Jealousy of Misfortune

Before you all read this, I've noticed that people think I made this up. This is an actual account of what happened to me in Iraq. I was actually there. This isn't fiction. Please keep that in mind.

Jealousy of Misfortune

I took down the information as it crackled over the radio. According to the report a convoy from the 1/508th had been ambushed by an unknown amount of enemy forces and had taken casualties. Medivac was requested, but would not make it due to the enemy presence in the area. The battle captain took control of the radio acknowledging the report and asked for a follow up when possible. The radio chatter died down and remained quiet until several hours later when the final report came over the radio. One man injured and two men dead, the convoy had returned. Just another action packed night, I thought as my shift ended and I headed to bed.

A few days passed by and I found myself on guard duty in the blazing hot Iraq sun. I looked down the road and saw a fellow soldier coming up the way on crutches. As he approached I noticed it was Specialist Sams, one of my buddies from my unit that I had lost contact with over the course of the many months of being in Iraq. The area we operated in was quite large and it was common to not see your soldier buddies for quite a while before running into them again at the make shift chow hall or the temporary Post Exchange. Sams hobbled his way up to me and said hello. He looked horrible. Judging by his face it looked like he hadn't slept in a while. He was dirty as hell and sporting a broken foot. I was soon to discover the differences between Sams's experience and my own.
“Sams, what the hell happened to you man? You look horrible.” I said.
“Man we got ambushed.” he replied.

Just then it all clicked in my head. The report I had taken down several nights before was the same ambush Sams had been in. I hadn't really payed much attention to the names when I was jotting down all the information for the Battle Captain. I didn't even realize that it had been someone I knew out there getting shot up.

“So what happened?” I asked.

Sams began to tell me the story of how they had been out on patrol and had been ambushed while driving at night. According to Sams the shots came from all directions and in an attempt to escape the gunfire the entire convoy sped up and turned off their headlights to decrease their visibility to the enemy. In all the confusion Sams lost sight of the vehicle in front of him and headed left instead of going right. In a panic he kept on driving and then he said he hit something which stopped the vehicle abruptly causing him to fall out and have the vehicle wheel roll back onto his arm pinning him there. He was riding with two other guys. One of them was his executive officer who had been shot through the leg piercing a major artery in his thigh. He had been riding in the passenger seat but somehow got up despite his injuries and walked around the vehicle to free Sams arm from underneath the tire. After being freed Sams realized the extent of the leitenants injury and began first aid applying a bandage to the wound. The wound was too severe however and required a tourniquet. Sams got up to check the vehicle for something to use to tighten the tourniquet and stop the bleeding and found the third passenger, a young private first class, to be dead, shot through the throat. He grabbed the best thing he could find which was a wrench and continued his efforts to stop the bleeding on the XO's leg. His efforts were in vain however for it was a mortal wound and the bleeding could not be stopped with a simple tourniquet. The more Sams tightened the tourniquet the worse it seemed to get. Minutes later the rest of the convoy discovered Sam's vehicle and picked them up for transport back to base. Sams and the XO were loaded into the back of a humvee and rushed back to base. On the ride back the XO died holding Sam's hand in the rear of the vehicle being rushed to the aid station.

I couldn't believe it. That was the craziest story I had ever heard, but it was all true. Sams had become victim to something so awful and horrible yet so intreguing. Sams held up his dirty hands and showed them to me. They looked dirty, but had a red tint to them. It was the leutenants blood. It was even caked up underneath his fingernails. He said he couldn't wash it off and was having a hard time sleeping ever since. The plus side of it all was that he was going to be able to go home and leave this hot awful place behind.

Sams and I exchanged our goodbyes and he hobbled along, off to tell some other soldier the same story before catching a flight home. Sams had become a hero amongst us soldiers in a certain respect, but now he would have to live with that horrible memory for the rest of his life. I couldn't help but have mixed feeling about the situation.

Believe it or not, seeing action in Iraq is rare. You might as well be winning the lottery to get involved in a major skirmish. The enemy attacks in treacherous ways and you never see them fight head on. Most of the attacks are in the form of improvised explosive devices because the enemy cannot amass a force large enough to take on our forces.

I felt sorry for Sams, but also jealous. He had lived up to what a Soldier was supposed to face and believe it or not I wanted that experience, but at the same time I didn't.

Unlike Sams's experience, mine hadn't been so extreme. A few months before the war in Iraq started the Army found out I wasn't just another dumb infantryman. This combination was rare indeed, so they saw it fit to put me in a higher position where my brain would come in handy. I would be working behind the scenes and not doing much grunt work.

When the war broke out in Iraq, we headed out there, and I found myself going out on very few patrols and spending more time on the radio, going out on small security missions as well as guard duty. Any action I saw was usually from mortar and rocket attacks as well as firefights in the middle of the night out on the fenceline from Iraqis trying to penetrate our defences.

This is where the jealously came into play coupled with the double bladed sword. Sams was a hero for the experience he had undergone. He earned a few medals for his actions and suffering, scoring a one way ticket home, but he would never be the same again. He would always remember that night and it would probably haunt his dreams. To this day many soldiers come back suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome from extreme experiences. I know Sams would probably be one of them. Yet, I still was jealous. I wanted what he had. I wanted that hero status he had gained. The story and the memory. I didn't neccessarily want his exact experience I just wanted to feel more like a true Soldier.

After my tour in Iraq I arrived home to welcoming arms of friends and family. Everyone was happy I came out unharmed. They noticed I was the same old Marco I had always been despite being worried while I was gone. A bit older, wiser, and in better shape, but still Marco. Over time the people around me no longer thought it was a big deal that I had gone to war and the novelty wore off. After a while it started feeling like I had never been to Iraq in the first place, I ended up blocking it all out. I can almost guarantee Sams will never forget his experience and his friends, family and anyone else who hears his story will not forget. Sams will forever be a hero and I will be forgotten.

The more I think about it the more I realize maybe taking the easy route isn't so bad. Sure Sams's gets the war hero status, but it wasn't by choice. He also had to endure one of the worst experiences of his life. Why should I be jealous of the worst experience of someone's life? Mine was just as unique, but in a different way. Maybe its the need to feel more like a hero, or maybe I should just be grateful it wasn't me at all.