Field Morgue

We all deal with stress in different ways. My personal strategy was to delay dealing with many issues, to focus on the tasks at hand. Busy was always good. The rear area provided way too much time to think.

Field medics put wounded troops on medevacs. Once we robbed The Reaper, they were loaded on the chopper. Our job was done. That was the end of the story. I didn’t think about the permanent results of their injuries. I didn’t think about how their lives were inalterably changed.

I never thought about the dead. I never thought about parents, wives and other loved ones who would receive the remains and weep. These thoughts put you over the edge. A soldier can only take so much thinking. Put them on the chopper and wish them well, if they were still breathing. We would remember…later.

So I thought I was battle hardened. My tour was coming to a close. I heard that a friend had been killed in a helicopter crash. It felt right to go and pay my final respects. The field morgue was all too accessible to medics.

They gave my friend a promotion and some nice medals. The military shows reverence to their fallen. I watched as the mortician unzipped the body. It was him. I saw the big tag attached to his toe. I drew my gaze upwards to his face, noting the teeth marks where he screamed before impact. The silence was thick, until the mortician rezipped the bag, over his face, to the top of the bag, which cause me to gasp for my own breath. There were so many ways to die here.

I wasn’t ready. Clothes bag zippers still bother me to this day, as I remember that body bag being unzipped. A young man was alive…then he was gone. He just doesn’t come back. We couldn’t save them all.

Two weeks later I boarded the last chopper in a hasty exit. I see three heavy laden radio operators and way too many guys. We were definitely pushing the weight  limits of this chopper. The pilot eased through the triple canopy trees. The blades incessantly brushed the tree branches. Choppers usually move forward to increase their lift. This pilot navigated a forced straight up.

I saw what looked like a torque needle buried deep in the red. We couldn’t go up; we couldn’t go down. The pilot found some lift to ascend inches at a time. There was nothing more than pilot experience keeping this ship aloft.

The image of my deceased friend returned to me. I tried to keep my mouth shut. I would try not to scream…if we didn’t  make it. It was stupid thoughts. No one would ever know if I bit my tongue. Dead is dead. A mortician does his best, when The Grim Reaper wins.

The chopper cleared the final canopy, lumbering forward like a whale almost beached. We needed altitude to avoid small arms fire from any number of directions. Slowly, surely the pilot guided us up to cruise altitude. My body relaxed, but my head kept swirling in a canopy of dark memories. 

It was hard avoiding thoughts that I could return home soon, flying at amazing altitudes toward a peaceful place, where friends don’t die daily, to a place where it is safe to think. But for now, I need to concentrate, doing the things that brought me to this day, where I am still alive, still breathing.

Currahhees…we finally left with a duffle bag full of bad memories. The unprocessed load takes a lifetime of unpacking.