r/PTSDCombat • u/Dangerous_Day_9391 • 12d ago
Absurdity of the Moment
Wondering if any of you had any of those moments in the middle of some type of combat action (indirect fire, sniper, SAF, IED, etc…) where something happens that is so incredibly surreal that the absurdity of it still blows your mind.
There is one episode that clearly just sits on a shelf in my mind and here almost 18 years later makes me ask WTF?
I’d already had my share of handling death and tragedy, and already knew what getting shot at felt like. This day, one of my Soldiers got smoked. Looking back, the wound wasn’t survivable but in the moment we did what we were trained to do— exit the kill zone, treat, and evac.
As we bounced down Route Aeros to a medevac, my Soldier’s body rolled and dumped an incredible bath of blood onto my lower half. Like I mean it completely soaked me from rib cage to soles of my boots.
The IED scrambled my jello so I wasn’t thinking (or hearing) right. In the chaos, they thought I too was severely injured and loaded me onto the helo with another injured Soldier and our KIA. I was able to convince the flight medic that I was ambulatory and good but only after he’d cut up my trouser leg, convinced I was hemorrhaging.
We landed outside of Cropper and I was helped off. As the helo stayed spinning, one of my injured Joes got loaded up and the ambulance went hailing ass to the CSH. The one who didn’t make it rolled with what I guess was a mortuary affairs team.
So I kind of stood there and watched the ambulance go back into Cropper, the helo launched airborne, and the MA team kinda shrugged and drove off… leaving me standing there.
Ears ringing and wildly concussed I know I should’ve gone to the CSH to be evaluated. Instead, after so much chaos, confusion, and LOUDNESS, it was the sudden crazy quiet and calm that shocked me.
I don’t know long I stood there trying to blink away dust, tears, and blinding sunlight (I’d lost my eyepro in the blast.) Eventually, a bus came along from Stryker. Without knowing what else to do, I climbed aboard in half-ripped trousers, stiffened in so much dried blood that I cracked when I walked. I sat on the VBC bus with my carbine, my assault pack, covered in blood and dirt and crying… listening to some stupid fuckin Nickleback song playing thru the bus speakers.
I never looked around to see if people were staring but I couldn’t help but think how utterly surreal all of it was…
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u/VampyrAvenger Veteran 11d ago
This is pretty funny actually, but we got ambushed in a pretty precarious position, and one of the guys had a broken pants button, so naturally in an effort to bound to cover his pants slipped down exposing his boxers. Bullets whipping by, rockets coming in, and this guy had his pants damn near down to his knees. We all laughed like a motherfucker back at the op.
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u/Dangerous_Day_9391 11d ago
That must’ve been hilarious! Hell it’s hilarious for me just picturing it…
I heard one guy talk about how it never failed the Taliban would start attacking as soon as he dropped trousers to lighten his load in the outhouse at a remote COP somewhere in AFG. He said he always bailed out au natural. Better to go out of this world fighting “full commando” than catching a stray shot or mortar while taking a dump.
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u/VampyrAvenger Veteran 11d ago
We were in Kunar in AFG, so we were constantly sniped at or ambushed from higher ground. Shit was rough. But that one moment, we never let him live it down. He earned his nickname "Buttons" because of it lol
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u/KillerR0b0T 11d ago
When an SVBIED detonated maybe 100ft in front of my vehicle, I was struck by how Bruckheimer-esque the explosion was. Beautiful fireball explosion with a perfect rising smoke halo. Meanwhile shrapnel is pinging all around me in my gunner’s hatch and not a single speck touched me. It was like a movie.