COP to the FOB.
“I hate this place,” Cummings wrote in a note later that day. “I hate the way it smells, I hate the way it looks, I hate the way these people don’t care about freedom, I hate that human beings want to kill one another for nothing.”
Kauzlarich wrote some things down, too, for another memorial speech.
“The thought that the bullet has already been fired at each of us and it is only a matter of time when it will hit, brings comfort to some and terror to others,” he wrote. His intention was to be symbolic rather than literal, to say that as soon as someone is born he is eventually going to die, including poor Craig, whose “courage in the face of danger, his commitment to the task at hand, and his loyalty to his comrades was demonstrated daily and ultimately on the morning of last Monday, 25 June 2007, in the Baghdad suburb of Riassa, when his bullet hit, and took him from our world into the next.”
He was proud of what he wrote, but when he said it out loud at Craig’s memorial service to a chapel filled with soldiers increasingly on edge, it creeped a lot of them out.
The bullet has already been fired.
Only a matter of time.
On June 27, Kauzlarich was again on PEACE 106 FM.
“Here’s something I find personally illogical,” he said to Izzy, to Mohammed, to whoever might be listening to their radios instead of out among the trash piles hiding EFPs.
“On the east side of the river, virtually everyone, the majority of the people, are Shi’a.
“The Jaish al Mahdi is a Shi’a-based militia.
“The Coalition Forces on this side of the river are helping all Iraqi people, but most of those are Shi’a.
“So what makes no sense is why is a Shi’a-based militia trying to destroy the Coalition Forces that are trying to aid the Shi’a people?”
On June 28, at 6:50 a.m., another EFP hit another convoy of soldiers headed from a COP to Rustamiyah for rest and relaxation, and when reports came over the radio that Private First Class Michael Dunn had lost an arm, Sergeant William Crow had lost an arm and leg, and Ricky Taylor was calling into headquarters and saying, “This is bad. I hear them screaming in the background,” Cummings went down to the aid station, arriving just after Dunn had been medevac’d out by helicopter.
“So I walked in, and the first table to the right is where Dunn was, and blood was still going into the drain there,” Cummings would say afterward. “What I remember is, I remember the blood, and I remember how many people were there. There’s a tape line that you’re supposed to stay behind, and everybody was standing behind that line. And at the last table, that’s the table that Sergeant Crow was on, and when I came up, they said, ‘Okay, CPR again,’ and the medics were CPR’ing his chest, and I was trying to look to get status, to see if I could tell how bad off he was, and he was very gray, so I knew it was bad. And I looked over, and I could see that his leg was gone about mid-thigh. You know, you could see the bone, and you could see the flesh, just ripped out, hanging there. I saw he had a tourniquet on him, couldn’t really see his arm. I knew his arm was messed up. It was kind of covered by the docs, and then I saw Doc Brock was there; Doc De La Garza, Al, was there; one of our medics was doing the bag; one of our medics was doing CPR.
“It was just an ugly scene,” he continued. “It was hard to watch. You know how you have those moments where you remember where you were? I remember where I was in ninth grade when the Challenger blew up. I was walking between fifth and sixth period, and they made the announcement. I remember where I was when President Reagan was shot. I was by Glenn Norwicki’s house, walking up the street. And it’ll be one of those things. I’ll know where I was when Sergeant Crow, at the moment— because Doc De La Garza had a machine; I’m assuming it was an EKG machine, and I’m sure he had leads onto his
“I hate this place,” Cummings wrote in a note later that day. “I hate the way it smells, I hate the way it looks, I hate the way these people don’t care about freedom, I hate that human beings want to kill one another for nothing.”
Kauzlarich wrote some things down, too, for another memorial speech.
“The thought that the bullet has already been fired at each of us and it is only a matter of time when it will hit, brings comfort to some and terror to others,” he wrote. His intention was to be symbolic rather than literal, to say that as soon as someone is born he is eventually going to die, including poor Craig, whose “courage in the face of danger, his commitment to the task at hand, and his loyalty to his comrades was demonstrated daily and ultimately on the morning of last Monday, 25 June 2007, in the Baghdad suburb of Riassa, when his bullet hit, and took him from our world into the next.”
He was proud of what he wrote, but when he said it out loud at Craig’s memorial service to a chapel filled with soldiers increasingly on edge, it creeped a lot of them out.
The bullet has already been fired.
Only a matter of time.
On June 27, Kauzlarich was again on PEACE 106 FM.
“Here’s something I find personally illogical,” he said to Izzy, to Mohammed, to whoever might be listening to their radios instead of out among the trash piles hiding EFPs.
“On the east side of the river, virtually everyone, the majority of the people, are Shi’a.
“The Jaish al Mahdi is a Shi’a-based militia.
“The Coalition Forces on this side of the river are helping all Iraqi people, but most of those are Shi’a.
“So what makes no sense is why is a Shi’a-based militia trying to destroy the Coalition Forces that are trying to aid the Shi’a people?”
On June 28, at 6:50 a.m., another EFP hit another convoy of soldiers headed from a COP to Rustamiyah for rest and relaxation, and when reports came over the radio that Private First Class Michael Dunn had lost an arm, Sergeant William Crow had lost an arm and leg, and Ricky Taylor was calling into headquarters and saying, “This is bad. I hear them screaming in the background,” Cummings went down to the aid station, arriving just after Dunn had been medevac’d out by helicopter.
“So I walked in, and the first table to the right is where Dunn was, and blood was still going into the drain there,” Cummings would say afterward. “What I remember is, I remember the blood, and I remember how many people were there. There’s a tape line that you’re supposed to stay behind, and everybody was standing behind that line. And at the last table, that’s the table that Sergeant Crow was on, and when I came up, they said, ‘Okay, CPR again,’ and the medics were CPR’ing his chest, and I was trying to look to get status, to see if I could tell how bad off he was, and he was very gray, so I knew it was bad. And I looked over, and I could see that his leg was gone about mid-thigh. You know, you could see the bone, and you could see the flesh, just ripped out, hanging there. I saw he had a tourniquet on him, couldn’t really see his arm. I knew his arm was messed up. It was kind of covered by the docs, and then I saw Doc Brock was there; Doc De La Garza, Al, was there; one of our medics was doing the bag; one of our medics was doing CPR.
“It was just an ugly scene,” he continued. “It was hard to watch. You know how you have those moments where you remember where you were? I remember where I was in ninth grade when the Challenger blew up. I was walking between fifth and sixth period, and they made the announcement. I remember where I was when President Reagan was shot. I was by Glenn Norwicki’s house, walking up the street. And it’ll be one of those things. I’ll know where I was when Sergeant Crow, at the moment— because Doc De La Garza had a machine; I’m assuming it was an EKG machine, and I’m sure he had leads onto his
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