Cairns In The Sand

Just a pre-read note: this was published previously in a journal that I do not speak of. They mangled it so badly that I called the editor up and tore her a new one. It is my writing. It is about an incident that happened during Operation Desert Shield, just prior to Desert Storm. It is non-fiction...(Uh, yeah, that means it's a true story)
I'll see you at the end of the read. HOO AHHH!

I squirmed, struggling to turn from my back to my side. Any exercising of my abdominal muscles threatened to burst my bladder. Despite being a consistent part of each of the recent seven days, the pain, never-the-less, maintained a novel potency. This water, the cure, I felt was just as painful as the condition of dehydration. In my struggle to gulp water as quickly as I lost it, I became a model of overachievement; a bent-over model, clothed only in brown boxers and green jungle boots, sans socks. Painfully, I could only take short, quick wisps of the desert’s dark air. I stepped gingerly as I negotiated the maze of duffel bags and cots. I scraped a shin on one of those cots, and I ignored even the thought of wincing, fearing that a gasp would kill me.
I reached for the tent flap. As I pulled it open, I felt the cool crisp rush of the outside air. I closed the flap before any more of the darkness could sneak into the tent. I took steps with hands groping, stirring the blackness before me. Finally feeling the door of the Humvee, I turned north and shuffled what felt like several miles to reach the rear hatch of the vehicle, where I turned west and leaned against it at waist level. I glanced, eyes right, and began to piss a giant puddle. I struggled to keep from using any muscles; I surrendered unconditionally to the forces of gravity. Minutes later, I was panting with relief, thankful for the ability to breathe normally again. I stayed bent over, savoring the moment.
The pain had retreated, and, once again, I assumed command of my body. I wiped sweat from my forehead and backwards into my fresh new haircut. I tilted my head forward, and I scratched furiously, trying to shake sand from the top of my freshly shaved head. I stood up, straightening my frame back into the shape of a soldier. My strength was renewed; my confidence was restored. I walked seven steps from the rear of the vehicle to the front of it, and I peered into some direction of the darkness. I saw the vague shape of the Criminal Investigation Detachment tent only a few steps away, and I heard the sound of another giant piss puddle forming somewhere in the immediate darkness before me. I looked to the left and to the right of the sound; the rods of my eyes processed an image of one of our resident CID agents relieving himself. I waived, and the movement registered in his eyes. I walked over, and we made small talk. I told him I drank nineteen of the one and a half-liter water bottles--one full liter for each hour I was awake. He began to straighten up and said he too had drunk to excess. Then he went back to his tent, grabbing another full bottle of water before he went inside it. I turned, hoping I was facing my tent, and walked like a miniature Indian Frankenstein in boxers, arms leading the way.
On the fall of one of my footsteps, I nearly jumped out of my boots and boxers. The silence of my comical journey was shattered by the shock wave of a tremendous crash, and then another, and finally one more. The CID agent said, “I wonder what that was.”
Doing far more than wondering, I said, “I don’t know,” already several footsteps away from where I had been. I followed tracks earlier vehicles had made in the sand; all fear of sand vipers, scorpions, and camel spiders faded in the face of my curiosity.
About one hundred yards into my trek, I met a fellow sergeant, staring at his Humvee; it was a turtle stuck to the steep north side of a sand dune. It balanced tragically upon the shoulders of a young MP who was sitting underneath the right doorpost; his loose seatbelt was still clipped around him. I asked the sergeant what happened; he mumbled something about a vehicle rolling down from the top. I failed to recognize the shock in his blank stare at the vehicle.
I was running and screaming all the way back to the tent, never realizing that the darkness had been replaced by complete clarity. I screamed “Hey!” and “Somebody help me!” with every step I ran toward my tent. I was taking short quick wisps of air, afraid I would not get the words out quickly enough or loudly enough.
The CID agent met me between the tents. On the verge of tears, I shrieked that one of our vehicles had rolled over and, “Wake everybody up, I need help!” I sped into my tent, screaming the news to my platoon. I saw nothing but my flashlight lying on the ground, where, once before, I had seen nothing but complete darkness. Jumping over a bag, I ran from the tent screaming for them to follow. I took short quick wisps of air again, afraid that I couldn’t replace oxygen quickly enough.
I screamed into the heart of our Military Police compound for people to wake up and help. I raced back to the Humvee. The sergeant was trying to reach over the Private and blot out some sparking wires. I looked with my flashlight, whose cursed beams generated a picture of legs trapped beneath the side of the vehicle. This Private was supporting the weight of the vehicle on his upper spine. Blood clogged his mouth, his nose, and his ears.
“Don’t rock it, you’re gonna hurt him!” I screamed at the sergeant, who had regained his composure. I leaned into the weight of the Humvee; “Don’t worry, I’m not pushing it up, I’m just gonna keep it from going any further,” I grunted.
My platoon began showing up, and I assigned several of them to the task of holding the vehicle. I sent one soldier scurrying off to get a Humvee with a winch positioned on the other side of the deadly sand dune. Then, I watched somebody try to put the electrical fire out with a fire extinguisher; it wasn’t working. My lieutenant called out to his driver to bring his vehicle over; he needed the vehicle radio to tell the dustoff medical helicopter where to come to. More extinguishers exploded, more sparks flew, and I held on to a rapidly dimming glimmer of hope as best as I could.
Some idiot who normally wore lieutenant bars came running up to the scene and used a command voice, that he should have used earlier, to transform this accident from the Private’s problem into my own private nightmare. “Nobody touch the vehicle!” he commanded, and eight or nine pairs of hands flew from the surface of the vehicle. My shoulder suddenly felt heavy from the ton and a half of vehicle weight. I was positioned looking straight down at the helpless Private when the vehicle slipped.
In half of an instant, I lost all those short quick wisps of air.
I grunted from the deep dark parts of my soul as I pushed for them; I tried to scream “No!” but the air had rushed from my pleading mouth. I sucked at the heavy air; fear clenched my throat. I squeaked as I tried to breathe for the Private. My ears attacked my being with the sound of the vehicle groaning and scraping against his spine; my ears soaked up that sickening sound because his lifeless broken body could not hear. My heart pumped double-time as chunks of blood dropped from his face. His body lost all sign of life, and I felt that moment in a way as no man should ever have to suffer. My soul gathered momentum as I began to slip in the sand; my feet flew, forcing furrows of sand to go flying into oblivion. My tear-filled eyes saw his body bend unnaturally under the weight I could not hold, and they summoned my soul to speak now or surrender his spirit to the sweet hereafter.
I shouted in the last half of the same instant. My diaphragm contracted; my lungs pushed air past the fear; my mouth opened; my body pleaded for help because his could not move.
“Get your hands up here, you’re crushing him!” I shouted past the tears welling up in my eyes, past the sobs hiding in my throat. “Don’t let go of it!” I shouted, suppressing sobs with a great gasping mouth. They shored their shoulders up against it once again. I fought an incredible anger as I began to pray. “Dear Lord, don’t let that happen again!” I begged. After my personal hope for the best was damp with reality, his lifeless, misshapen body was rescued from the horrible position. He was laid on the sand as CPR commands pierced the air. We shouted his name from the sidelines.
“C’mon, don’t give up, keep trying,” we all shouted to the lifeless lump lying before us.
Someone from his squad yelled “Come on, don’t give up, we love you man.” I was soaking in a mixture of sweat and sand. I watched as his platoon sergeant and lieutenant worked in a concert of chest compressions, breaths, and an occasional whisper of encouragement to the Private’s body. The adrenaline raced through me, and I began to shake.
As I walked up the dune, someone asked why they had disobeyed our captain’s order not to take the vehicles up the dune to our observation post. Somebody else said their lieutenant gave them the ok to do it because they were cold. My shakes of fear turned to a shudder of disgust.
About thirteen minutes into my newest emotion, the helicopter flew from the darkness; it flew right to us; then it kept flying into the darkness, missing our location. About twenty-five nerve-wracking minutes later, it touched down. His body was put onto the craft, and it lifted off. I found some shred of solace from knowing that, like his soul, his body was being lifted into the heavens.
My lieutenant’s driver came up the hill to where I was crouched on the crest of the sand dune. Private McPherson cupped his hand over my shoulder and asked, “Are you ok Hadji?” I shook my head. I took short quick wisps of air to keep from breaking down in front of a junior soldier.
Inside, my soul sobbed, shook, quivered and sniffled. The war was weeks away, but I had already been “blooded.” In the absence of complications such as enemy soldiers’ bullets, land mines, and artillery, I prepared myself for the tragedies that could form in my very near future; I spent about an hour alone on the dune, quietly sobbing, praying, hoping, and searching.
I took a long, slow, deep breath as I made my way down the slope. I strode silently through the sand to my tent; pulling the flap open, I crossed into the deep, dark blackness.

This is why I love writing. I can bring you to the same place, the same emotions as I had.
In this story, if you thought he died, I brought you to the same place as I was that horrible night. He managed to live, but when he left, he had been under CPR sustainment for so long, we didn't know if there was going to be brain damage. We didn't hear much about him after he was evacuated. Then about six months after we got back (like a year after the accident) he showed up at Fort Hood, Texas. He still had to use a walker or cane and he was still re-learning how to walk normally, but he smiled. I smiled. I didn't say much. It was enough to know that someone had escaped the ultimate sacrifice and his family still had him.
His Platoon Sergeant and Lieutenant got Bronze stars for saving him, even though the lieutenant is the one who gave them permission to drive up a sand dune, against our Captain's Standing Orders. North side of dunes no good, wind blows south----->>>
south side is a gentle slope down---->>>>>>>>>>>>
North side is very steep and easy to tip over on. That's how come we weren't supposed to be driving on any sand dunes.
This is one of many things that go on every day in the military life. I just turned 39 and I count myself lucky that I'm relatively injury free from all the fun stuff I did in over 11 years in the military.