Ashes in the Darkness

Eyes

Looking back, I saw the injured soldiers, one was far worse than the other. One had his arm, a sling, and a pool of blood on the outside of his thigh on his cargo pants. The other lay on the floor of the helo, unmoving with several of the other men huddled around him. Blood pooled under him while the medic gave orders to apply pressure. He needed to go now.

The sound of bullets hitting metal knocked me out of staring at the mess in the back of my Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk, "we gotta go now!" Jackie said through the comms. I nodded and checked the ground, all the men were packed into the back, strapping themselves into the traplines. I slowly lifted from the ground as more bullets ricochet off my helicopter, "taking fire!" I said into my radio.

"Good copy!" one of the men in the back shouted before I heard a rifle being shot. Pressing on the throttle and raising the cyclic as I continued to raise from my hovering position. Jackie began pressing buttons on the dashboard, looking to me to tell her to return fire. I shook my head and she settled herself into a defensive position in her chair.

"Guns are hot," she said, thumb on the trigger that would release the missiles, I couldn't believe that I was here at this moment. Combat. No matter the training I had for these moments, nothing could prepare me for the first time I interacted with live fire.

"Hold on!" I said, I was still too close to the ground to do powerful maneuvering, especially with a crew in the back. I bent the nose of the helo forward and began to pick up some speed in the opposite direction of the firing. Jackie's thumb stayed upright over the trigger as the sounds of bullets trickled out.

When I returned to the makeshift compound some hours later, I was looking down at the pool of blood on the floor of my seahawk. It would leave a stain if I didn't clean it up soon. Technically it was my job to take care of the bird, but casualty cleanup was not something that I had ever done before. The medic was at my side with a mop and a giant bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I was sweating through my flight suit, too numb to feel the heat through.

If I had just been a little faster, or maybe if I had gotten to them faster the soldier would still be alive. Jackie appeared a few moments later, still in her own flight suit, "let's get her cleaned up." She said, but I had a hard time moving. The medic began to spray the hydrogen peroxide on the floor, wiping up as he went. Jack stepped up into the pit and picked up the bucket of water and began to follow the medic. Looking up at me she turned pale "come on, Hendricks," she said.

Although I was ranked higher than her, I knew that commanding voice in her. I approved. Picking up another one of the buckets of water, I began to wipe the bench on the side of the pit. Blood was everywhere. I felt my eyesight darken as the heat finally took its hold. "Damn it!" I shouted throwing the cloth down and wiping my forehead with the back of my wrist.

"Hey!" The medic looked up at me, then looked over at Jackie, "both of you need to hold it together." The medic was an older man, he had been at this for a while, he had probably lost people before. These things happened, I should have been prepared for this, it's what you trained for.

Jackie looked at me and nodded before I picked up the cloth again. I let my mind fall blank with the sound of scrubbing, but there was one thought that I couldn't let go of: I didn't even know his name. "What was his name?" I asked after some time.

The medic looked up and sighed "Watkins, he was a transfer from the British Armed Services, he wasn't even supposed to be here."

"Jesus Christ," Jackie said, she began to scrub harder. If he had joined right out of high school, that meant he was young, eighteen or nineteen years old. My body was completely numb at this point, the sounds of sloshing water and scrubbing turned to echoes in my head.