I'm Surrounded (A Wartime Story)

I’m Surrounded

It’s 0100 in the morning and we are flying five miles above the ground ready to jump so that we can accomplish our mission. My name is Sergeant Barrett A. Schmidt of the United States Army. I am a Special Forces operative on a mission to usurp the Iraqi Taliban. Our mission is set and our objective clear, We have to capture Al’Quehas Hussein to destroy the Taliban government.

The flashing red light awakens me from my daydream that I had fallen into on the flight to the jump zone. We all gather our gear and shuffle up to the bay door awaiting the signal to jump fearlessly into the pitch black darkness. We know that there is a town that the Taliban government runs out of five miles below us. The signal comes; I jump into the black nothingness to a destination known only by the crewman on the plane. As I’m in the freefall I play out my mission in my head. This is a mission that we have done numerous times to achieve the victory that is needed.

A little beep in my ear awakens me, I had daydreamed again. I’ve got to stop doing that; it’s going to get me killed. On instinct, my body has reacted to that beep like muscle memory to open my parachute. Oh God. I go into a spiral as my main parachute is tangled, I have to react fast or I’m dead. I pull out my knife and cut away the main chute. I gain my stability once again and react again by pulling my spare chute. It opens, now for a safe glide down to the landing zone.

As I land, I realize that the problem I encountered in the air has sent me off course. I’m at least a mile away from everyone else. I sit and wait; hoping that they are looking for me since we can’t make radio contact due to the risk of enemy picking up our frequency. Pop! Pop! Gunfire someone has spotted us and we are in trouble. I take off running towards the gunfire; hoping to find the rest of my team.

It’s 0147. I’ve made contact with my team. I sure am glad I found them. We head off to the north towards our objective. We move silently in a V pattern so that we can move faster and so that we all won’t get blown up by enemy mortar fire. As we approach the town, we are all on edge. This is the first time any American forces have set foot in this place. We have no idea what to expect from the people who inhabit this town. We approach the first building; this isn’t our first time clearing a building. We all stack up against the wall in our set position I am the first man into the building. I feel the tap on my shoulder, making me aware that my team is ready. I signal back so that the number four man knows to come up and be ready to open the door. PFC Neal comes up and checks the door for any booby traps. He sees none and signals to me that he is ready. I nod my head.

As the door comes down, I am rushing into the room checking my set points. The call of “clear” rings out from all the members of my squad. I give the final call of “all clear”. We move through the building looking for any intelligence that may be concealed in this building. We find a report of how many enemy forces currently reside in the town that we are in. We are all awestruck by the number. The ration of them to us is 75 to 1. We are against amazing odds and realize that this mission just got 100 times more difficult. We realize that this mission just turned into a suicide mission, but we are loyal soldiers and will die to complete the mission if we have to.

“Move out,” is the command I give to my team to continue on. As we gather outside to move down the alley, a spotlight comes on and we are all caught in the middle of it. I give the order to run back into the building and lay out suppressive fire. After about 5 mikes (minutes) I have put together an evasive maneuver to escape from this death trap. I quickly run through the plan with each individual of my team. They all understand and prepare to execute the tactic. I move to the other room of the building and set up the charges on the wall to create another exit point. I yell out, “Take cover!” so my men know that the charge is about to go off. As the explosion rings out dust flies everywhere causing a kind of smoke screen for us to exit out of.

We take off running for the next building in dire need of cover because bullets are flying all about us. We stack up on the next building ready to move in fast and deadly to clear the building to us it as cover. One of the other men takes the first man position. We pass the signal forward, and he passes it back. Neal once again moves forward and checks the door for and traps. None were found; he then continued to kick the door in. As the door fell open we rush in I’m behind our first guy ready to clear my objective. We round the corner and our first man gets hit and falls to the ground. I turn right to face the opponent and squeeze the trigger three shots ring out followed by three thumping sounds as the rounds impacted the assailant. I scan the rest of the room to see that it’s clear and that there are no more targets in the room. I call out to the rest of my team “all clear” as they come in PFC Neal who is also our medic grabs our wounded soldier to check his vitals as the other member of our team secures the door. Neal looks up at me after checking the downed soldiers pulse and says, “He’s gone.”

I can’t help but think if I had been one man that it would have been me on the ground dead. That spot was the one I usually was in whenever we did our maneuvers. I come to the realization that we need to keep moving or we are dead. We quickly scan the rest of the building looking for anything that could be of use to us we find some ammo, 3 grenades and some food nothing of real importance. We collect the ammo and grenades and prepare for the next part of our plan. Again I set charges on an exterior wall to create another exit point for the rest of my team. The charge goes off and the three of us rush out when our grenadier gets hit and goes down. Neal and I grab him by his body armor and drag him to cover behind the next building. Our grenadier’s wound is a grizzly sight. The shot had entered the side of his cheek gone through his jaw and clipped the artery in his neck. Neal says to me, “He’s going to bleed to death there’s nothing I can do for him. I thought for a split second of what we were going to do for this soldier who was going to bleed to death at any moment. I figured we can’t do anything to help him but I can give him morphine to ease his passing. I gave him both my dose and his so that he would be oblivious to any pain that he was having. I held his hand as he gripped it until there was no more movement left in his body.

Neal and I continued on with the mission we decided to blown an entry point into the building where Al’Quehas Hussein was said to be. I planted the charges on the back wall of the building and got behind cover just as it went off. Neal and I moved in perfect unison towards the building ready to bring a vengeance to our fallen brothers. We rush into the spray of fire like mad men. I ran into a room and instantly encountered contact. I returned fire placing well aimed shots into each of my targets. Neal comes up beside me having already finished clearing his room. We form up and prepare to rush into the room where are target is. Neal kicks the door in and I am rushing into the room before the door has even hit the ground. I turn pull the trigger at an assailant who is trying to fire upon me. His lifeless body falls to the floor and I turn and face our main target. Hussein is standing in a corner pleading, begging us not to kill him. I tell him in Arabic that we are not here to kill him we are here to capture him and take him back to the U.S. base for questioning.

As we are escorting the target out of the building Neal and I both feel as if this is all over that we have done it. Neal gets on the radio and calls for a hot LZ extraction. We head out through the hole we made in the wall towards the tree line and eventually to our extraction point. We move with haste zigzagging through the woods to escape the gunfire that is coming from many different directions. As we approach a clearing in the woods we lay low awaiting the sound of an American helicopter coming to fly us out.

Its 0434 by the time the helicopter comes into view. As the helicopter approaches Neal and I pull a 360 degree circle of security to insure that there aren’t any enemy forces awaiting us to move into the clearing to take us out like fish in a barrel. The helicopter lands and we both rush towards it with our mission complete and our prisoner in grasp. As we get within ear shot of the airman he greets us heartily knowing all too well the problems we encountered. Neal and I push Hussein up onto the helicopter as the airmen pulls him up and secures him into the restraint. Next I climb onto our ride out of this place and turn to grab Neal’s hand. As I go to pull him onto the helicopter blood spatters my face and body. I noticed with dread that Neal was shot through the neck and was bleeding badly. I grabbed his body and pulled him onto the helicopter as I yelled to the pilot to take off.

The blood keeps flowing even though we have tried everything we can to stop it. Neal is bleeding to death and there is nothing any of us can do about it on the helicopter ride back to the base. Neal suddenly reaches up and grabs my shirt and pulls me close so I can hear him speak. He whispered in my ear, “Tell my family I died a hero.” Even at the success of the overall mission I had lost much that night. I had lost the greatest friends a man could ask for. I was awarded the bronze star and the medal of valor for my sacrifices and leadership that completed the mission. I felt it my duty though after the awards ceremony to talk to Neal’s family myself.

I knocked on the door to the address that was given to me. A beautiful woman opens the door and asks, “May I help you soldier?” I look into her eyes and state, “Ma’am I was with your husband during his last moments of his life and I wanted to share his story with you and I just wanted you to have this.” I take the Medal of Valor off of my dress uniform and hand it to her. I see tears well up in her eyes as she stares at me. She says, “Come in and tell me my husbands story.”