Special to The VOICE, Part 2 of 8
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Zacery Blaisdell, formerly of Ravensdale and Selleck and a specialist in the United
States Army, suffered severe injuries one year ago when his convoy came under enemy
attack in Afghanistan. He has spent most of the past year at Walter Reed Medical
Center in Washington, D. C. and it is expected that he will require another year
of treatment there. This is his story, presented in serial form, in eight parts.
FROM A GUNNER IN THE TURRET OF ONE OF THE TRUCKS intelligence of a large explosion
was relayed to the acting platoon leader, Sergeant First Class Joseph Hissong, a
sixteen-year Army veteran from Dayton, Ohio. Immediately breaking into battle drill,
SFC Hissong ordered the convoy to perform a Herringbone maneuver in which each of
the vehicles pulls off on alternating sides of the road. He then directed his MRAP—the
second in the order of movement—along with the lead truck—which would be used as
a security point—to peel off. Swinging out and around and with gunners armed and
at the ready to guard against a possible second enemy attack, the two big trucks
cut a straight line back up the road.
As their MRAP tacked up alongside and to the rear of the stricken vehicle, SFC Hissong
and a medic, twenty-year-old Specialist Jordan Kurtz of Chatsworth, California,
came flying out. With his aid bag in hand, SPC Kurtz took off sprinting towards
the last truck, which was billowing smoke and slowing as he approached. Meanwhile
SFC Hissong began moving towards the front of the cab. As soon as SPC Kurtz hit
the pavement, SSG Gerk stuck his head out the gunner hatch. There were wounded inside,
he hollered. In response, SPC Kurtz shouted for them to drop the back ramp so he
could get in.
Reaching SSG Smith’s side of the truck, SFC Hissong wrenched back on the door, but
it had been jammed shut from the explosion. Failing to jimmy it open, he whipped
around to the driver’s side. SSG Young, seeing him coming but with halon fumes heavy
and everywhere, couldn’t immediately find the door handle. Finally, though, his
hand grabbed onto the latch. As he lurched open the door, “a halo of smoke” poured
out towards SFC Hissong.
“Hey, get the ramp down! We got a medic coming,” SFC Hissong ordered. SSG Young,
with “snot and everything else” running down his face, “slammed the toggle switches,”
dropping the hatch. “Are you good to drive?” SFC Hissong questioned him. Even though
SSG Young “couldn’t breathe, was on the verge of passing out, and was spitting and
hacking up all kinds of shit,” he indicated that he was. “Then bury that pedal to
the floor and don’t let off the gas until we get back to the COP,” SFC Hissong told
him. “We’ll be right behind you.”
SFC Hissong then hustled to the back of the MRAP to check on SPC Kurtz. The medic
was just piling into the cabin of the truck and SFC Hissong could see that SSG Gerk
had already applied the tourniquet to Zac’s arm. Raise the ramp, he ordered. Up
front, SSG Young was waiting for any signal. “The second I heard the clang of metal
from the medic’s feet on the ramp, I punched it,” he recounts.
Already edging forward and picking up speed as SPC Kurtz was scrambling onboard,
the MRAP ramped up to full throttle in the direction of their duty station of COP
Sayed Abad, some five minutes away. Maybe two minutes had elapsed from the commencement
of the attack until they were in transit again.
Once he was inside, SPC Kurtz prepared a second tourniquet, tying it around Zac’s
left leg. He then began swathing Zac’s arm in bandages. To numb the pain, he administered
a shot of morphine.
As they raced down Highway 1 at speeds approaching the maximum that the MRAP could
go—seventy-five miles per hour—chemicals continued gushing from the fire suppression
unit and the interior of the truck smelled of “burnt steel and flesh.”
Shortly it became almost impossible to see out the front window. It was so suffocating
that the back ramp and top hatch had to be opened to let some of the dust escape.
SSG Young was “weaving in and out of traffic, fishtailing around the turns and laying
on the horn.” As he puts it, it was like “‘get the hell out of the way or get run
over.’” Such was their speed that SGT Wakefield’s MRAP couldn’t keep up and soon
they lost sight of them.
To conserve every second, SSG Smith radioed ahead. They were en route, he informed
the Aid Station at the COP, and carrying casualties. Twisting around in his seat,
SSG Smith looked back at Zac. “How you doing?” he shouted. “Okay, sergeant,” Zac
responded, but adding that he was “in a lot of pain.” SSG Young glanced back just
once and ever so briefly. From a glint of light seeping in through the open hatch,
he could make out SPC Schultz who was grabbing at his knee.
SPC Kurtz continued helping Zac. “While [I was] treating him, I questioned [the]
others in the vehicle about their injuries and made a mental triage that they could
all wait [on medical care] until arriving back at the base.” That decision allowed
him to focus all his energies on a single patient. SPC Kurtz “packed the wound in
Zac’s arm with gauze and placed a pressure dressing over that.” He then began “to
apply a splint.”
As they neared the entrance gate of the COP, they saw two medics there waiting,
but SSG Young thought “I’m not stopping” and they barreled straight on through the
checkpoint. SSG Smith peeked at his watch and noted the time. It was 1:11 p.m.
At the Aid Station medical staff were standing outside with gurneys. SSG Young slammed
on the brakes, threw the MRAP into park, and jumped out, scrambling straight to
the back of the truck. Because his door was still stuck, SSG Smith climbed out through
the turret hatch. SSG Young, seeing that SSG Gerk was already helping Zac, assisted
SPC Schultz. The injured were rushed up a wooden ramp and through a set of double
doors and into the Aid Station.
Miraculously, only two American soldiers had suffered severe wounds. Zac’s, however,
were among the worst imaginable. “I knew how bad my injuries were going back to
the COP,” he recounts. “My forearm was half gone and I thought it would have to
be amputated. I had heard my sergeant when he contacted the medevac say “a possible
amputee” and so I accepted that right there.”
A triage team, consisting of the battalion surgeon and five medics, converged over
Zac while SPC Kurtz began treating SPC Schultz and another medic was assigned to
SSG Gerk. All the soldiers in the MRAP were checked for evidence of Traumatic Brain
Injury (TBI).
Once the wounded had been received and everyone had been examined, SSG Young stepped
out of the building and into the open air. Having reached a state of complete and
utter exhaustion, he belly flopped onto the ground.
SSG Gerk’s wounds were treated and he was released from the Aid Station.
Zac doesn’t remember what was said as his clothes were cut away from his skin and
the medical team feverishly worked to get him stabilized. He was awake, but dazed.
As Zac describes it, he was “just lying there looking up, more in shock.” There
was pain, but with painkillers it was tolerable. A transfusion would be required
after Zac left the COP, so notice was sent out and four Sky brothers came running
in to donate blood. In addition to banking four units of non-FDA approved blood,
medical personnel concentrated on stopping the bleeding from the ulnar artery in
Zac’s arm because the tourniquet needed to be removed to allow blood to begin flowing
normally to the rest of his body.
Meanwhile, at the Helicopter Landing Zone (HLZ) located on the other side of the
COP, a bird landed about two minutes after the MRAP reached the Aid Station. As
soon as Zac could be moved, he and SPC Schultz were transported to the HLZ in an
ambulance, boarded, and placed under the care of an air medic. To help their friends
onto the helicopter, sergeants Hissong and Smith rode along. Before he left the
HLZ, SFC Hissong, first to one and then to the other, bent down and whispered in
their ears: “You’ve done enough and all you can do. Go get yourself well. We’ll
be waiting for you when you get back. Have a beer for us when you get to Germany.”
Their immediate destination was Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank south of Kabul
in adjoining Logar province. Moments after he was carried in on a stretcher, Zac
glanced over at the medevac pilot and, in his own words, he “just passed out.”
The American soldiers had responded to the attack with extraordinary swiftness,
skill, and bravery. According to SFC Hissong, within a single minute of the RPG
strike, SSG Gerk had applied the tourniquet to Zac’s arm—an act “that saved his
life right there, there is no doubt in my mind on that one,” SFC Hissong says. Within
four minutes, SPC Kurtz was inside the truck administering care. Within nine minutes
they had reached the COP. Within twenty-one minutes, Zac and SPC Schultz were on
the medevac and on their way to FOB Shank.
After Zac and SPC Schultz had been evacuated, SSG Smith and the other soldiers in
the convoy stripped off their body armor and began “buddy checking” each other for
hidden injuries. SSG Smith then helped in scrubbing out the MRAP and prepping it
for future service. When that was finished, he returned to his B-hut, a small wooden
sleeping compartment. He was still covered in retardant and his eyes were stinging
and his ears were ringing. There was a rasp in his voice and he felt weak. Thinking
it might help, he took a shower, thoroughly flushing his eyes with water. He then
lay down on his cot. But his breathing became so labored that he got up and reported
to the Aid Station. When his vital signs were checked, his oxygen level registered
just in the seventy range, a life-threatening reading. Requiring a higher echelon
of care, SSG Smith—at about ten-thirty in the evening—was placed onboard a helicopter
and he too was medevaced to FOB Shank.
Back on the first helicopter what happened next is not fully clear. For most or
all of the time that they were in transit to FOB Shank, Zac was not conscious. On
landing at that base he might have received additional treatment, or he could have
been boarded directly onto another air transport. The constant queries of SPC Schultz
checking on the status of his buddy produced few answers. But what is known is that
after reaching FOB Shank, Zac and SPC Schultz were transferred again, this time
to Bagram Airbase in northern Afghanistan. At either the FOB or Bagram—Zac is not
sure which—he remembers coming to as he was being removed from a helicopter.
Meeting him were doctors who told him that he would have to be put under again.
His eye, they explained, required attention and other medical procedures needed
to be done. Zac knows for certain that at Bagram he underwent surgery to stitch
up his right eye (amazingly, his eyelid had not been damaged) and an external fixator
was applied to his left forearm, a technique in which screws and wires are used
first to stabilize and then to facilitate the fusion of traumatized limbs. To help
prevent infection and induce healing, a “washout” of dirt, shrapnel, and bone fragments
was also performed. With those procedures having been accomplished, Zac was deemed
fit for flight to Germany.
About an hour after Zac and SPC Schultz were airlifted out of FOB Shank, SSG Smith’s
medevac touched down. Finding himself assigned to the same nurse who had attended
to Zac, he jumped at the opportunity to inquire on the condition of his two friends.
“They were all right,” he received as a vague answer. SSG Smith probed further.
“What about Zac’s arm? Was he going to lose his arm?” “I don’t know” was the only
response. Placed on a regimen of Albuterol and Advair, SSG Smith saw his oxygen
counts rebound to ninety and ninety-one, not yet optimal numbers but sufficiently
elevated as not to be considered dangerous. After five days, SSG Smith was returned
to his unit.
