Sunday, May 1, 2005
On a highway 20 minutes south of Baghdad, a Rhode Island Guardsman reached bloodied hands for his squadmates and screamed: We're under attack. Shrapnel had cracked into Edmund Aponte's skull, to his brain, and he bled into the sand. The father of three from Providence couldn't work his legs. His squad from the Rhode Island National Guard 115th Military Police Company carried him from his burning Humvee, which was leaking diesel into a puddle of fire. M-16 rifle ammunition popped and pinged as it cooked off in the flames. Aponte's body was limp, he was unable to move on his own. The soldiers could not believe how heavy he was. Just 10 steps under the desert sun, and they were exhausted. The fire spread inside the crippled Humvee. Ammunition cans for the Mark 19 grenade launcher exploded. Smoke grenades blew. Some of the tractor-trailers the squad had been escorting on the Iraqi highway swerved around the chaos, and grumbled toward Baghdad. Platoon medic Kyla Cannon made sure Aponte's airway was open, and then dug into her bag for bandages to try to stop the blood. "They're gonna come," Aponte cried, "and shoot us!" THE CONVOY On Monday, Sept. 1, 2003, Kyla Cannon wrestled into her body armor, grabbed her Beretta 9 mm handgun and her medic bag stuffed with bandages, gauze, morphine, burn cream, a cervical collar, plastic tubing, needles, a tourniquet and bags of saline for IV drips. Cannon was assigned to ride with 1st Squad of the 1st Platoon, 115th Military Police Company, Rhode Island National Guard. Their mission that day was to escort a convoy of trailer trucks down a portion of Main Supply Route Tampa, a key military supply artery from Kuwait. They were to begin some 50 miles north of Baghdad, and drive about 150 miles south, to a fenced truck stop. There, they would pick up a northbound convoy and retrace their route -- an exhausting 12-hour day in sweltering desert heat. Convoy escort could be dangerous work, but the 115th had been lucky. The soldiers had survived ambushes, returning to base with bullet holes in their trucks. Just the day before, a roadside bomb had detonated prematurely about 40 yards ahead of the convoy. No Rhode Island National Guard unit had seen any combat fatalities since the fight for the Philippines, in 1945, near the end of World War II. The 1st Squad was split into three teams -- Alpha, Bravo and Charlie -- each with three soldiers in a four-wheeled Humvee. The trucks lacked the "up-armor" designed to toughen them against roadside bombs. The lead truck that day carried five soldiers: the Charlie team, the squad leader and Kyla Cannon, the medic. Her right side was sore that morning. She had spent 12 tense hours in the Humvee the day before, on the right-hand side of the truck, leaning to the window and watching for roadside bombs from a metal chair the size and shape of the cheapest seat in a football stadium. She wanted to abuse her left side for a day. Her squad leader, Staff Sgt. Joseph Camara, a New Bedford cop, agreed to swap seats. Cannon climbed in behind Dameon Harrington, the driver, a mortgage broker from West Warwick. THE DRIVER Dameon Harrington fidgets in an easy chair in his in-laws' living room, in West Warwick. He says that since he came back from Iraq, he doesn't sleep. Three, four hours a night is often the best he can manage. "It's just poof -- I'm up," he explains, as his wife, Tegan, listens. "I get up. I eat something. Go to the bathroom. Lie back down. Go to sleep. Wake up again. It's constant." Sometimes he can't help waking his wife, who will scold him about snacking in the middle of the night. "They say," she says, "it's the worst time to eat." Harrington is seeking a medical discharge from the National Guard. "It's one [health problem] after another," he says, including hearing damage and posttraumatic stress. "I went to the PTSD clinic. I have PTSD and all kinds of stuff. "I have no memory anymore. I have a Palm Pilot and I write everything down on the calendar. It's the only way to remember stuff. I've talked to doctors and they say it's a common problem." Harrington is 24. He went to Tollgate High School, Class of 1999, and is working now as a welder at Electric Boat. Tegan is 25. She went to West Warwick High School. They met as teenagers, on the job at McDonald's on Bald Hill Road, and dated eight years before they married last September. Harrington joined the National Guard in 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, because it seemed the right time to become an adult. He learned Feb. 7, 2003, that his unit was heading overseas. Two days later, Dameon and Tegan got engaged. "Ever since the explosion, he says he lost his luck," his wife says. "He used to say he had a horseshoe up his butt, but in the explosion it fell out." CHARLIE TEAM Kyla Cannon tucked her medic bag in the back, with the rectangular ammunition cans lashed to the Humvee's steel bed, including three cans for a Mark 19 grenade launcher, plus ammunition for the M-249 machine gun and 40 mm grenades for the M-203. The convoy of trailer trucks, with three Humvee escorts, motored south from Balad, toward the Scania Convoy Support Center. They went around Baghdad, down a three-lane superhighway that reminded the Rhode Islanders of Route 95, except that the median was a strip of sand. When the trucks were spread out, the convoy was as long as two miles. Harrington drove the lead Humvee, followed by about 30 big rigs. Then came a second escort Humvee, another 30 or so trucks, and then the rear escort Humvee. The convoy drove down the center of the highway -- to avoid bombs buried in the soft roadside. The trucks made good time. At Scania, the squad ate lunch and prepared for the return trip with a northbound convoy. Harrington was beat, from the drive, and from the 115-degree heat. He thought about asking somebody else to drive. Who could swap? Not Cannon, he thought; she was the medic. Camara, who rode in the back next to Cannon, was the squad leader. Sgt. Todd Caldwell, an investment planner with a new bride back in Attleboro, was the team leader and the front passenger. Also, Caldwell was the acting squad leader that day, getting some on-the-job training from Camara. That left Edmund Aponte, the gunner. Aponte, a metal worker at Electric Boat, was in the roof turret, assigned to the belt-fed M-249 machine gun. The gunner sat in a sling, a 2-inch-wide strap looped between hooks on either side of the turret hole. The sling was adjusted to his height, so that the top of his shirt pocket was in line with the top of the truck. It's only a few more hours, Harrington decided. I'll just drive. THE ROMANTIC Margaret Caldwell is a nurse at the West Roxbury Veterans Administration Hospital, in Massachusetts. "It's weird," she says, quietly. "The guys from Iraq are coming back -- injured or having problems. At first it just freaked me out a little bit. There was this big banner in the lobby: 'Welcome home, Iraqi veterans.' At first that made me cry. But it's okay now." Her husband, Todd, was a 401(k) planner with Putnam Investments in Norwood, Mass. He joined the National Guard in 1997, originally for tuition to go back to school, to explore an interest in marine biology. For their first date, Charles "Todd" Caldwell, took Margaret Yasharian to the circus. He had gently and persistently wooed her after they met in a biology class at UMass Boston. He proposed to her in May 2002, on the rocks at the edge of the sea, at Brenton Point, in Newport. Todd's deployment to Iraq, at age 37, changed their wedding plans. Back then, Margaret had insisted: You're not going away without us being married. He answered: I don't want to go without marrying you. On Feb. 4, 2003, they married in a 10-minute ceremony at Attleboro Town Hall. They stayed half an hour, for pictures. Family joined them at a reception dinner at Marchetti's, in Cranston. Todd loved the military, and became one of his squad's team leaders. Margaret recalls, "Todd would say, 'You're not mad at me because I want to go [to the Middle East], are you?' He would check back after every drill to see if it was happening. He wanted to go there and prove what he was trained to do and do a good job. I really can't be mad at that." "I sent him a mini tape recorder [in Iraq], and I had one," she says. "Those tapes were the best -- they were just an hour of babbling. We were going to get married again, do it all over and have everyone come, have a big party, go to Hawaii. "He was very romantic. You'd look at him and you wouldn't think that of him. He would come by my work and leave a rose on my windshield. Or leave little notes: 'I'm thinking of you today.' "I don't think that's ever going to happen for me again." THE BOMB The attacker had buried the explosives -- probably a 155-mm artillery shell -- in a hole just off the pavement, on the east side of the highway's northbound lane, next to a short concrete pillar. The wire to the detonator stretched from the bomb under the sand, into a field of grass and shrubs and a few trees. The wire zigzagged all over the field, ending behind a dirt berm, about 50 yards from the road. The berm was good camouflage. Standing behind it, the bomber was mostly hidden, but had clear sight of the convoy of big rigs rumbling up the highway, and the American Humvee in the lead. When the Humvee reached the concrete pillar, the truck was in line with the bomb. THE BOSS Jonathan Issa was still in Iraq when the soldiers and police officers in uniform, in rows of green and blue, filled the church for Joseph Camara's funeral. Camara was a 21-year veteran of the Rhode Island National Guard, and had been a New Bedford police officer for four years. He was 40, a husband and a father of three. "I didn't attend any kind of wake or funeral for him," says Issa, 25. "Obviously I was still over there. I have no closure on his death, I have no closure on him. It still haunts me at this day. Every night it's in my dreams. Every day I have daydreams about it. It doesn't stop. "It feels as if it was 2 seconds ago, like it just happened." Joe Camara was Issa's boss in the National Guard for seven years, and his friend, too. Since Issa has returned to Central Falls, he has tried to speak to Camara's wife, but cannot find her. "I've exhausted every lead I've had," he says, "whether it is where they used to live, or old phone numbers or old cell phones, e-mail addresses. You name it, I've tried them all. Nothing, nothing is the same." In his head, Issa still sees the sudden puff of dust that swallowed Camara's Humvee, which Issa witnessed from the turret of the second escort truck in the convoy. He sees the fire in his dreams, and remembers the exploding ammunition that made it impossible to retrieve his friend's body. "When I watched his body perish like that, my life pretty much did the same thing," he says. "And, you know, with my family, my friends, my now ex-wife -- I've never been the same since." THE FLAMES The blast broke Caldwell's neck and he died instantly. The force of the explosion shoved the Humvee. Shrapnel sheared the gas tank and splashed fire over the passenger's side. For a split second, Harrington thought a tire had blown. Then dirt and debris rained over the windshield. Smoke poured into the truck. Harrington had been trained to get his team out of the "kill zone." If the explosion was the first wave of an ambush, the team needed to get out of there. He steered the burning Humvee down the road for another 10 seconds. Medic Kyla Cannon reached forward and grabbed Harrington's shoulder. The ring in her ears from the boom rendered the scene oddly silent. "We have to get out!" she screamed. The fire, that diesel fuel, all that ammo lashed down in the back -- they were inside a rolling bomb. "You have to stop!" Cannon could not hear her own voice; she only felt the words in her throat. Harrington stopped the truck and popped open the driver's door. His head pounded. His right ear wasn't working. Cannon looked over to Sgt. Camara. She screamed to him to climb across the truck, away from the fire that was spreading over the passenger's side. "Get out! Get out! My side! My side!" Camara opened his own door, and collapsed into the flames. Cannon and Harrington ran from the fire. She carried her medic bag. Looking back, they had the same thought: Where was Aponte? THE GUNNER At 35, Edmund Aponte went to his third war. He had been active duty from 1988-92, and had parachuted into Panama in 1989 as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division taking part in Operation Just Cause, against the regime of Manuel Noriega. In the 1991 Gulf War, Aponte was among the forces guarding the border of Saudi Arabia. Once the war started, his unit moved into Iraq. After his discharge, he served in the National Guard in Maryland, and then in Puerto Rico. He moved to Mt. Pleasant, in Providence, in 2001, and worked briefly at Kmart before landing a job as a metal fabricator at Electric Boat. In Rhode Island, Aponte, who has three children, joined the 115th and was deployed in February 2003. He spent 10 months at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital after the attack. His family left New England because cold weather gives him headaches. Aponte speaks slowly, deliberately, over the telephone from his home in Florida. A television is on in the background on his end of the line. "My skull got fractured in the front -- it got cracked and it got depressed down," he says. "The shrapnel went into my neck, the shrapnel came through the right side of my face, like behind my ear. When it went in, it damaged nerves." Including nerves to his right ear. "I lost my balance because of the liquid in my right ear. So I feel dizzy sometimes. And, I dunno, like somebody just spins me a lot. I puke. I feel sick. I puke and then I'm okay. "I'm deaf in my right ear, for all of my life. They don't think I'm going to get my hearing back. I got posttraumatic stress. And I'm having a rough time with my family, especially my wife. I don't know, I'm like, very aggressive. Arguing, you know? And with my brain injury, I got mood disorder." His two younger children don't yet understand what happened to their father. "My little boy, he always say that I got bit by a dog in the head," Aponte says. "My teenager, he's 13 when it happened, I don't know what kind of effect it is on him. "But with my wife -- I think she is the one who is dealing with the toughest. Now instead of having three kids, it's like having four. I mean, I'm a man, I can act. Except that I make little mistakes because of my brain injury. I'm writing a check for $200, I could easily make it for $20 or $2,000. I could leave the stove on. She could say, 'Honey I need you to pick up the kid at this place at this time -- don't forget.' But I don't think she would put me in that situation because I would forget. In 15 minutes, I'd forget. "I've been reading and learning about head injury. Once you hurt your brain, there is no healing completely. When you lose some brain cells, it's going to be hard to function." THE PRAYER Aponte never heard the blast. Something startled him, as if he had been shaken violently from a dream. He heard the flames. He looked around. Then he heard voices. "C'mon, Aponte! Get out! Get out!" Cannon and Harrington were right outside the Humvee, peering in. But to Aponte, they looked far off -- as if he were watching them through the wrong end of a telescope. "What happened?" Aponte asked. "What's going on?" His own voice sounded like he was talking underwater. He felt warm liquid run down his forehead. Oh, [expletive], he thought. I got shot! Then he reasoned. No, I didn't get shot, because I can think. How can I be dead if I can think?
Maybe the bullet just grazed my head. Keep calm, he told himself. If you get scared, you're gonna bleed faster, because your pump is gonna
pump faster. Relax. Remember, you have Cannon, who is the medic. Whatever you
got in your head, whatever is wrong with me, I know Cannon is going to fix it. Somebody took him out of the Humvee. He collapsed and grabbed for the vests of the soldiers beside him. They laid him down. Cannon started working on his head. Aponte fretted that the squad was under attack. "Be careful, be careful," he said. Somebody took his boots. His right hand burned. He begged for somebody, anybody, to pour water on it. The sun was in his eyes; he asked somebody to block it. Now someone was taking his pants. "No," Aponte said, "I don't have no underwear." It was hot; he hadn't worn any. People were talking to him. Aponte! Aponte! they said, don't worry, you're going home. He grew sleepy. Stay awake, they told him. What kind of food would his wife cook when he got home,they asked. Aponte was in pain. He was grouchy. "Man," he said, "leave me the [expletive] alone. I don't know what the hell she gonna cook." He fought sleep. When he thought he couldn't stay awake any longer, he prayed. Please God, don't let me die. I don't wanna die. I wanna see my family.
I wanna see my son grow. As soon as he had completed the thought, Aponte changed his mind. You know what, God, I'm sorry, I take that back. I know I'm not gonna die. Right there he fell asleep. MIXED BLESSING "Some days," Aponte says from Florida, "with all my trouble, all my problems and my moods, I feel like, damn, why'd I survive? But I know that's wrong, I should feel happy. I am thankful I could see my kids again, and my wife. I know that I owe one to God, a big one. "So I feel blessed, really. And I feel mad because I know two other guys died. Sometimes I feel bad that I survived and they didn't. And I know Sergeant Camara had kids. So I feel it was unfair. I cannot see kids crying. Just to know that his kids have no father and my kids have a father -- it's a mixture. It's a mixed feeling. I'm glad and I'm not glad. It's hard to understand." He catches himself complaining. "I complain about this pain or that, but when I was in Walter Reed, I saw a lot of guys that were worse than me. I saw guys missing an arm, I saw guys missing two legs, an arm and maybe two more fingers. I saw a lot of guys who had brain injuries from Iraq, or from car accidents, and they were nothing compared to me. I mean, I'm talking to you, I know what's going on. These guys were acting like babies. I saw one guy that had diapers. A big Marine had diapers on. He cannot recognize nothing." Aponte cannot work yet, but looks forward to working again. "Any job I can get helping other people or animals," he says. "I feel like I have a second chance. I was alive and I died once. And I don't want to waste this second chance just working inside a store, you know? Does that make sense? "I want to interact with people, as many people as I can. So when I die again, for my real time -- you never know -- when I die again, then I wanna feel like, OK, I did plenty on earth." THE RESCUE Aponte's windpipe was open and he was breathing. But blood gushed from a gash along his hairline, and from a wound by his right ear. His eyes flicked rapidly side to side, which medic Kyla Cannon took as a sign of neurological damage. Cannon spoke to him as she worked, to see what sense he could make of his surroundings. What color is the sky? What did you have for breakfast today? "Cannon, help me help me," Aponte said. "You're my angel." She wadded gauze and applied a pressure bandage to Aponte's head to control the bleeding. She inserted an IV line into his left forearm and gave him a saline drip to fight shock. She treated the burn on his hand. One of the tractor-trailer drivers pulled his rig forward to shield them from ammunition firing off the burning Humvee. A patrol from another unit arrived and helped set up a defensive perimeter. Sgt. Luke Walker, the team leader in the rear escort Humvee, argued over the radio with a relay operator who didn't seem to understand that a member of the 115th was hurt and bleeding. "You get that [expletive] copter here now!" Walker screamed into the radio. "Or I'm gonna come there personally, and kill you. We've got two body bags to fill and there's gonna be three if you don't get that copter here NOW!" Walker waited with a red smoke grenade to signal the evacuation helicopter. The wait felt eternal. He had no confidence in the relay operator, so when two Chinook helicopters passed overhead -- massive transports with two rotors each -- Walker sent up the red smoke to signal that they had somebody wounded, and needed help. The Chinooks circled two or three times, and then flew off. Two minutes later, a medevac helicopter swooped in and put down on the highway. Rescuers loaded Aponte on a litter and took him away. As the helicopter disappeared, the scene fell quiet. The soldiers who had carried Aponte wore his handprints on their uniforms, in blood. THE MEDIC KYLA Cannon got out of the National Guard last September. At a coffee shop inside a Warwick bookstore, she struggles to explain how her 14-month National Guard deployment changed her. "I wanted to do nursing, and then you go over there and do all that stuff and by the time you come back ..." She pauses. "Do you know what I mean when I say my nerves are shot? I can't go through stressful situations anymore. I always had to think on my toes and act on instinct. It wears on you all day, every day, living like that." After graduating from Narragansett High School in 1997, she served four years of active duty in the Army, which included medic training after boot camp. She joined the Rhode Island National Guard in 2001, for the travel and for college tuition benefits. "It sounds bad but I don't want the responsibility that comes with nursing, and the lives that you have in your hands. It's hard to explain and it feels like I'm not living my dreams or whatever, but in a way I already did over there. "I don't want to be responsible for people's lives anymore." She is studying at the Career Education Institute, in Lincoln, to be a medical assistant. She is 25 years old. Staff writer Mark Arsenault can be reached at marsenau
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