It was Walding’s turn to leave—and it was just in time.
The situation was grave. Walding knew it. All you had to do was count the wounded: Behr, Morales, and Ford. Rhyner was grazed. Rounds had bounced off Shurer and Walton’s helmets. CK was dead. Walding wondered who else was injured. The reality was that no one was safe. No one. And now he himself was fading fast. He could feel it. His body was shutting down.
In retrospect, Walding should have seen it coming. From jumping out of a hovering helicopter and landing hard in a rock-filled wadi to falling into an ice-cold river to scaling a steep mountain that was reminiscent of the Rangers’ famed climb to take Pointe du Hoc during the D-Day invasion.
Nothing had been easy. Walding’s hands were cut and bleeding from the climb. But he looked back with pride. He had reached the objective with his team. He and Sanders were so close to the village that they could almost reach out and touch the first building in the compound. But then the shooting started and everything changed.
Sanders was the one who told Walding they were leaving. He explained that he’d found a way to get everyone off the mountain. It was risky—there were steep drops along the way. But it was much riskier staying on the mountain. Sooner or later, they could get overrun. Despite heavy bombing, the insurgents hadn’t gone away.
“Are we going to make it?” Walding asked.
No one had the answer.
But now, on this small patch of rock, he was optimistic. Morales had made it to the bottom, right? How dangerous could it be?
In preparation, Shurer ran to Walding and began checking his tourniquet. Although Walding was only fifteen feet away, it was the first time the medic had examined him. The tourniquet was a mess. It seemed that the wound was bleeding more now than at any point since he was shot. Shurer adjusted the tourniquet to try to stop the bleeding.
“We have to move, John,” the medic said.
Walding’s eyes were closing. He was fighting so hard to stay alert. He was blacking out.
“John, we have to move.”
Walding nodded weakly.
It was Shurer’s job to take care of Walding. One of the terps, Blade, and a commando, ran over to Shurer to help.
“We have to get you down the hill,” Shurer told Walding.
“I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“No, you have to do this. You have to get up.”
The battle was raging. While planes had been bombing the compounds, insurgents were still firing a steady barrage of rounds and RPGs at the soldiers. It seemed that it was getting worse, not better, and if they stayed where they were any longer, no one would get out alive.
“I need you to listen to me,” Shurer said sternly to Walding. “I need you to hold your leg and get up.”
But Walding refused to move. Shurer believed that the image of his nearly severed leg was just getting into his head.
“I can’t do it,” Walding said.
“Focus,” Shurer shouted at him. “Focus. You can do it.”
Walding finally nodded his head yes. He would do it. The soldiers lifted him and began moving him toward the edge of the cliff. He was extremely weak but he tried his best.
Moving Walding was a little different from moving Morales. Morales had tried his hardest to help. He would slide and crawl. Walding, however, couldn’t move at all. He was probably in shock and incredibly weak from losing so much blood. So when the soldiers reached the edge of a berm, one man would lower Walding down to another. It went on like that until they came to a drop-off that was too wide to lower him by hand. They were stuck.
But then Shurer had an idea. He removed a green nylon cord from the cargo pocket on his pants—the one Ford had forced the entire team to carry—and wrapped it underneath Walding’s arms. Then the soldiers lowered Walding to the next rock. Shurer had questioned why they had to carry the chord. He didn’t think they would ever need it. But if he hadn’t had it now, there’d have been no way they could safely lower Walding.
It took a half hour or so, but Walding was finally at the bottom of the cliff. The soldiers waiting there moved him to the casualty collection point, where he was placed on stretcher near Morales. He heard Morales say something to him, but he couldn’t answer. He was too feeble.
It was easier for him just to close his eyes.