooped up their mates. Richard Rose, the sound recordist who I had been separated from after the blast on the veranda, lifted me up in his arms and bundled me with the help of our driver Ahbed into our ageing Mercedes. Richard was not going to leave me to the mercy of Lebanese soldiers with little or no medical knowledge. Ahbed drove at breakneck speed to the Commodore hotel back in West Beirut.

In the dusty foot in the rear of the Mercedes I had found a stash of beer and was in the process of devouring as much as I could. The beer was absolutely wonderful and I was starting to feel rather good. Richard carried me through the doors and into the lobby of the Commodore hotel. The alcohol finally kicked in and I passed out.

Over the deafening noise of the British Chinook helicopter’s engines a laconic Londoner’s voice just an inch away from my ear said “Have we had a little drinky then sir?” Was I still in that bloody APC or in a tumble dryer on a very hot spin? “Have we had a little drinky sir?” Was this a promise of yet more beer?

My news desk in London had contacted the British Defense Secretary who authorized a Chinook medevac helicopter to land in the center of Beirut at great personal risk to the flight crew. They were now, unbeknown to me, flying me to The Princess Mary RAF Hospital in Akrotiri, Cyprus to be put back together.

“Sir how much have you had to drink?” I opened my mouth but nothing worked. “Is that four sir? Please sir, can you remember, approximately sir, was it four cans of beer?” I could feel the voice’s hot breath and the gentle brush of lips on my ear. Why can’t you hear me, I thought. “I think he said four doc” another disembodied voice joined in over the roar of the helicopter’s rotors. “Fuck, why can’t you hear me!”

“Twenty-Four” and thankfully passed out again!

“And how are we this morning young sir?” We! We! Are there two of us in here? I was in Cyprus. I still had my eyes closed and had the hangover to beat all hangovers. In fact three days had passed and a load of shrapnel had been removed from my stomach. “How are we?” We, Sebastian, Me. My thoughts were a total jumble. “Mmmmm give him a few more minutes.” For what? I thought.

******

Pilot Wolf Fight celebrates the birth of his daughter with a cigar.

“Have a cigar Sir.”

Pilot CW3 Wolf Fight of Charlie Company. That’s his real name Wolf Fight, Esq. I thought that was his call sign. (Call sign is Blue Max nine.) Wolf’s wife in the States has just given birth to a seven pound ten ounce baby girl named Elizabeth. I am tempted to get too far too clever for my own boots and wax lyrical about the cycle of life and death in a war zone. Far too worthy for the likes of my scribbling. The cigar makes me turn green.

It’s still raining on the flight line. The ‘Sergeant Major’ of Charlie Company licks his balls, stares lazily at decals on the wall that read ‘Ugly but well hung-C troop 7-6 Cavalry’ and the rather poetic “burning gas to save your ass,”  stretches his long legs and falls back to a deep sleep on his favorite comfy chair.

‘Sergeant Major’ is Charlie Company’s pet cat.

Sebastian Rich is reporting for the Diplomatic Courier and CBS News.

Dog Day Nights

“Stand down, Dust off, stand down.”

The twin screaming Blackhawk General Electric 701C engines developing 1900 horse power shut down mid wind with a piercing whine and metallic clatter. That’s twice tonight already. Bad weather, the first call, and then someone else beat us to the next casualty. Pilot in Command: Warrant officer Casey Green, call sign HOMO. I bet he loves that one. Mutters into the Blackhawk’s communication system in a mock pirate voice “It’s the curse of the Black Pearl me harties.”

Crew Chief Angela Nolan (no call sign, apparently everybody is too scared to give her one) rubs tired eyes as she jumps out of the Blackhawk. Angela has only been asleep for five minutes fully clothed. I am not sure if that look on her face (best not to ask) is relief or anger that the mission is aborted.

It’s 1:00 am and I am on my third cup of Jasmine tea back in 1-61 Charlie Company’s operations room, and still childishly giggling over the name on the tea bag ‘Jasmine Jazz the Romance Enhancer.’

I am just about to give up for the night and crawl into bed in a tiny windowless cave at the back of the aircraft hanger that I call home when Sergeant Danielle Dumas takes a strange call from a U.S. Special Forces mission somewhere they should or should not be in the pitch black Afghan night.

The Special Forces (Navy Seals) were requesting a medevac for a K9 (dog) as it had been shot in the hind quarters (bum). Being a bottom feeding hack I instantly wanted to do the sums. What were the costs of aviation fuel for two Blackhawks? They always fly in pairs. Wages, time, and effort for a dog. And what brilliant pictures it would make. Perfect for my story of U.S. helicopter medevac policy to evacuate anyone from anywhere, anytime, including enemy combatants and pooches.

The Navy Seal mission is highly classified and I am coming up against many brick walls trying to get information. But as ever, there are little leaks in the system. The dog is a ‘Navy Seal’. No, I don’t mean that he belongs to the Navy Seals. He ‘is’ a Navy Seal. 

The classified named dog is a large German shepherd and his rank is higher than his human handler. The dog had been chasing two insurgents out of a dirt tunnel when he was shot. After the two insurgents had been captured by human soldiers the German shepherd came wagging its tail to its handler as if nothing was wrong at all. The Navy Seal handler went to pat the dog and his fingers disappeared into a large bloody hole.

In Charlie Company’s medevac operations room no one seemed to be batting an eyelid on this call and it was duly logged and put into the system awaiting its turn in line. Policy is that if the animal is the property of the U.S. military it will be treated as a serving soldier. It makes sense. This German shepherd is highly trained in either sniffing out explosives and insurgents plus a multitude of other Special Forces sneaky beaky things that we will never know about.

My initial thought was that Navy Seals had come across a stray dog with a bullet in its bottom and they felt sorry for it. Nice try. There goes my military bashing story. Oddly, the same medics of Charlie Company would accompany the dog in the medevac helicopter as they would a human soldier. The classified named Navy Seal dog is on his way to a full recovery.

It was not the first time I had comes across the ‘Dogs of War.’ 

********

“Here, Sir use my gun, the safety is off, and mind the splash back Sir!”

What the… I span around with my camera to find a British army sergeant handing his service revolver to his Captain. In front of the two soldiers, crawling on its front legs, was a huge black Alsatian who had been machine gunned across its pelvis and was dragging behind what was left behind of its hindquarters. The smell was sickening. High velocity bullets had disintegrated the dog’s bowels along with its legs, leaving a putrid trail of shit, blood, and shattered bone. Unbelievably, the animal was still alive and determined to stagger to God alone knew where. The first shot from the Captain’s revolver missed the dog completely and smacked loudly into the stone of the village road. The British soldiers hiding in the tree line jumped nervously at the gun shot, giving away their hidden positions in the surrounding bush. The captain leveled the pistol a second time inches away from the dog’s forehead, turned his head, covered his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

So died the last remaining survivor of the village of Uzdol.

Uzdol—what kind of name is that? It could only be in former Yugoslavia. Such a very ugly name for such a pretty little hamlet nestling in between lush green hills. If it weren’t for the corpses littering just about every buttercup laden grassy knoll it would have been a wonderful place for a picnic

All the men of an age to hold a gun had left the Croat village early that morning to go and fight on some ever shifting front line that snaked over the ex Yugoslav landscape far from their grandparents, wives, and children. Unbeknown to the fighters, just an hour or so after they left their homes, Bosnian soldiers entered the village and summarily executed every living soul: men, women, children, livestock, and of course dogs.

There was not a stretch of village road, barn, house, croft, or hillside that did not have a butchered corpse of one species or another—a telling testament to the morning’s banquet of brutality and bloodlust. Was I really to be the only photographic record of such horror? I was, and felt duty bound to film as many of the dead as I could.

I stuck my head into a barn to see a piece of dirty brown sack cloth loosely covering two bodies propped up against the mud whitewashed wall. Underneath was an elderly couple in their eighties. I looked down to see that they were still holding hands as their executioners had shot them at point blank range in the head. House after house told the same grisly story. The raw uncut footage was transmitted to the BBC in London. I would wait and see the Nine-o’clock News via satellite, and I wish I had not. The story was the massacre of course, but it had been cut to ribbons to the point of Disneyfication on the grounds that it was far too gruesome for the Nine-o’clock watershed (TV talk for the kids go to bed later). The word from the news desk was “what was the cameraman doing shooting all those close up pictures of dead bodies and dogs?”

Massacre in Uzdol Bosnia

Dead Grandmother Uzdol

“Stand down, Dust off 46, stand down.”  

Classified named Navy Seal dog got a ride on a Special Forces Chinook helicopter. Bollox. I’m going to bed.

Sebastian Rich is reporting for the Diplomatic Courier and CBS News.

Gunships and Medevacs

Sargent Steven Solum treats soldier

The first medevac of the day for 1-61 Charlie Company is to pick up a young U.S. soldier wounded with an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) blast near the town of Ghazni. Over the radio chatter we learn that he was sitting in his vehicle when he took the brunt of the blast. He has chest and leg injuries and ruptured eye drums caused by the dramatic change of pressure from the explosion.
 
On the way to pick up our hapless soldier I had time to look at the magnificent snow capped Afghan mountains once again and mused that many years ago I had tramped over these magnificent mountains with the veteran British correspondent Sandy Gall.
 
Memory can cause selective rose-colored amnesia. I gazed lazily from the Blackhawk’s windows in a stupor from the roar of the engines and the slight lack of oxygen at this altitude. My memory wandered here and there. Mind you, I did seem to remember that back in those halcyon days freezing my bum off and starving half to death while we walked countless torturous miles, that those magnificent mountains were “those fucking mountains.” 
 
“Dust off, four, six, clear to land.”
 
I cleared my head of such soporific memories and readied my cameras. The young soldier was quickly and without fuss loaded onto our Blackhawk. Medic sergeant Steven Solum professionally went about his business comforting the young soldier and at the same time checking his whole body for any injuries that weren’t as obvious as the ones we could see.
 
We are not in control of when and how memories come flying into our minds. Maybe it was the helicopters, wounded, blood, and guns—whatever.

 

Terry llyod

Terry Lloyd of Independent Television News of London—one of their most senior correspondents and my mate—was ripped apart by American helicopter gunship bullets in the first days of the Iraq war.
Terry was not an ‘embed’. He was what we termed ‘unilateral’, which was the normal procedure for covering any war up until that point in the history of television journalism. Terry knew that the ‘embeds’ where going to get the lion’s share of great pictures (and he would not have taken kindly of us getting the lion’s share).
 
My friend was killed on the 22nd of March 2003 on the southern Iraq front. Terry’s death caused much concern to all, as it was believed that he had died as a result of U.S. troops opening fire on Iraqi soldiers who appeared to be surrendering.
 
Terry’s cameraman at the time, Daniel Demoustier, said that they had been approached by two cars carrying Iraqi soldiers who seemed to want to surrender. But allied tanks started firing directly at them and the ITN car, clearly marked as a TV vehicle. Daniel who was driving with Terry in the passenger seat said: “after we were hit I crouched under the steering wheel, pressing the accelerator to the floor. I looked up just before we crashed, the door was open and Terry was gone.”
 
This was the last Daniel saw of Terry and he believed he had been killed.
 
The September 2003 edition of the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror raised the very real possibility that Terry survived that first attack by U.S. troops only to be killed by them after being rescued by one Mr. Hamid Aglan, who was intent on driving him to the hospital. Hamid Aglan states that Terry received only a wound in his shoulder in the original incident. He picked Terry up in his Mitsubishi minibus along with four wounded Iraqi soldiers. His minibus was travelling away from the fighting when a U.S. helicopter gunship opened fire on it, killing Terry instantly as well as one of the four Iraqis. 
 
Hamid had found Terry sitting on the road’s central reservation surrounded by injured Iraqi soldiers. Hamid said: “It was a scene of total chaos, destroyed army vehicles and dead and wounded men everywhere. There was also a civilian jeep with the letters TV clearly marked on the side. Some Iraqi soldiers flagged me down and begged me to take them to hospital. I was loading them into the back of the van when the journalist asked me to take him too.” Hamid goes on to explain that he was travelling away from any fighting when his minibus was attacked.
 
“I turned the bus around in the direction of Basra for the hospital. But after only one hundred meters I heard a helicopter behind us. It immediately started to shoot with a machine gun. The right back tire went and the van was difficult to control, but I knew I had to keep going. It was our only chance. The helicopter was dark green and about two hundred meters behind us. But after another hundred metres it stopped following.” Ten minutes later Hamid arrived at Basra hospital, but it was too late for Terry. Hamid thinking that Terry was just unconscious carried him into the hospital. A day later Hamid returned to the hospital to inquire about the man he tried to save. He was told that the man was British and that his name was Terry Lloyd and that he died instantly from a bullet in the head. 
 
The British military has said that the other two missing members of Terry’s crew are believed in the chaos to have been captured by Iraqi militia, delivered to the local headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen, who then executed them and buried their bodies in unmarked graves in the desert. The Royal Military Police are awaiting the results of forensic tests on Hamid’s minibus, the rear of which was hit by at least six bullets. The last time I saw Terry was just before the war in Baghdad. We had been shopping in an old clothes souk market. Terry asked as he tried on an old nice leather jacket “Seb, does my bum look big in this.”

 

*****

 

 “Dust off, four, six, clear to take off.”
 
Our medevac Blackhawk lurched a little uncomfortably into the sky. I put down the camera and looked at the young man without my crap technology between us. He was getting the best, the very best treatment. I spun my head around fast so that no one could see me burst into floods of tears. Through my blubbering I could just see the tops of the snow-caps. “Fuck, Terry I hate these fucking mountains.”
 
Not a good day.
 
Footnote: It’s Ten past Ten, or Twenty Two Ten, or Ten thirty Zulu, whatever the latter means, and the lovely ladies of Charlie Company’s busy operation’s room have just made me a wonderful cup of Jasmine tea. Tea with an improbable name on the box: Jasmine Jazz the Romance enhancer.

Sebastian Rich is reporting from Afghanistan for the Diplomatic Courier Magazine and CBS News.

 

St. Patrick’s Day in Afghanistan

“Well you take a pound of flour and just a twist of lemon, mind you with just a little milk, not much. I tell you this makes the very best.” 

“Mmm, my daddy thought I had made my own key lime pie but I hadn’t the heart to tell him I bought it from Safeway. And the packet was still on top of the trash can”.

This slightly out of place conversation was between two female members of Charlie Company’s elite aviator medics. I marveled at the two women chatting away as if they were in their neighbor’s kitchen. Well they could have been if they hadn’t had high powered automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, in uniform, and weren’t in Afghanistan.

Angela Nolan, Crew Chief

Blackhawk medevac Pilot LT Muriel Mendoza

 

 

Personally I love it. I am surrounded by the highest life saving technology that war has to offer and these two are exchanging key lime pie war stories from the kitchen.

Walk across Charlie Company’s hanger floor and things are a little different: “Man, Madonna really is an old foot, just look at her.” Two male pilots remarking on Madonna’s latest tour of somewhere in a gossip magazine. “Man she is a skank.” I have no idea what a skank is but it doesn’t sound very pleasant.  Then, the inevitable conversation about guns and cars. I like the car conversation a little; when I was a misguided youth I used to or try to collect classic cars—usually old pieces of crap that never worked and had to be towed away immediately after purchase.

The whole of Charlie Company is a wonderful mix of female foil and male saber. The briefing room illustrates this mix too well. The briefing room is a highly secret den of mystery and off limits to the likes of civilian snappers like me. Well, I am allowed to change my walkie talkie batteries in the den of mystery every night. That’s how I know that on the secret briefing table is a mix of Gun World, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping. 

If I were in the Army it would have to be Charlie Company. I get to carry big guns, save lives, fly bloody great Blackhawk helicopters, and bake cakes. It can’t get much better than that.

 It’s St Patrick’s Day and Charlie Company is preparing a BBQ in-between medevacs.

This evening is the first time that I have had time to sit still since I have been a guest with Charlie Company. It is most welcome as I scoff processed grilled chicken and some white substances that resemble rice. In charge of BBQ operations is First Pilot Lieutenant Muriel Mendoza, a highly qualified Blackhawk pilot who seems just at home organizing this little shindig as she is gunning her helicopter into battle.
 
“Sir, I mean mam, what is this white stuff.” I timidly asked all the while eyeing the bloody great rifle slung over Mendoza’s slim shoulders. All personnel on this base have to, by order, wear their rifle or side arm at all times.  “Rice.” That was the spoken word. Muriel’s thought process might have been a little different. “Yes, of course, how silly of me…”  I started to apologize as only the British can, stumbling over my words and digging a bloody great hole for myself. “Sorry I didn’t mean to be rude; I just didn’t know what it was, mam sorry. I mean, I am sure it’s very nice. Gosh can I have a second helping, how yummy.”

Medevac, medevac, medevac!

All the radios around the makeshift dining table screamed. Sausages and bacon flew into the trash can. In a thrice I was left sitting on my own trying to unglue my tongue that had been firmly cemented to the roof of my mouth by the strange rice like substance.

I had decided to shoot video of the Blackhawk helicopters’ night take off to cut in with the night interior medevac from the previous evening. I watched the two Blackhawks melt into a velvet black Afghan night and disappear. I had a pang of guilt that I wasn’t with them; already I was missing the adrenaline rush of going into the unknown and was beginning to understand why they did what they did.

Avoiding the rice like substance I shifted my attention to an untouched key lime pie, it wasn’t just a kitchen myth, there it was, homemade in all its glory. I had to try a chunk after eavesdropping, knowing I was going to write about it. Delicious.

For a few wonderful moments I was not in Afghanistan I was in my eldest daughter’s kitchen in Colorado happily shoving pie in my mouth. “Sir may I sit.” A young flight medic just off duty sat down with a mountain of hamburgers and chips.

I love listening to the medic’s stories. My own armchair war stories pale into utter silliness compared to what has been witnessed by these young men and women. But some I could do without while swallowing key lime pie.

Just when I thought, and I always do think that I have heard it all, there is always something else. One of the first calls for this medic was to pick up a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl reportedly suffering from severe dog bites to her stomach. In the Blackhawk the medic cut off her shirt and removed filthy bandages. No dog bite, but a long ragged gash just above her pubic bone sown up with the type of large diameter string you use to tie up a sack. It seemed that the dog was capable of cross stitching after biting its prey. The little Afghan girl was a rape victim and had been with child, bringing perceived shame to the family. I use the past tense ‘had been with child’ as her father ordered her older brother to cut open her belly with a rusty razor blade and rip out the fetus. And like a good son he did.

Sebastian Rich is reporting from Afghanistan for the Diplomatic Courier Magazine and CBS News.

Bombs, Batteries, and Bullets

Three year old Nazier happily scoots around the U.S. Army hospital corridors here in the American airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan as if she owns the place. She may not own the bricks and mortar but she certainly owns the hearts of all the medical staff and soldiers of the base. Huge, tough men with even bigger guns melt into doting fathers, cooing with cow eyes at the little girl’s demands for attention.
 
Nazier is not a victim of war. She is a normal child doing normal childish things (like swallowing watch batteries). Why? Because that’s what inquisitive children do all over the world. Stick their little chubby fingers in electrical sockets, eat mommy’s HRT pills, stuff cat litter into their mouths, and swallow batteries. This is all well and good in a country with well equipped hospitals on every block that can, at the drop of a hat, suck out a few pounds of cat litter from the little rascal’s stomach. But try that in Afghanistan where the only hospital that can cope with such ailments is hundreds of miles away at the occupying forces’ base and there is a very different outcome.
 
Almost a year ago little Nazier swallowed a watch battery no bigger than a dime. Unfortunately, the battery stuck in her throat and eroded quickly. The toxic acids leaked from the battery and eventually destroyed her esophagus, so much so that she was unable to breathe. Luckily for Nazier, U.S. Army medevac policy here in Afghanistan states that they will pick up any casualty anytime, anywhere, regardless of nationality or status. This includes enemy combatants.
 
Nazier has undergone many surgeries in the last year to keep her airway clear. She still has a plastic breathing pipe in her throat that emits not only her chirps of joy but also the rather ugly noise of the inner workings of her lungs. The doctors here say that one day the pipe will be removed and she will be able to breathe normally. If Nazier were to be returned to her village community she would most surely die. The advanced surgical procedures that have kept her alive are also her death sentence should she leave the clean and hygienic confines of the American military hospital.
 
There is no Afghan village in the dusty countryside with anyone who could give Nazier the specialized after care that she would need. Luckily, the U.S. State Department has granted Nazier and her family American citizenship and they will move to the States in as little as 17 days from now. In the meantime, Nazier is the heart and soul of this hospital, bringing a smile to the most overworked doctor or nurse. In fact, I suspect that she is the constant reassuring reminder to the staff that they are doing a little good in a country that is set with so many awful and seemingly insurmountable tragedies.
 
Little Nazier wave’s goodbye to my video camera then playfully grasps the microphone with podgy little fingers and tries to eat it.

*****

In the intensive care unit of the same hospital, just yards away from playful Nazier, a five-year-old girl is quite literally fighting for what could be the last days of her young life. She is a victim of a phosphorous grenade. Thirty percent of her body is terribly burned. The little thing has only a 50 percent chance of survival. If she does pull through, she will be most dreadfully scarred from top to toe and lose the sight in her right eye. She is in a chemically induced coma. But even in this coma she is given pain medication; such is the excruciating pain of these awful burns.
 
The American nursing staff has called the little girl ‘Basil’ as she came in on the medevac Blackhawk on her own with no identification. Why Basil? I asked. “Cos it’s nice.”
 
Basil’s once tiny face has swollen grotesquely to the size of a large red kitchen frying pan. Her features are totally unrecognizable. Her legs are swathed in bandages as she has no skin left. The medical staff has no way of knowing what she looks like until and if she heals.
 
Teddy bears from the medevac pilots litter her bed between dozens of wires, drains, and a multitude of life support systems monitoring her vital signs. The head nurse sighs heavily and shakes her head when I ask on Basil’s prognosis. “Fifty fifty. Sorry I’m not very good with that big camera in my face, sorry.”
 
It is not known if Basil was playing with old soviet ordinance or that somehow she was in the middle of a battle. Unlikely. Most probably the former.
 
The Russians dropped over two million small mines from their aircrafts. Charming little fuckers with the sweet name of butterfly mines. Named such because when they sit on the ground they look like harmless butterflies or small toys to be played with. These mines were not designed to kill but to maim. The idea being that two other mujahedin fighters would be preoccupied with the fighter and his missing leg, in turn keeping three mujahedin from taking up arms. Probably a great soviet military genius thought that little ditty up. But the likes of little Basil are still picking up these terrifying butterflies, and other dangerous and deadly crap, on a daily basis.
 
Numerous foreign NGOs have mine clear programmes in Afghanistan but as a mine clearance officer told me once “you ever tried to suck the Mediterranean Sea dry with a straw?”

*****

I left Basil to photograph an 18-year-old boy with a bullet still lodged in the back of his brain. The Blackhawk medics are in absolute awe of this young lad. When they picked him up he was walking, talking, and generally in good spirits. They could see a cut on the side of his head and some bruising but not an entry wound. It was not until the hapless lad was brought back to Bagram and x-rayed that they realized that the bullet was still in his head. Once again luck was on the side of this boy. A top Military neurosurgeon was on hand. By this time the boy’s brain was starting to swell to alarming proportions. In fact, the swelling was so severe the surgeon had to cut huge chunks of skull out of either side of his head to let the brain swell outside in the open.

The two pieces of skull were sown into the boy’s stomach to preserve them until his brain becomes a normal size again. Then they can saw his head back together.
 
I asked Blackhawk paramedic Sergeant Rob Walters how was it at all possible that this boy is still alive. “I really just don’t know man. These people are tough.”
 
I left the hospital thinking that the children’s song Humpty Dumpty needs rewriting.
 
Sebastian Rich is reporting for the Diplomatic Courier magazine and CBS News.

Day One: Bagram U.S. Base

Whatever your politics on the mess that is Iraq and Afghanistan, sitting in a medevac helicopter desperately trying to avoid kicking the lifeless bodies of U.S. service men clears your head of such useless bar and living room debates.

I am embedded with Charlie Company or, to give it its full handle, 1-168 General Support Aviation Battalion (GSAB) at Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan. The Spartan hanger that is Charlie Company’s new home in the desert has a dark and bloody history.

As the might of the Soviet empire grounded itself to a dusty halt in Afghanistan, victorious mujahedin strung up Russian officers by the neck from hangers in the ceiling and set them on fire. Other soviet ranks were lined up in the dirty back alleys of the then Russian base and shot in the back of the head.

I have just been given a rather unnerving tactical briefing by a first sergeant, which included his permission to take his weapon and his medical kit from his dead body should my need arise. A cocky smile quickly vanished from my lips as I realized he was deadly serious. “Mr. Reporter at the POI (Point of Injury) the aircraft could and probably will be engaged by the enemy, be aware and be ready.”

Then the more mundane but necessary side of the brief continued. “Don‘t walk there or your head will be cut off and don’t walk there either or your head will be cut off again!” We’re to sit and not get in the way of anything at all.

A French photographer had just left Charlie Company the day before my arrival and the aircrews were not that impressed with his behavior.

My brief was interrupted with a few non diplomatic quips from the sergeant.

“That fucking cocksucker, sorry sir, that French gentleman, um—maybe because of the language barrier sir, umm, he was just all over the fucking place sir.”

Not many more details of the photographer’s behavior were forthcoming as the sergeant visibly held himself in check, but not too well.  I heard a final derogatory mumble directed at the French media, then silence.

My predecessor’s crowning achievement was to use his flash at night in the airborne helicopter, wiping out the entire crew’s night vision capabilities. I made a mental note to try and not be the British equivalent.

Medevac -medevac -medevac.  All radios burst into life and a well-oiled life saving operation spurs into action. Two Blackhawk helicopters spit and roar into life. On the medical platform, the other ‘chase’ or protection chopper. The medevac helicopter has no weapons and relies on the ‘chase’ to see off any attacker.

The mission is to resupply another U.S. airbase in Jalalabad with blood and fresh medical supplies.  A U.S. patrol has been victim to an IED (Improvised Explosive Device). Three had been killed instantly and a fourth was fighting for his life in a forward base operating theater. He had lost both his legs and was hanging on by a thread.

While in the air, the chief medic prepared all the drugs and equipment needed for our patient. I stole a quick look over the pilot’s shoulder. The most beautiful snow covered mountain range came into view. In the midst of all this beautiful landscape a legless soldier was bleeding to death.

My headset crackled with the information that the fourth serviceman had ‘expired,’ and that this mission was now a ‘Fallen Hero mission.’ There were to be four bodies spread over six body bags.  The pilot’s shoulders dropped with resignation and the aircraft nosed just a little. The medic gently kicked his now defunct medical kit to the back of the aircraft. We landed in Jalalabad in silence or, what passed as silence in the roaring Blackhawk.

The commanding officer in Jalalabad asked me not to take pictures.  A natural instinct to any photographer is to ignore any such request, plough ahead, and damn the consequences.  But already the objectivity of the embed process was weaving its subjective spell. I had only been with this unit a few short hours, but I had become one of them. They would save me, feed me, die for me, and carry my body home. I could at least show a little respect and keep my finger off the shutter for a while.

I had this objectivity problem while embedded with the First battalion Second Marine Corps during the ground war in Iraq. It’s not rocket science; you become friends sharing the same fate.

During that war I had covered none too impartially the effects of friendly fire on my Marine base by another. I was more concerned for my platoon’s welfare than the story and the pictures.

Ashamedly, I took this new camaraderie to new and rather strange heights during that war. I had been on a bridge spanning the Euphrates River in the besieged town of El Naseriha. Stupidly, I had been standing in the middle of the bridge in full view of the enemy, but documenting imagery that Francis Ford Coppola would have been jealous of. Hellfire missiles from U.S. helicopter gunships were smashing into buildings only a hundred meters from my position. To my immediate right there was a U.S. forward observer relaying enemy positions to the circling helicopters directing fire. Three high velocity rounds fluttered passed my head causing my knees to buckle. Then I saw him, a sniper running from one building to another. Maybe I had been with the military too long or a survival instinct kicked in automatically. I shouted at the forward observer: “Unfriendly my two o’clock” who in turn instantly relayed the coordinates to the choppers and my sniper vanished in a ball of flames. Such is objectivity. I just hope he wasn’t an old chap caught in the open carrying a fishing rod.

The body bags of the four U.S. Service men were gently loaded on to our waiting helicopters. The wash of warm air from the chopper’s rotors caused the body bags to move unnervingly as I tried to delicately clamber over the dead and strap myself in for the journey back to Bagram.

The medic sat next to me with hands tightly clenched. He now served no function on this aircraft. Feeling a little like a vulture I shot a couple of minutes of video and a few stills images. The dead men could not see the most beautiful sunset casting an orange sheen on the jagged Afghan mountains. Good for pictures I guess.

Putting down my cameras I realized that the two door gunners and the medic were looking anywhere but at the body bags. I am sure they were not waxing bloody lyrical at the sunset.

Sebastian Rich is reporting for the Diplomatic Courier and CBS News.