Staff Sergeant Ron Shurer packed and repacked his medical kit.
He had more than enough bandages, syringes, scissors, tourniquets, morphine, and a portable intravenous system, or IV, with lifesaving fluids to treat the wounded. While every team member carried a first-aid kit with bandages, tourniquet, and morphine-filled needles, known as syrettes, to ease the pain, it was nothing like his. As the team medic, it was Shurer’s responsibility to keep soldiers alive until a medevac arrived to whisk them away to a field hospital. It was an awesome responsibility, and as unlikely as it was where they were headed, Shurer hoped he wouldn’t have to use his skills on this operation.
Still, as he reviewed his kit, he knew he had to pare it down. Carrying his gear up a mountain would be difficult enough under normal circumstances. Whatever he didn’t absolutely need had to go. He decided against taking a Skedco—a heavy-duty fold-up stretcher—because it weighed twenty-five pounds. Instead, he took a poleless litter—a lightweight fold-up stretcher made of cloth. For a moment Shurer thought about tossing out a green tubular nylon rope. He didn’t think they would need it. But Ford required everyone to carry it. He didn’t know why. It seemed pretty useless in the field.
Shurer had requested this role. Nothing was more important—and challenging—than taking care of wounded soldiers in the field. It took more than a year of intense training to become a Special Forces medic, and medics usually had to perform their duties in desolate, dangerous areas, where medical help wasn’t readily available. It was a pressure-filled job. No doubt. But it was one that Shurer embraced.
When he enlisted in 2002, Shurer had told the recruiter he wanted to be a medic. Not just any medic, but Special Forces. He knew Special Forces teams were among the Army’s most specialized combat forces, and the medical sergeant was a critical member of the team. They were considered the finest first-response/trauma medical technicians in the military. Though their training emphasized trauma medicine, they also had to have a working knowledge of dentistry, veterinary care, public sanitation, water quality, and optometry.
When they were not in the field, their duties included maintaining medical equipment and supplies, and providing examination and care to detachment members. They also ordered, stored, cataloged, and safeguarded medical supplies.
It was a big workload and every ODA usually had two medics. But on this mission, Shurer was the only one. The other medic had been sent home a month earlier after he was injured in a truck crash. If Shurer’s team was caught in a firefight, this might pose a problem. If too many soldiers were wounded, would a single medic be able to take care of them all? And what happened if he was hit? Then who would take care of the wounded? These were more than hypothetical questions, and not unreasonable ones. In firefights, shit happens. Always does. That’s why teams prepared and planned for the worst. But in this case, it seemed that the commanders were being overly optimistic in thinking that a second medic wouldn’t be necessary.
When Shurer studied a mission, he analyzed every possible scenario to make sure he had everything covered. He learned that in the Green Berets, and it was an extension of his major in college: economics. Explore every aspect of a deal so you know what you’re getting into. One mistake could cost you your business, or an investor millions of dollars. Here, though, the stakes were higher.
He understood the way the military worked because he was a military brat. By the time he was three years old, he had lived in Alaska, Idaho, Illinois, and the state of Washington.
His parents met while they were in the Air Force. After they were married, his mother left the military to raise Shurer, who was an only child. They settled in a small community about fifteen miles south of Tacoma. His father, Ron Shurer Sr., worked in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at McChord Air Force Base. Tacoma was Washington’s third largest city, with approximately 203,400 residents, but it seemed like everyone there had a military connection.
With no siblings, Shurer spent a lot of time by himself. He would run and cycle—he would later compete in triathlons—and spent a lot of time outdoors in the shadow of Mount Rainier. He went to Rogers High School, and when he graduated, he attended Washington State University, a school with twenty-five thousand students in nearby Pullman, Washington.
As he was getting ready to graduate, he thought about joining the Marines. He even enlisted and was accepted to officer candidate school in August 2001. But at the last minute, he was rejected when the medical board discovered that he had pancreatitis. There were only three ways to get it: trauma, diabetes, or alcoholism. He told the board it was from an injury—a car smashed into his bicycle in 1995. But in the pre-9/11 mentality, the board didn’t want to take a risk.
Disappointed, he applied and was accepted in Washington State University’s master’s program in economics. But he never stopped thinking about the military, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Shurer finished one year of graduate school and, in August 2002, enlisted in the Army, a move that surprised his parents. Growing up, he had model airplanes and played war games in his backyard, but it wasn’t until later in life that he thought about the military as a career option.
His parents tried to persuade him to join the Air Force. The United States was engaged in one war in Afghanistan, and a conflict with Iraq loomed on the horizon. The Air Force was a safer choice. But Shurer wanted to be a medic, and if he was going to do that, it made sense to join the Army. Its soldiers were on the front lines in the War on Terror. He could use his skills to help save wounded soldiers. So Shurer enlisted in Spokane in 2002. He turned twenty-four while he was in basic training.
When he enlisted, a recruiter asked him if he ever thought about joining Special Forces. Shurer was the perfect candidate. He was athletic and smart. He asked if they could guarantee that he would become a medic. They said no. So he stayed in the Regular Army and trained to be a medic.
After basic training, he decided to take matters into his own hands. On his first day with his new unit, he told his sergeant he was going to try out for Special Forces because he wanted to be around a “different group of people.” Not that the soldiers in his new unit were slackers. It was just that they didn’t have the same mentality as Special Forces.
So Shurer went to Selection. It was brutal, much harder than he thought, but he became friends with Seth Howard, and they would later serve together in ODA 3336. In Selection, Shurer, like all the candidates, endured three weeks of hell. There were times when he wondered why he was doing it. But that’s when his stubbornness kicked in. He told himself over and over: I’m not going to quit. Keep going.
He did keep going and was offered a position as a medic. And that was when Shurer’s real training started. He spent a year in the medic program, and it covered everything from treating gunshot wounds to veterinary medicine. He did an internship in an emergency room and completed a nationally accredited paramedic program.
The goal was to get the soldiers as much experience as possible and give them the confidence to treat everything from severe wounds to an Afghan villager’s cough.
It was just the kind of training Shurer was looking for. He threw himself into it and excelled. After Special Forces training, he joined ODA 3336 in June 2006. He had done everything he had set out to do in the military, but he was lonely.
His girlfriend had broken up with him when he decided to join the Army. At the time, they had been going out for a year and a half. They reunited briefly, but they kept fighting, and after Shurer had been in the Army for six months, they broke up for good.
Shurer wanted someone to share his life, but he hadn’t met anyone while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. So he turned to eHarmony, an online dating service. That’s where he met Miranda Lantz.
She was a graduate student at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, about five hours north of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Originally from West Virginia, Miranda had graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Their first date, he drove up to Harrisonburg and they went to the movies to see The Incredibles—an animated film about a family of superheroes. Shurer was quiet and shy, and had just come out of a bad relationship. Miranda was supportive. It was a long-distance relationship, but one that they both wanted to pursue.
When he found out he was being deployed to Afghanistan in August 2006, he asked her to marry him. She said yes—even though there was some apprehension about Shurer being in the military.
About six months before she and Shurer met, Miranda’s brother-in-law died in Iraq. She definitely knew what she was getting into with Shurer. Soldiers always face danger during a deployment. But Special Forces soldiers seemed to always be in the thick of things. He told her not to worry. He assured her that his job was to save lives. He wouldn’t be in danger.
And during his first tour with ODA 3336, he hardly saw action at all. His team mostly trained Afghan National Police. But it was a real eye-opening experience. He was surrounded by natural beauty. Ice-capped mountains and deep valleys and crystal-clear, clean, fast-flowing rivers and gorges. But he was shocked to see the abject poverty. The Afghans didn’t have paved roads and people lived in mud huts. No one had money. The way of life—with bartering and using donkeys for transportation—probably hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. The only difference was the technology. Even though they had few material possessions, many people owned cell phones. And they were quick to use them to call tribal leaders to settle disputes over money, land, or with American troops. As a medic, Shurer provided health care services to the people—shots and examinations. He also was responsible for training the Afghan police medics.
At times, it could be frustrating. Shurer was a no-nonsense soldier. He expected everyone to train like him. Stay long, until you get it. No excuses. And he was patient as long as people were trying. He would stay late and explain concepts and techniques. But he found that he had no patience for the Afghans who didn’t take their training seriously. He would snap at them. By the time his deployment was over, he was glad to go home. His wife was pregnant with their first child.
His second deployment with the team was vastly different. Ford was their new team sergeant, and he was strict, a disciplinarian with an aggressive philosophy. Shurer liked Ford and his approach. He toughened up the team. No doubt about it. There were no more cliques. Everyone worked together for the benefit of the team. It was all about the unit—something that had been missing during his first deployment. It seemed that his friends during the first mission—Howard, Morales, Wurzbach, and Behr—all respected the new team sergeant. Ford worked them hard because he wanted them to be prepared for every obstacle they could possibly encounter in the field.
And so now, sitting on the helicopter headed to the Shok Valley, Shurer was confident his team was ready. There was nothing his team couldn’t handle, he thought. He just hoped he had enough supplies—and enough time to treat everyone—if the team hit a shitstorm.