Perfectly Wounded by Mike Day

Author:Mike Day [Day, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

TRANSFORMED

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

—Chief Tecumseh

CHAPTER 10

Medevac

April 6, 2007, Northeast of Fallujah

Back in the enemy compound, when the shooting stopped, I was still on the floor lying on my left side. I pushed myself up to my knees. I don’t remember hearing any of the gunfire, but now sounds began to register in my ears.

The two men who had stacked up directly behind me in my room-clearing train were our Iraqi scouts. The second man in our train took a round to his chest plate and it knocked him clear out into the foyer. Ironically that round may have saved his life. He’d originally been within an arm’s length behind me as we’d entered the room. The third man in my stack had been shot as he entered the room—a 7.62 × 39 AK-47 round had smashed through his bulletproof chest plate. He had fallen dead in the doorway.

The chance factor was insane. Once fired, a bullet can be unpredictable. The internal milling of a gun’s barrel causes bullets to spin in flight—some bullets will begin to tumble through the air at low speeds, while others are designed to tumble and cartwheel after hitting a target, which can cause some brutal damage. It’s likely that we were all hit by the same type of bullets, at nearly the same time, shot from the same gun, but the damage to each of us was significantly different. The balance of my room-clearing train—five or six other guys—hadn’t been able to get into the room at all because of the sheer volume of fire.

I moved from my knees and stood to my feet. It felt like there were two hundred pounds on my back. I took off my helmet and used the white light on my damaged pistol to survey the room. One of our other Iraqi scouts entered the room—he had been behind Clarkie and followed him into his room. The bullet that hit Clark bypassed all three of the Iraqi scouts stacked up behind him. These three made it into Clarkie’s room and had gotten trapped in the back of the house when the shooting started. The scout had been part of the original group of ten recruits who had been with us since the first day. He spoke decent English and gave me a report: one SEAL killed in action (KIA), one Iraqi scout KIA, two detainees, and six women and children.

I needed to secure the building myself, so I moved into the foyer with its glowing lamp and then into the room directly beside where my gunfight had happened. There were the six women and children, all sitting in the far corner screaming and crying. I pointed

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