by William Yeske
The following is an excerpt from William Yeske’s book: Damn the Valley 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 2-508 PIR, 82nd Airborne in the Arghandab River Valley Afghanistan–which can be purchased here.
SPC Ross hadn’t even wanted to be on this patrol. With the frequency of everything that was going on at COP Ware, there was no time to get anything done, much less sleep. He was always exhausted because if there was a detail to be done, he would be the one that always seemed to be snatched up. Having been there longer than the rest of the lower enlisted in 1st Platoon, it seemed to be a curse because there were some NCOs that would depend on him if they needed anything done. They knew he would get it done and it would be done right.
As they approached the compound, he felt a chill. Like those that you get when you enter a haunted house, and the temperature drops 10 degrees unexpectedly in the matter of an instant. Ross shrugged the feeling off and followed in everyone’s footsteps as the area we were coming in on had been cleared already. Lt Demarest called to get a team on the roof of the building because he was worried about spotters calling out our position to the insurgents in the area.
Ross had been bored on this day and Johnston was already headed up onto the wall to get eyes onto the surrounding area. “I’ll go!” he exclaimed, as he could use that moment of solace to just get away from the bullshit going on within the compound. A breath of fresh air would be nice and Johnston was just the guy that would understand. They could enjoy the silence and the scenery together on the rooftop as they shared a smoke. It had been a rough week and with his fellow weapons team members on leave, Ross would fill the gaps in the patrol needs as well. It was utterly draining.
Thomas was pissed as he had been heading for the wall when Ross had just jumped out there and started immediately scaling the wall. He edged up only a few feet behind Johnston. It was a weird wall that had some breaks in the structure and sloped a bit up to the roof of the building that was within the inner areas of the walls. It wasn’t unlike a lot of the other tricky mud-built architecture you would find everywhere in the valley. Towery had a walking stick or something and held it up for Ross to steady himself as he made his way up. Just helping a guy out, as we all had to while crossing some of the terrain and manmade features that peppered the landscape and made going any amount of distance miserable.
All of a sudden, he felt like someone had cracked him in the back of the head with a bat or something. What the hell? It was right underneath where the protection of the helmet ended and one of the vital areas in the neck that hurt like a son of a bitch if you were hit there in any capacity. I’ve seen guys go down from a proper cuff to the back of the neck in that spot before. BLACK…
What in the hell just happened… his brain was catching up. Where in the… what the fuck? Everything was tilted and his neck hurt something fierce. It took a moment to realize, but he figured out that he was outside of the wall and on top of his head. There was dust everywhere and his mouth tasted terrible. Oh, shit. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Ross figured out that they had hit an IED.
There was a grunting coming from the orchard in front of him. The orchard…
He was the only one outside the wall! His brain started to panic as he knew that the enemy would probably be coming soon. He was outside of any sort of security perimeter and completely alone. He started to come out of the fog and quickly scanned the area for his rifle and his assault bag. He had everything he needed right there. Let the bastards come. Could there be any better way to go for an infantryman? His family had history in the Vietnam War with an uncle who was killed in combat after having been up and down the conflict areas and even into areas of Cambodia. Let them talk about how Ross took his chances on a last-ditch effort to take as many down as he could before they cut him down. There was no other option for someone like Ross. This was it.
There was that grunting noise again. What the hell had happened? Was something hit out here? As he had finally gotten his rifle in hand and was trying to make sense of the entire scene, he turned his attention to the pile of material that was making the noises. As his eyes came into focus and his brain started registering what he was seeing, his curiosity turned into horror as he realized that the shape had a uniform pattern to it. It was Johnston.
It was as if Satan had come to the Arghandab to play a sick and twisted marionette puppet show with a patrol squad of soldiers. As the puppet master, he had tossed the figure of Johnston into the air and had just dropped the figure onto the stage in a discarded pile. Johnston was folded over and in half with his face in the dirt and was trembling as his body was starting to move and go into shock. The noises were changing now and getting louder.
“OH JESUS! OH MY GOD! OH GOD!” Ross could hear Thomas screaming in the compound as the realization of what had just happened was washing over him. Ross needed to get to Johnston, but there could be mines everywhere out here. He was flying blind here. Ross decided to crawl as low as he could to the ground and do a series of checks for IEDs as he made his way to see what he could do.
He couldn’t believe there was any way that Johnston was alive. It looked like every bone in his body had been broken. Ross got to him and got what was left of Johnston onto his back in the field. “Dude, it fucking hurts, man,” he said to Ross. Ross couldn’t believe Johnston was alive and actually talking to him. There was no way this guy was going to live through this. Fuck it, he had to try.
Ross pulled his own tourniquet out of the medical pouch on his rig and got it around what was left of Johnston’s left leg. It was pulverized, but his right leg was already gone. There was his femur sticking out of his left and what appeared to be enough structure to press down on and seal off the bleeding from any arterial wound. Although who knew how would that even work as it looked like Johnston’s entire pelvis had been smashed. Ross could literally see into his organ cavity.
Ross started to crank the tourniquet down to hopefully stop some of the blood loss. That’s when Johnston started screaming. “I need someone out here!” Ross screamed for help as this wasn’t something he could handle alone. He needed the doc out with him and he needed him right now.
Doc Ponce finally made it over to the scene and Ross could see that he had gotten fucked up from the explosion as well. Doc was half blind but operating at a level of focus that can only be explained as a properly trained combat medic doing his job. Ponce ripped his medic bag open and threw Ross a package as he started ripping into another and packing Johnston’s wounds with curlex to stop the bleeding. There was so much going on and with the both of them working at a breakneck speed to save him, the pair synced in a pattern of efficiency that allowed them the feeling that there could be a chance.
Johnston was still talking to them and asking if he was going to die and how bad the damage really was. Ross didn’t even know how bad it was. He just told him that he was going to be alright and to stay with him. Just keep talking to him. Johnston started to say that he was having trouble breathing along with everything else he was talking about.
Bobby Musil and the rest of the QRF were the most welcome sight Ross had ever seen when Bobby crested that wall. The pararescue helicopter had just gotten there when Johnston’s eyes went cloudy.
_________________________
William (Will) Yeske is a combat veteran who served 11 years in the U.S. Army. He is a serial entrepreneur who brings significant expertise in marketing, IT, and project management. He currently runs and operates a marketing company, No Limits Marketing Group (NLMG), founded to help small businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses a combination of modern marketing techniques coupled with a non-lethal targeting framework learned in the military to provide clients with winning strategies. Will was also a founding board member of a Veteran non-profit, Rally for the Troops (now part of Racing for Heroes) and has worked on other veteran-based projects.
He is currently attending Columbia Business School while running current business projects, creating new possibilities for future endeavors, and parenting his two children with his wife, who is also a US military veteran.
As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.
Buy Me A Coffee
The Havok Journal seeks to serve as a voice of the Veteran and First Responder communities through a focus on current affairs and articles of interest to the public in general, and the veteran community in particular. We strive to offer timely, current, and informative content, with the occasional piece focused on entertainment. We are continually expanding and striving to improve the readers’ experience.
© 2024 The Havok Journal
The Havok Journal welcomes re-posting of our original content as long as it is done in compliance with our Terms of Use.