Paratus Protection

GRAPHIC PICTURES FOLLOW
We have all heard the saying “it can happen when you least expect it.” That’s especially true here in Iraq. As the violence rages I am constantly reminded of how precious each moment is. Not in some sappy greeting-card kind of way. But in a way that seems to be branded on my soul by the searing heat of the reality of war.

This time it came in the form of an attack that involved two of my men. There is nothing poetic about how it occurred. No heroics. Not even much to the story.

I sat and thought about what had happened and how I could share the experience. But how do I share something so random? The details are short, simple and plain. Two of my men were stopping to buy cigarettes when two rockets slammed into the sidewalk where they were. One of the men was nearly untouched. The other had his eyes blown out of their sockets. The swollen tissues and caked blood was all that held them from dangling on his cheeks.

Some have said that writing about what I see may be “cathartic.” It isn’t. The feelings of helplessness that day will never go away. How do you help a man that you have trained with and worked with daily for months, when you know that pulling the shrapnel embedded in his eye would be nothing short of torture?

(Pictures by Marshall Young/Paratus Protection)

We could barely give him enough medicine because he was in such a state of shock we would have had to clear an airway and breathe for him just to relieve it.

Mind you all of this has to take place in the back seat of an SUV. The first of the three hospitals we took him to had not so much as enough tape to hold down the IV catheter put in his arm.

By the time we reached the final hospital his eye had fully migrated from the socket and stared blankly up and to the right. His iris had turned grey from the pressure and drying fluid. Even as I write this the bile starts to rise in my throat.

How did it happen? A piece of shrapnel entered into his left temple and traveled though to his right eye socket. The shard of metal then struck a bone and ricocheted out his right eye. His skull was fractured in several places and the metal was left protruding from his right eye.

After my medic and I worked on him for hours, even while he was at the hospital we finally left, leaving two men with him.

I sat for the past few days thinking about this incident. The true feelings I have about this cannot be written down in a way that would do them justice. It will have to suffice to know that this man was blinded by another man for nothing more than a political statement that was lost in the smoke and screams of that day. It was lost and buried with the dozens who died on that sidewalk.