It's been over 18 years since I participated in Operation Desert storm. Even today, when I am doing a physical exercise, at a party or even at work I experience something that triggers a reflection back to an event that took place while serving my tour. Here I am, sitting in a 2 day First Aid class listening to all the students talk about their traumatic experiences and began to think about my first significant military combat encounter that occurred, to the best of my recollection, on 15-FEB-1991. This was the first day of the ground assault, however, the air force had been pounding the republican guard for almost a month till this point. Prior to crossing into Iraq we were given the order, or allowance you might say, to destroy, kill, blow up whatever we saw moving in front of us. Any living object we were given authorization to kill. Driving over sand dune after sand dune we peaked this dune which overlooked about 5-10 kilometers of open desert and saw 2 military trucks with about 15-20 men picking things up and moving things around. It didn't take long before our entire troop (10 M3A2 Bradley's and 6 M1 Abrams) became fixated on these 2 trucks and men. As well, it wasn't long before those men were pointing towards us and started running to get into their trucks, trying to get away before we could attack them. Hoping their trucks could out run our tanks.

Warnings came across the radios that they were laying down antitank mines and we needed to proceed with caution. Caution?! We all had the pedals floored moving towards them as fast as the tanks would move. Perhaps 3-5 minutes after the trucks were spotted the first bullets started to fire. Bradley's have a 25mm chain gun and a 7.62mm machine gun. The 25mm chain gun has 2 kinds of bullets. Armor piercing, which are used for shooting at tanks and Explosive, which are like mini hand grenades that are used for firing at human targets. When fired, the bullets shine like a bright burning white star that seem to be moving at a walkers pace. So when the Bradley's started firing on these 2 trucks it was like shooting stars falling from the sky on top of them. Ultimately, after 5-10 hits the trucks exploded, were burning and the men who survived we could see jumping out the rear of the vehicle, gasping for air from the smoke, crawling on the ground because they were hit by some shrapnel from an explosive 25mm round, or a lucky 1 or 2, unwounded, were trying to run and get away. Since the Bradley's had the machine gun that is there for shooting troops at closer range, soon someone had opened fire trying to kill the remaining living individuals. At some point, I don't remember hearing an order, but the firing stopped.

We setup a parameter to make sure this wasn't a trap. The Iraqi's would setup bait at specific coordinates (trucks, people, weapons, etc...), anything to draw the enemy in, once stopped all they would need to do is pull a trigger and artillery would be coming our way in a matter of seconds. So securing an area, a few square kilometers wide was critical. This is where my memory was triggered while in my First Aid class. Once we got the parameter setup and the situation under control, people started jumping out of their tanks and tried to save the individuals who survived. The gunners who were shooting and killing where looking at the places where their bullets had hit the trucks and possibly the men and weeping, trying to help the most in saving who they could...administering first aid as best as possible. I started thinking about what the people were saying in the First Aid class about sun burns, deep cuts and broken bones and had some tears come to my eyes when I remembered the burning bodies, the scattered body parts and the weeping, the screaming from sorrow and pain of grown men, from both Iraqi and American troops. I started thinking about why did we shoot those men in the first place if we were just going to run up there and try to save them afterwards? First Aid, First Aid...First Aid!

My mind still continues to process the events that happened during this short war. I hope someday I will make some sense out of or forget them. Sure, I'm aware of the overall objective that we succeeded in accomplishing during this conflict, but I am somewhat burdened to live with the events that happened, when I have such memories recalled, simply by sitting in a 2 day first aid class.

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