Blood and Bone

It happened shortly after 7am, almost at the moment of my platoon's arrival at the Transload site. We pulled up in the trucks and heard it – two explosions, in quick succession – and saw the darkly curling smoke rising from outside the gate. I went with six soldiers to see what had happened. We drove up to the gate from the inside, unlocked it, and went outside. We locked and loaded our weapons and went outside.

There were two Iraqis who had been wounded. That was what you saw first, these two Iraqis slumped up against the concrete barriers that form a wall around the site itself – bleeding. Blood, real blood, does not look like blood in movies. It isn't all one color, for one things…there are darker bits where it begins to dry, and deep red runnels that trickle down a face and drip off the chin. It drips like a leaky faucet. Three of my soldiers are combat lifesaver qualified – they began to work on these two wounded. One had a deep head wound, moving and speaking in a drifting, distant way that made us instantly suspect a concussion. The other had lacerations to his scalp, his arms, his calves…blood dripped into his eyes and made wet tracks in the dust on his bare feet. These two had been dragged to this location by the rest of the crowd. The explosion had happened 50 meters farther up the road.

I left my three soldiers with the Iraqis and went up the road to see the site of the explosion. There was an infantry unit already there, and their medic was talking care of yet one more wounded person, who I never saw – by the time I got up there, they had already trundled him into the back of a vehicle and taken him to the hospital. I turned the corner of the concrete wall and saw it – a truck, completely blown out by the force of whatever explosives it had been loaded with, with another truck behind it, on fire.

The infantry unit's platoon leader came up to me and gave me a status report – two dead, one wounded. "Three wounded," I said, and I pointed back towards the gate. "There are two over there." I could see over his shoulder one of the dead Iraqis. He was lying on a stretcher with his arms at his sides and blood on his face. He didn't look like he was sleeping. "Listen," the lieutenant said, lowering his voice. "Do you have something I can cover him with?" We were already starting to generate a crowd.

"Where is the second body?" I asked. He pointed behind me. You might have missed him at first, if you weren't looking. All you could see of him was his arm, slung over the side of one of the cargo trucks – he'd obviously been sitting in the back with the cargo when the explosion had gone off. "We'll have to move him." I said. "Well, they won't do it," the other lieutenant said, meaning the Iraqis. "They say half of his head is gone."

I got the rest of my platoon out there and had them isolate and search the drivers of the trucks from their vehicles, then search the vehicles themselves. They moved the two casualties to the street, waiting for a vehicle to arrive that could take them to the hospital. The translator told us they didn't want to go to the American hospital. "It's free." I said. Then they wanted to go.

We took a stretcher and went to the vehicle with the dead body. Two of my soldiers climbed into the back with him, and grabbed him by the shoulders to roll him over. "Oh gross," one said. "His brain just fell out." We rolled him out of the truck and onto the stretcher. He was very fat and very heavy. It took four of us to carry him. We laid him by the other body, and then rolled him off the stretcher, onto the ground. We needed it to carry one of the wounded, whose leg had been hurt so he couldn't walk. There were brains on the stretcher, and a lot of blood. The infantry medic looked at the stretcher and shrugged. "He can't walk, so he won't complain."

A body without a face does not look like a person. You look at it, and you think to yourself, something isn't quite right here, but your brain won't let you see at first what it is – then you realize that the dead guy is missing the top half of his head, torn off neatly above the eyebrows. One eye had popped out of its socket and lay on his cheek – the skin around the wound looked rubbery and fake, like a Halloween mask. "We're bringing someone over to identify him, his family is here," said the infantry lieutenant. "We need to cover his head first," I said. "His family will freak out if they see him like this." I looked at the medic, and he looked at me. He shook his head. Finally I asked him for a pair of gloves. I took the body's head, and I wrapped the top part in cloth so you couldn't see where it was missing. He looked like he was wearing a turban. Except for the eye. I couldn't do anything about the eye.

We brought the family over – brothers of the two dead Iraqis. They lifted the sheets and started to cry, horrible gut-wrenching tears and I remember thinking, "Wow, are they overacting," as if it was a movie, or a TV show. You always see people on CSI or Law & Order identifying victims and sobbing, screaming, shouting, saying no, no, no and in real life, I guess that's how it actually is, too. We put the bodies into body bags, which are now called Containers for Human Remains in Army speak, because I suppose that sounds less upsetting, and loaded them into cars the family brought. Once we'd taken pictures of the bodies, once we'd gone through their pockets and gawked at the man with half a head, there was nothing left for us to do, so we didn't need the bodies anymore. They were no longer evidence.

After the bodies were gone, the explosive ordnance disposal team showed up and did their thing – we stood around guarding the Iraqi drivers while the team made sure the site was secure. Then we let the drivers go back to their trucks, and we went back inside the Transload site, and opened the gate.

My soldiers still had blood on their hands and on their uniforms, and we had to open the gate, we had to let the vendors in to offload their cargo, so they could get paid, so the Army could get paid, so everyone could get paid…including, I guess, us.

Charlie Mike, motherfuckers.