(Then Specialist Robert Humes, I Corps Honor Guard)
If my memory serves me correctly, it was our second week in Camp Diamondback, an Iraqi airfield that members of the 101st Airborne Division made home. This was before you could contractor-grade burgers and fries on Camp Diamondback - before a then-unknown insurgency began using the tactic of remote-detonated weapons called improvised explosive devices or IEDs. One night during week two, I remember it being a frigid night.
The chorus of small arms fire could be heard from our part of the airfield. The First Corp’s 62nd Medical Brigade was in theatre to support combat hospital operations for the 101st and any other units that needed our support. I bounced from hospital administration to guard duty, but my core role was driving for a Colonel who found great providence in our presence in Iraq. As the camp eased into the evening routine of baby wipe showers for our bodies, weapons, and whatever else needed to be delivered from the onslaught of sand that got into everything, the chorus grew into an odd crescendo. A fire had grown on top of a hill overlooking the camp.
Our colleagues had found a weapons cache; the rumor was that someone tossed a grenade on the cache, starting a fire and setting off hundreds of boxes of small arms ammunition. Squawks over the radio added to the symphony of confusion; the small arms were entering the airspace over the airfield at random, putting everyone on the ground in danger of severe injury or worse. Our Command Sergeant Major (think COO) received orders to ensure troops were safe. We donned our Kevlar helmets and flack jackets and huddled in a mass of humanity while small arms fire rained down on the airfield. Some cried, others sang song lyrics, and I chose to pray. In the following weeks, we learned how to make the most of the environment we would make home. Those with engineering skills helped turn a gas-powered pump into a heated shower and laundry station; others turned lime layers pits into ports-potty stalls - I figured out the kitchen patrol schedule and knew the exact dates we’d have real meat for dinner. We met the mission, created a community, and survived together.
That’s what I learned from being a soldier- survival. Not the kind of survival where you learn to boil water and suck snake poison out of open wounds -the kind of survival where you learn to embrace the culture and understand a history not your own so you can build relationships and coalitions to support rebuilding a nation.
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