Face That Screamed War's Pain Looks Back, 7 Hard Years Later

[Victor_c3]

16. I really wished that you wouldn't have posted that

I read this thread before I went to work today and it really hit a cord with me. Like was mentioned above, I knew exactly what photo was being discussed without even having to click on the link.

I really wished that you wouldn't have posted that. It is a remarkable picture, but it is VERY tough for me to look at. By the way, I'm not looking for any type of apology. I'm just saying...

Look at the blood on the Soldiers boot and on the ground. I can't even look at the girl's face.

If/when (unfortunately) we approach another war in the future, we need to get this picture out and talk about the true cost of war as much as we can in public. I found this figure a few weeks back. In the 20th century the ratio of civilians to Soldiers killed in war is 10:1. (I can find the source if anyone wants to reference it).

While I'm typing this I'm also running around my house making my two daughters dinner. My oldest daughter (she is 4) is telling me what she wants to eat for dinner and I just look at her and I really have a hard time keeping it together.

I was an Infantry Platoon Leader in Iraq from Feb 2004 through March 2005. On 20 June 2004 I had to escort my boss and provide security for a weekly meeting he had with local Iraqi town leadership. We were in the outskirts of Baqubah, just a few miles north of Diyala University when an IED on the west side of the road blew up on the third vehicle in my patrol (we patrolled with a minimum of four HMMWVs and 12 people - more depending on the mission we were doing for the day). The vehicle was messed up, but nobody was hurt. I was in the lead HMMWV and my gunner identified who he thought was the trigger man. The guy stood up, ran, then ducked behind a sand berm and the IED blew up. After the explosion, the guy stood up to run and my gunner cut him down with machine gun fire. Some other guy in my rear HMMWV got out and open fire one someone else.

Immediately after all vehicles stopped, I dismounted and ran to the disabled vehicle. I saw nobody was hurt. My boss (the company commander) was dealing with our headquarters and he called for a vehicle recovery and for the QRF (quick reaction force, i.e. backup) to launched immediately. Given the distance, it'd be about 30 minutes until they arrived. Since we were only running the minimum number of people at the time, I grabbed my platoon medic, my M249 (light machine gun) gunner and my 1SG and the four of us walked on foot in the area surrounding where we fired on what we suspected was enemy.

The area was kind of bare dirt with a little bit of grass and a few large trees (not what you really picture when you think of Iraq). There were a few square cinder block/concrete houses about 500 meters away and people were out and about doing their daily business. We were stopped on the side of a four lane road. About 200 meters off of the road I came across a guy kind of in a little sunken hole in the ground by a tree. He had a beard, was wearing what I called a white man-dress, unarmed, and covered in blood. He was just rolling on the ground and scrunched up quietly bleeding to death. I left my medic and M249 gunner there and I continued with my 1SG towards group of three guys I saw sitting on a log about 50 meters away.

There were two men in the 20s-30s and a 6 year old boy sitting down. As I got closer to their position I saw that there was a boy that I'd guess was 8-10 years old lying face down in the dirt. There wasn't much blood, but he had a pretty formidable hole in his lower back. I yelled for my medic and told him to let the other guy die. He ran over and began to apply first aid to the kid. We turned him over and saw that he was still alive. His breathes were shallow and he had a very blank look on his face We tore off his shirt and found that he had a small entrance wound in the top left portion of his chest. It was obvious that he had what we would call a "sucking chest wound" in which the lung is punctured and you become unable to breath. He was cold and sweaty and very responsive.

The two guys sitting on the log were the kid's uncles. They were holding a little tuxedo wrapped in a plastic bag and they were on their way to a wedding. The boy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't know why I did this, but I had the guys zip-tied (hand cuffed with plastic zip ties) [I'm yelling out loud to myself while I'm typing this]. I have no idea why I thought they were dangerous or a threat. I really regret the way I treated the adults. I should have brought them over to hold the boy's hand and to comfort him.

The little boy's house was just a few hundred meters away and the boy's father and mother saw that something was up and came running to my position. My translator (who was a local Iraqi civilian) came running to my position and told me that the father wanted the mother to be kept away from the boy who was shot. The father had missing teeth, was wearing a white man-dress and had a light beard. He looked completely harmless and was very distraught. I pushed the mother back (on the father's request). She had some sort of crazy blue tattoo on hear forehead (I don't remember exactly what it was). A crowd began to gather about 100 meters in the distance and I had one of my HMMWVs come to our position to provide a little bit of over watch on out position. The crowd saw our weapons and gave us space.

When we first saw that a little boy was shot we immediately called for helicopter MEDIVAC. While we were waiting for the helicopter, my medic was trying in vain to get an IV started on the kid. As you go into shock, your veins and arteries constrict and they become harder to find and it become very hard to start and IV - which is a vital first step in applying first aid. We weren't able to get an IV started on the kid. The guy who we first found finally stopped breathing and died and the helicopter MEDIVAC showed up after about 15 minutes to pick up the kid.

About that time the QRF arrived on the scene and was working on recovering the the damaged vehicle.

I was told that the kid was going to Ballad (a large air base about 40 minutes from where we were) and, the kid's father started to cry. He hugged me and kissed me on the cheek when he found out that he was going to an American hospital. I felt so ashamed.

The kid was cold and sweaty and looked half-dead when MEDIVAC arrived. I didn't even mention how the boys little brother stood by his older brother who was shot and held his hand why we tried to give him first aid. I don't know what happened to the kid and I don't know if he even lived.

I came to my senses and cut the zip-ties off of the two uncles. Again, I don't know why I cuffed them.

After the whole incident was over and the kid was taken away, We drove back home and pigged out on a huge lunch. The local Iraqi translator who we had with us that day kept saying "he was just a boy" and was really shaken up by the event. At the time, I was mostly numb to it and it didn't bother me. Since I got home from Iraq and since I've had kids, the memories and the images have come to really haunt me. So much so that when I play with my own children (who are 2 and 4 years old) that I frequently have flashes of what I saw that day and I have a hard time interacting with my own kids. I couldn't imagine losing my kids to the errant actions of some foreign Soldiers like that dad in Iraq lost his son to.

I hope this whole post makes sense. In the course of writing it I downed 3 beers and my two kids are going crazy running around the house while I'm mentally back in Iraq. They just want to play while I'm on the verge of a meltdown.

I almost don't even want to post this, but I hope someone can pull something worth reading out of it.