6
BEFORE THE COUNTERATTACK STARTED, LAMEREAUX had been inserting a new IV in Calvert's arm. The sounds of the enemy gunfire shocked him. He thought, One minute you're safe from this threat in the front, and the next you're getting it from the rear. Lamereaux and Cunningham picked up their weapons. Joined by the air mission commander, Tabron, they started to fire down the saddle to protect the casualties any way they could.
Lamereaux yelled, “Hell, we've got to move these patients. We have to get them behind cover.” But he, Cunningham, and Tabron could not lift the litters. They called for help and then picked up their rifles and began shooting, lying on the snow. The shape of the saddle over which they fired offered an awkward shot. They sat up and were shooting down over their boot tops.
With the bullets flying over them from two directions, Calvert and Gant decided to play dead. “Maybe they won't shoot at us,” Calvert said. He turned his face away from the enemy gunfire, but after an instant of anxiety too great to endure, he turned back. He saw the enemy pop up and shoot. He could hear their voices—taunting them, he guessed, though he spoke not a word of Arabic or Pushto. The enemy fighters were less than 100 feet away, and he looked for Lamereaux and Cunningham.
The enemy soldiers were firing RPGs with time fuses set to explode in the air. Lamereaux heard the first RPG before he saw it—coming straight at him. It spluttered over his head and exploded over the helo's tail. Lamereaux told Cunningham, “Man, those things aren't anything. I'm not worried.” But mortars were now coming in around them, too.
The medics had to make a decision. “What the hell,” Lamereaux said. “We'll sit here and shoot it out. I'm not going to leave these guys.”
Cunningham said he wasn't going anywhere, either. He told Lamereaux, “Let's sit here until this is over with.”
Cunningham and Lamereaux shot it out for forty minutes. Oddly enough, Lamereaux did not feel himself to be in danger. He did not feel like he could be shot. As he fired down the saddle he talked to the wounded. He'd started firing with eight magazines in reserve. Now, he was shooting out of his seventh magazine.
Suddenly, two bullets hit a foot in front of him. Their impact chipped snow in his face. He thought, Oh, this is really going to suck!
The enemy had targeted him and Cunningham. Lamereaux turned over and crawled up the hill 4 feet from where he was sitting, hoping that this would take him out of the enemy's sights. He turned over and started shooting again. At that instant, he and Cunningham were both shot in a burst of enemy gunfire.
“You all right?” Lamereaux shouted at Cunningham.
“You all right?” Cunningham asked him. They both groaned in pain.
Lamereaux was hit in the belly. Two rounds had found a space below his body armor. To describe the impact, he used the same sledgehammer analogy as the others who'd been hit. He turned over on his side and curled into a fetal position. A third bullet hit him in the buttocks. So intense was the pain of the stomach wound, he did not notice the third shot. He and Cunningham were out in the open, in fetal positions, moaning. Cunningham had been shot once through the small of his back to the right of his spine through his pelvis; the bullet had shattered his liver. He told Lamereaux, “I think I'm OK.”
Lamereaux was not as certain about himself. He understood the prognosis of abdominal wounds. The other men whom he had treated that day would live; he felt certain of that. He had controlled even Calvert's bleeding. Neither Calvert nor Gant had internal injuries. But as a medic, he knew that there was nothing to be done about internal injuries in the field. He thought, I can't understand it. It's very unlucky. I am going to die. There is just no . . . I'm shot in the belly. His specialized knowledge gave him reason to fear. I am not getting to an OR anytime soon. I am going to die. He was mentally preparing himself. How unfair to my wife and my children. He said a couple of prayers, and then he concentrated on the facts.
He wasn't bleeding out; at least, he did not think so. The pain was paralyzing. In one or two minutes, some feeling returned to his legs and he could move them again. I have to gain the nerve to reach my hand down there to see how bad it is, he told himself. If my hand comes back and it's bad, I have a chance of dying.
He needed several minutes to build up the resolve. He slid his hand below his body armor and turned over on his knees. Any second, he thought, he could be shot again. He pulled his knees higher under himself. The thought of seeing his own blood spilling out on the snow terrified him. The ground was wet. He did not know if he was feeling melting snow or blood or what. He looked between his arms. Only a small spot of blood stained the snow. He thought, That's awesome. That's great. The warm wetness was urine, not blood. The rounds had torn off the top of his bladder. He thought, Well, maybe I've skated it.
Cunningham also was trying to diagnose his injury, probing and feeling and assessing the flow of blood on the snow. He was not bleeding that he could see. Indeed, he saw nothing to cause him serious concern. He and Lamereaux were more worried about the counterattack, with bullets flying around them and over them from two directions.
Matt LaFrenz, who had come in with the second chalk, was up on the peak by the bunkers with Self, trying to find a good firing position, when he heard over the radio, “Medic has been hit!” He ran with his aid bag down the slope at the front of the helo. The bullets were flying past him and impacted on the snow. He was thinking, I am not Sergeant York. A graduate of Vanderbilt University in premed who had grown up in the San Francisco Bay area the son of hippie parents, he was better trained, if not equipped, than all but a few medics in the entire Army. He brought prodigious medical skills to bear on Cunningham, who he believed was bleeding internally. Cunningham was lucid. He told LaFrenz he hurt bad. He was surprised and even angry, and he told him, “This is bullshit. Cannot believe they shot me.”
LaFrenz thought he had controlled Cunningham's bleeding and hooked him up to a bag of Hespan, the same volume expander that Lamereaux had used earlier on Calvert. LaFrenz believed that Cunningham would not bleed out if he was kept still. It was imperative that he not be moved, and yet he was lying in the line of the enemy's fire. He had to be moved. Cunningham was still talking. He asked LaFrenz about his wound, curious about where he was hurt and what it looked like.
Polson and Stebner rushed Dube up to the peak to safety. They ran back down the slope to the helo for Cunningham. Polson told Stebner that he did not have a weapon that worked, and Stebner pointed to a pile of guns by the helo. Polson grabbed what turned out to be Chapman's M-4, with a bullet hole in its pistol grip. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and grabbed a handle on Cunningham's litter.
Stebner looked down at the wounded young Air Force PJ. “Are you ready to go?” he asked Cunningham. “You're priority now. We need to get you up there.”
Cunningham said, “Go over there, there's a little cooler, grab my blood.”
Stebner placed the cooler on the litter between Cunningham's legs and started moving him.
Stebner's nose was bleeding from the altitude, and he was winded and exhausted. He staggered with his end of the litter.
Polson, Vela, and the crew chief, Brian Wilson, rushed down to help him. Halfway up the icy slope, under fire, the frame of the litter snapped. Cunningham fell off and hit the ground hard. His pelvis crunched, and the sound horrified Polson. He apologized and put Cunningham back on the litter.
Moving the five litter casualties took more than an hour. It was now early afternoon, around 1300. The enemy ceased firing. Stebner, Vela, Polson, and Wilson stayed out in the open carrying litters up the slope. Seeing them exposed, the enemy fighters opened fire again. Watching from the peak, Self was amazed that his Rangers and Wilson were not killed.
Lamereaux told LaFrenz, “Tell me what you see. I'm ready for it.”
LaFrenz replied, “You got a couple holes down there, but I don't see any blood.”
“That's great. Give me dressing, and go talk to Jason.”
LaFrenz reported the medical details of the casualties to Self, who relayed the information to Masirah. LaFrenz made it clear that Lamereaux and Cunningham were in category highest—urgent surgical. Self requested a medevac. LaFrenz did not think that Masirah grasped the urgency of the moment, and he took the radio. He stated the realities of their medical needs. He said in plain language that Cunningham and maybe Lamereaux would die if they were not flown out to a forward surgical team immediately.
“Roger, understand,” came the reply.
The wounded helo pilots, Calvert and Gant, knew what Masirah was really saying.
LaFrenz turned and told the wounded, “We know they're coming.”
The pilots said, “They'll come, but not until nightfall.”
Masirah told Self, “We have a seventy-man reinforcement that we are going to push in there for you.”
“We don't need it,” Self replied. “We don't have room for them. It's not going to help us. We just need to get out what we got. What's the possibility of a medevac in here?”
“We're trying to work that out.”
All afternoon the answer would be the same, no matter how Self and LaFrenz phrased their demand. Each time, they were told, “Yeah, we're working to get the package ready for you. Just continue to fight.”
This incensed DePouli, who understood the rational point that Masirah did not want another helo shot up, but his emotional response, hearing the cries of the wounded, overwhelmed him. On the radio, he asked Masirah, “Why? If we don't get them out of here, more guys are going to die.”
“It's not nighttime,” came the reply. “It's a hot LZ. We don't feel safe.”
Canon heard Masirah ask, “Is the LZ cold?” He shouted, “Just bring somebody in here!”
The calls went back and forth. The urgency of their calls created even more confusion. Canon thought, Cunningham and Lamereaux might not see it off the mountain without medevac now. But in the end, the SOAR pilots were right. Nobody was going to leave the peak until after night fell.