3
NEAR THE DSHK EMPLACEMENT, STEBNER LAY down behind a rock and sandbag wall, shaking with cold, his teeth chattering. He took off a boot to check his feet, and his toes were blue with the beginning of frostbite.
Wilmoth came by. “How're you doing?”
“I'm cold,” Stebner replied, hardly able to get the words out.
Wilmoth went away and came back carrying a black fleece jacket. “Here, Stebner,” he told him, throwing him the jacket. “Someone wants you to have this.”
“Who?”
“Don't worry who, just put it on.”
Stebner slipped his right hand through the sleeve, and it came out covered in blood. But he was grateful, and kept it on. He lay down on an evasion map of the valley that was about the same size as a picnic blanket, and he waited for nightfall.
With a pure, even reckless sense of duty, Totten-Lancaster separated himself from the other casualties, as if he did not think he belonged among them. He hobbled to the north side of the crest in the enemy's cooking area to be with Gilliam on his M-240 gun.
Gilliam said, “You know we're going to get home.”
Totten-Lancaster said irritably, “I know that. You don't have to tell me.”
Canon saw him standing on one leg like a flamingo knee-deep in freezing water. He was shivering and pale. In his usual abrupt manner, Canon asked him, “Totten, what in hell are you doing?”
“I'm his AG, sergeant,” he replied, using shorthand for assistant gunner.
“What about your leg?”
“Ummm . . .” He had not been able to feel it for some time.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“A while, sergeant.”
Canon was furious with him. “Bullshit.” He sat Totten-Lancaster down and wrapped his own poncho around his legs for warmth.
Polson was keeping busy staying warm. He had no idea what was going to happen. He half expected to remain on the mountain the whole night. The last he had heard, no more helos were coming to the mountain. Canon asked him to help Wilmoth with the bodies of Chapman and Roberts, who lay untouched where they had fallen. No one had dared to move them. Knowing that eventually they had to be shifted out of sight of the wounded, Wilmoth tied ropes to their legs, and from behind cover he and Polson pulled them to make sure they weren't booby-trapped.
Canon was curious about his friend Marc Anderson. He knew he was dead, of course. He had spoken to him last at Gardez, when he slapped him on the ass and told him to load up, telling him, “I'll see you in a little while.” Cunningham would be able to tell him about his friend's last moments, since he was the medic who had treated him in the helo. Canon asked LaFrenz, “Can I talk to him?”
“Yeah, you should be able to,” he replied.
Canon walked over to Cunningham's litter. He thought, He doesn't look good. He is in the middle of dying. That's not right. He shouted, “Matt, get over here!”
LaFrenz ran over. “He's crashing,” he said.
He and Miller struggled to save the other PJ. They incised his windpipe for a tracheotomy; they could probe his entrance wound with bare fingers, pushing down more Curlex, and feel around exposed nerve endings, muscle, fat, skin, and vessels to reach for the perforated section of liver. But they knew that a liver cannot be clamped off like an artery. With the minutes running down to seconds, with no more blood and empty IVs, without expertise, LaFrenz and Miller watched him slip away. They injected him with morphine. Against all their instincts to do anything rather than nothing, they watched him die. The time was approximately 1800.
His passing focused the emotions on the tragedy of the whole day. Cunningham's death deeply touched the men on the mountain, whether Army or Air Force, SOAR or Ranger or Special Tactics, whether or not they even knew his name or what he looked like. They were all one in this harrowing play. Cunningham had treated anyone who was wounded without regard to their service. His death was felt even more profoundly than the violent, instantaneous deaths of the other men. Cunningham's passing was a loss that did not need to be, in their eyes. It symbolized their sacrifices like none other because it was slow and painful and because Cunningham was someone who helped others in need. Miller thought, He was not supposed to die. A PJ like Cunningham, his team leader, Miller was in a dazed state of grief and shock. He wandered over to Gabe Brown by his radio. He spoke quietly to him, shaking his head sadly, and broke down in tears. He fell to his knees and hugged Brown around his legs, his grief pouring out in waves.