You need to read all of this.
“We were just rolling along, man, and it was all good,” Marklein remembered. The Humvees rolled past a market and just began to enter a neighborhood. Then Marklein saw a “big, orange ball” and heard a distant boom, like a firecracker at the end of a long tunnel.
But the explosion wasn’t far away: It was right there.
The blast was so bright Marklein didn’t perceive brightness, just color; the sound so loud he hardly heard it.
The driver blanked out. Then, head back up, he took in the damage. Tires, flat. Steering, zero. Gas, gone.
But Marklein realized the incredible. He was fine. Somebody had detonated an artillery round maybe three meters from the Humvee — it was shredded with shrapnel — yet Marklein was in one piece. He called out to Cooke, happy they made it.
The sergeant major was silent.
The Humvees in front advanced out of the blast area, then the troops got out and came running back. Bonura, the chaplain, knew inside that Cooke was all right. Sergeant Major always was.
Bonura helped load Cooke into the ambulance.
“I held his hand,” the chaplain said. “But there was no movement. Nothing.”
They talked to him in case he could hear.
“Sometimes,” Bonura said, “they can.”
Back at the base, soldiers were starting to party. A karaoke and R&B Christmas Eve. Bells dangled from the ceiling. The tree sparkled in the corner.
Then the rumor started: Sergeant Major was dead.
Stevens left the tactical operations center and told troops in the mess hall that nobody knew. Cut the gossip.
But by 10:30 p.m., Stevens and the other soldiers in the TOC knew. Cooke died before he arrived at the hospital.
No comments:
Post a Comment