Candles

We keep two candles in the window of our apartment. They're the electrical kind that people put up for Christmas. Ours represent my brother in law Jonny and his buddy JD.

Early this morning my father in law got a phone call. Jonny had been medievaced by helicopter to Balad Military Hospital in Iraq afther an attack that happened within the past forty eight hours. From what he told his dad, they were on a patrol in an MRAP, a kind of armored truck that was somehow flipped over. The gunner, was apparently unconcious but had a pulse, When they got out to try and right it, a Herculean feat, they came under small arms and RPG fire forcing them to take cover. In the insuing gun fight, the gunner died.

The team commander was the most serious and as such was flown from Iraq to Germany and the massive trauma center that serves the US military, presumably in Ramstein. Jonny and the driver are being evaluated in Balad. Doctors are trying to determine if Jon suffered any brain trauma and if there is any swelling. The driver's injuries are unknown to us at this point.

From the Email I received from my father in law this morning, I heard that Jon is beside himself over not being able to save his buddy. Its understandable, he is a very capable medic, very well trained and sure of his skills. He's used them on the streets of Boston and now, over seas he's been caring for his fellow soiliders. Its not the same impersonal medicine of EMS where we treat somebody for, at the most, 45 minutes and turn them over to the ED. Jon was alone, underfire trying to keep his friend from dying and unfournately the efforts and technology available in the field were not enough.

I had received an Email from Jon two days ago. On a whim I had noticed he had activity on Facebook so, in the hopes of contacting him I had sent a quick message. His reponse stated that he had "gotten his bell rung a couple of times." and that "Iraq smells like crap, everyone is really poor and they bombard the base with rockets at night." His father told me that kids were throwing rocks at the Hummers as they cruised out on patrol.

So Jon is in an inhospitable place, in a field hospital bearing the grief of losing a friend in a country that is basically hell on earth. I could go on about how much I detest this war and the Aemrican foreign policy that has lead to the injury of another one of my good friends. But if I do that I'll no doubt get Emails from gung ho "Patriots" who think these are necessary sacrifices in order to better the world. And I could say somethings that I'm sure would sound pretty racist about the Iraqis and the Middle East in general, but I won't because I'll get the other side of the fence complaining that I am not compassionate to their feelings and their culture. And again I think of what I would do if a bunch of people I'd never seen before came to my country and told me "This is how its going to be, assimilate." Chances are I'd find Klashnikovs and RPGs too.

And thats what my mind is doing. I feel for Jon, I worry about him. I know I won't ever trully know the grief of the gunner's family. (Out of respect for his family, I'm withholding his name.) I can understand military personell feel a need to finish what was started in Iraq, even if I don't understand why it was started (and please no comments trying to educate me on why we had to invade a sovereign nation, they will be deleted). The scary part is I can even understand the feelings of the guys with the guns that tried to kill him. They didn't see him as my brother in law, my wife's brother. They didn't see him as the guy who wants to be a firefighter and watches idiotic movies with scrotum jokes. Instead they saw him as a symbol of the evil they feel is being pushed on them by a foreign power, threatening what they feel is a just way of life. I don't condone what they did, but I understand it. A lot of conflicting emotions are bouncing around right now. Mostly, I want him and all of them to be home.

When my wife came home this morning at around 0830, East Coast Time, I was just waking up. I hadn't checked the Email yet so we were not aware of the drama affecting our brother in the desert. I heard Mandy fumbling around in the room where the candles sit in the window. She was changing the bulb on the one that I had always thought of as Jon. (It's one of those oddly childish things I do, "This candle is for Jon, that one is for JD.") Apparently this morning the bulb had been flickering, on the verge of going out.