TWO DAYS AFTER what would become known as the Battle of the Black Sea, I walked up to find Matt Rierson standing with Gary outside the hangar near a Conex. Matt was the Delta sergeant who led the successful assault on the target building that was the whole reason for our October 3 operation. Many of the casualties had already been medevaced out, some to Germany, some straight home. Those of us who remained sweated under a merciless Somali sun that bore down on our heads as if it meant to burn the rest of us out of the country.
I propped one boot up on a sandbag, part of a bunker fortifying the Conex so we could use it as a shelter during mortar attacks. I looked at Matt and could see in his eyes that his heart was as broken as mine. Delta had lost so many: Shughart and Gordon. Griz. Dan Busch. Earl Fillmore. Brad Hallings was alive but had lost a leg. Matt and I briefly held each other’s gaze and the thought we shared in that moment was, “What do we say? What can we say?”
I had just opened my mouth to speak when a massive explosion shook the ground. The world tilted sideways as I was knocked to the pavement.
I heard Gary, in agony: “My legs! My legs!”
I struggled to my feet and saw Matt lying on the concrete. His skull was split and his eyes were closed. I saw brain matter on the pavement. To his right, I saw Gary writhing on the ground, bright arterial blood pulsing out from beneath him, forming a rapidly spreading pool.
“Find Doc Marsh!” I yelled.
Boots pounded, people running toward us. Another explosion rocked the compound. Two soldiers grabbed me and yanked me over the sandbag bunker into the Conex. One of them accidentally stepped on my right boot, and searing pain shot up through my leg. Until then, I didn’t know I’d been hit. The Conex echoed with the muffled thuds of two more mortar rounds.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. I scrambled out of the bunker. Gary was still lying on the ground, now gritting his teeth against consuming pain. I saw one of the 160th pilots on the ground beside him. He had his hand buried in Gary’s thigh up to his wrist, trying to pinch off whichever vessel was steadily pumping blood out onto the pavement.
“Find Doc Marsh!” I yelled again. “Find Rob Marsh!”
Medics ran up with a pair of litters and laid them on the ground. “Sir, we need you to get on here and let us take you for treatment,” one of them said to me urgently.
As more medics encircled Gary, I stared at Matt. Only two days before he had risked himself to save others in one of the most lopsided battles in American history. He had lived through that. Only moments ago, I was looking at the life in his eyes. How could he be gone?
“I’m fine,” I said numbly, waving the medics off. “I’ll walk over.”
But when I tried to walk, I lurched badly, new pain lancing through my calf and thigh. Shrapnel, I thought, realizing at the same time that my foot was in worse shape than I’d thought. I gave up and lay down on one of the litters. And when I looked over at the litter next to me, I was shocked to see the man lying on it was Rob Marsh.
His face had already gone grey. From his waist to his thighs, his fatigues were soaked in blood. I hadn’t even known he was near when the mortars hit.
Not him, too, I thought. Not him. I wasn’t sure how my faith would hold up if God let this African hellhole rob us of another single soul.
Medics hoisted the litters and rushed us over to the same M.A.S.H. tent where I had watched the Air Force medical teams sort out living from dead two days earlier. Inside, they placed me on a gurney and Rob right next to me, on a gurney to my left. A medical team worked furiously on him, cutting away his uniform, inserting IVs, attaching lines to monitor his blood pressure and pulse.
I reached over and grabbed Rob’s hand. It was covered in blood. Blood soaked the gurney, dripped on the floor. “Hold on, Rob. You’re gonna make it,” I said.
Slowly, he turned his head and looked at me. His pupils had dilated to tiny dark holes. His face was vividly white.
A doctor explored the wound in Rob’s belly. “Looks like the renal artery’s been severed.” The doctor barked instructions. Medics ran up holding more IV bags. Instruments flashed in the low-hanging light.
Squeezing Rob’s hand, I began to pray silently, Lord, spare this man’s life.
The coppery smell of blood hung in the tent.
Don’t let this man die, God. For his family’s sake, spare him.
“His pressure’s dropping,” a nurse said. “Ninety over fifty.”
The portable monitor hung on a pole between the gurneys. I could see the red numbers ticking lower, lower.
“Fight, Rob!” I stared at him intensely, still squeezing his hand. His eyes were closed now. “Don’t give up.”
God, spare this man. Save his life. I ask it in Jesus’s name.
“Seventy over forty and falling. Pulse forty.” The nurse looked at me. “Sir, let go of his hand.”
“Hold on, Rob! You’re going to make it.”
“Fifty over thirty, falling rapidly. Pulse is thirty. Sir, please let go of his hand.”
I ask you in the name of Jesus to save him. Do not let this man die.
The nurse reached down to pry my fingers away, but I hung on desperately, willing Rob to hold on. Somehow, I thought that if I didn’t let go, if I just prayed hard enough, God wouldn’t take this good man with all the rest.
“Pulse twenty, pressure’s bottoming out!”
At that moment, Rob opened his eyes wide and stared into mine, his pupils only pinpoints. “Tell Barbara I love her,” he whispered.
Then Rob Marsh’s eyes rolled back in his head.