Doonesbury.com's the Sandbox by G. B. Trudeau

Author:G. B. Trudeau [Stanford, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7407-9882-5
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 2007-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Note: That’s The Dog, on the right.

PIECES IN THE SNOW

NAME: CAPT BENJAMIN TUPPER

STATIONED IN: PAKTIKA, AFGHANISTAN

HOMETOWN: SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

The streets, the fields, the market bazaar, everything as far as the eye could see was covered in a coat of pure white. Overnight a snowstorm had passed through our corner of Paktika, dropping just enough snow to cover all the mud and dirt and garbage that paints the landscape of the town.

I stood on the main road of the normally bustling bazaar, in an expanse of pure white, staring at a mysteriously vibrant pink and red object. Around me, there were no footprints disturbing the snow except my own. It appeared as if this strange object had been dropped from the sky. It lay there in simple repose—thin fibrous strands splayed like a peacock’s tail feathers along its top. At the base, a stiff stalk of white segments adorned with bright red dollops.

After the initial distraction of marveling at its intricate makeup, I refocused on my original purpose in approaching it. I needed to identify what it was. Having now done so, I turned and walked back to my Humvee.

It was the neck stem of a human spine, blasted 150 meters in the air from the site of a suicide bombing minutes earlier. I had been in the middle of a slow, frustrating meeting with my commander and our ANA counterparts, arguing over attendance numbers, when a very subtle vibration passed through our room. It was gentle and unassuming. With no one even mentioning the distant thud, we continued our conversation until one of my ETT teammates ran into the room and yelled, “We’re rolling—there’s been an explosion in the bazaar!”

Now I stood amid a chaotic scene. ANA soldiers and ETTs trying to organize a wide cordon around the blast site, with rumors spreading of a VBIED still in play, and the confusion of sorting out who was dead, who was wounded, and who was lucky.

These initial moments were pretty tense. Scattered in the road intersection were seven unoccupied vehicles. Any one could be a secondary explosive device positioned to kill the first responders, a classic enemy tactic. As we went about trying to get a grasp on what had happened and what needed to be done, we all were within the lethal blast radius of even a small car bomb.

I found myself nervous but ironically fighting to contain a smile. I kept expecting a fiery white light to instantly wash me away. BANG! Torn car metal. Flame.

When none of this transpired, I was happy as a kid on Christmas morning. And every second that there was no explosion, my grin continued to grow. I was just happy to have a few more seconds with no Technicolor finish.

This reaction probably seemed out of place, given the random burned and twisted body parts lying around me as I walked through the scene. But no one noticed me. Each of us was in our own little world, trying to process the remaining risks and the results of this suicide blast.

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