Zambos Iraqi Adventure

God this feels so wonderful. As I lie here on my new orthopedic mattress, I can feel my body sinking deeply into a state of absolute bliss as the mattress gently conforms to my weary body. My head rests peacefully upon a soft plump cushiony pillow and I love it. The open window next to me allows a mild temperate breeze that cascades a wave of pleasure over my entire body. I playfully wiggle my toes, take in a deep breathe and exhale a sigh of relief. It’s funny because fourteen months ago I wouldn’t have appreciated such moments as this. Things are very different for me now.

It’s rather strange, it doesn’t seem like I’ve been gone for fourteen months. It’s as if someone had taken my life starting from the moment I left, cut out all that was in between and spliced it back together to this point in time. However, everything in between did happen and it’s had an impact on my life.

A blossoming career as a director of a cable network station is what I had fourteen months ago. Nine years of hard work resulted in directing live television shows, a videotape series release on the national market and a chance to bring me one step closer to my childhood dream; a feature film. It was all so well organized and defined in my head.

It all changed on a particular Tuesday afternoon while working at my desk. I suddenly received a phone call from my friend Gary Schmitt who also happened to be my Army National Guard Commander. “Prepare to go to Iraq” he said. I didn’t quite get it, my mind refused to process those words, then my conscious and subconscious mind started to cloud up in confusion.

When the cloud cleared on Friday, I found myself bidding farewell to my coworkers and my feature film. On Sunday I had all my personal gear packed and ready to go. My family with tears in their eyes cheered me on and told me not to worry about a thing. Yeah right. One moment of life and zeal had emerged into uncertainty and fear. Now there I was standing before my soldiers that bright early Monday morning in military uniform, as the first sergeant of a twenty seven personal unit. Mission; provide force protection assessments for a military installation in Iraq.

Damn, retirement, how many times had I contemplated retirement from the Armed forces? Twenty four years of active and National Guard duty had been enough for me. From the Carter administration’s economic madness, the Cold war threat, an eight month Kosovo tour and a host of other crazy events the Army is good at tossing at you. I was only seven months away from what I was sure to be my final exit. I even used that as my pretext to excuse myself from the war, but Uncle Sam didn’t play that game as I reluctantly signed the involuntary extension.

Four weeks we spent at our mobilization site, training and equipping ourselves to go to war. We hurried to get certified so we could bolt to Iraq and get into the war. But that didn’t happen. The base was so packed with units trying to head to Iraq also that it created a bottleneck. So we sat and waited and waited until eventually the orders to fly to Kuwait arrived and off we went.

My future seemed uncertain as I sat in the plane with my weapon, body armor and other gear. I gazed out the aircraft window into the night sky while noticing the peculiar red hue image of Cairo Egypt down below. I had always dreamed of visiting the Middle East, but not this way.

When the commercial airplane finally reached Kuwaiti airspace, the aircraft’s exterior lights were cut off by the pilots. Inside the flight attendants scrambled to shut off the interior lights and pull down the shades. We were to fly in under the cover of darkness for security sakes. It was one of the most eerie feelings as everyone in the darkened plane was quiet as it made its approach and landed.

No longer were there the safe confines of an American dream land, where we enjoy the delicacies of restaurants, Sunday’s in the park and shopping to our hearts content. Instead, Kuwait greeted us with blistering desert heat, battling through sandstorms, waiting two hours in line to eat chow and sleeping on hard metal framed military cots.

Camp New York was a military staging base positioned somewhere in the hot white sandy desert of Kuwait. It housed a vast number of tents, vehicles and tons of supplies. We were to collect our equipment that had been shipped by boat and wait for confirmation to move forward into Iraq. I would spend many days sitting by the edge of the perimeter in amazement as our U.S forces moved countless numbers of convoys consisting of tanks, hummer’s and supply trucks.

I tried to make the best out of the situation and worked feverishly to keep myself and my soldiers motivated. We once again had to sit and wait for orders to push forward into Iraq. I would wonder what awaited us on the other side.

Little did I realize that what awaited me at that moment would end up being one of the most horrific times in my entire life. I was in our tactical operation center after a meeting we had just finished, straightening out a makeshift 4 x 8 wood panel we used as a conference table and a bunch of MRE cardboard boxes that were our chairs. As I walked around the table to straighten up some papers, I suddenly felt a rush of sand particles tear into my airway. My body instinctively dry heaved violently trying to force the particles back out. My eyes were instantly obscured by a massive flow of tears and my nasal passageways were also under attack. The sand made its way into my lungs and seemed to leave a blazing trail of fire inside of me. I raced outside gasping for fresh air, hoping that it would clear, but it was hopeless.
From then on my evenings became sleepless nightmares. I had non stop irritated coughing that felt like my lungs were being torn to shreds. My temperature would reach one hundred and three degrees.

This ill condition accompanied me when we finally made our push into Iraq. I had not seen the medics because I was afraid they wouldn’t let me go with my soldiers. The drive would be one of the most miserable times of my entire life. My exhaustion could not be remedied due to my inability to sleep at all. As we drove through the desert, all I could do is cringe in my seat miserably as I hacked and coughed while trying to breath through the dust filled air. The heat was so intense that I couldn’t hold my weapon in my bare hand; it was as if I were living in hell’s infernal furnace. I thought that for sure I would be driven to madness.

It took three days to finally reach our new home. We were assigned to one of the 4th Infantry division’s field artillery units at a base just north of Baghdad called Al Taji. It had once belonged to Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, but now it was ours. During our first few days in Taji, we basically had to get the division artillery to acknowledge that we existed while at the same time trying to make our living area habitable. I tell you that between flea infestation, mosquito invasions, rats wanting to hang out and killer dogs looking to make you their next meal, life on Taji was not looking to good.

Although I was busy trying to get our area squared away, the illness still had its claws on me. The fact that I hadn’t slept in over two weeks finally came crashing down on me one day. It became apparent that as I started to see and hear things that weren’t really there, I was getting worse. Finally I lied down and prayed to God for relief. “End this now” I said. “I can’t go on like this anymore.” The whole situation of being away from my family, having a respiratory system that felt like it was made of rough sandpaper and the lack of sleep finally came crashing on me. I fell to my cot and cowered like a helpless child. I began to cry as I heard voices telling me that all was lost, that I needed to go home. “But I can’t go home” I responded. These internal arguments led me to a nervous breakdown. I cried out loud in desperation. “God help me!” and then my left arm did something that freaked me out. It began to tremble uncontrollably. I watched in horror as I watched part of my body involuntarily do something that I wasn’t telling it to do.

I realized that I really needed to do something quick or else. It then dawned on me that I needed to relax. So I tried to do deep breathing exercises that I had learned years ago. As I lay flat I could feel that my body was extremely rigid and tight. I tried to take a deep relaxing inhale, but when I drew in the air into my lungs, I felt a powerful jolt of electrical current shoot though my body. I leapt up out of my cot terrified. I had never in my life gone through such an experience as this. Shaken, but defiant I lay back down and tried it again. I began to inhale deeply and once again a jolt of electrical current shot through me. I didn’t flinch this time, I forced the breath deep down into my lungs. I took it slow and easy, eventually I made progress and the trembling gradually stopped. I did the breathing exercise for about an hour and to my delight I discovered that I had fallen asleep for about two hours. That night I was able to sleep for five hours, eventually within a few more days I had recovered. It was the beginning of an adventure that was full of surprises.
One day while on a mission we drove in a four vehicle convoy along the road cautiously noting the actual beauty of the Fertile Crescent at a moment of reflection that we were in the land of biblical history, the curious sound of whizzing metal alerted us that something was occurring. When people ask if you’ve ever been shot at and ask you how you know. It’s fairly easy. The sound of the bullet whizzes through one ear, whizzes through your brain, then whizzes right out the other ear. After that moment settles in, and then what comes out is panic, terror and screams. Normally your convoy tears out of the kill zone and for a few hundred meters, regroups and figures out a way to find the bad guys, but that didn’t happen. Instead we came to a dead halt. This was not good for me because I was on the side that the bullets came from and since our humvee’s weren’t reinforced armor we had removed the doors. I was now literally a sitting duck. I started to hyperventilate as I imagined the assailant readjusting his fire by lowering his barrel and squeezing the trigger. That in turn would launch another lead based bullet right between my eyes. I was stuck because I didn’t know if I should get out of the vehicle and be risk being stranded by the convoy’s rapid escape or stay right where I was a sitting duck. I finally looked over and saw our commander at the lead vehicle outside the vehicle barking out commands on the radio. That was all I needed and so

As I worked out with my buddy Dave, on the bench press carving my body into a hard mass of chiseled steel we finished up with a set of pushups. As I joked with him on how the college girls were going to worship him back home a sudden bright flash of light distracted my attention followed with such an immense explosion that the force knocked me to the floor. As I scrambled on the floor trying to figure out if it had been the explosive ordinance detachment whose mission was to destroy weapons and explosives that had been collected up from areas within Iraq or if had been the very first mortar attack. It was quickly answered when I heard the whistling sound of the next round going over my head and impacting this time 200 meters to the front of me. The screaming voices of “INCOMING!” confirmed my fears. Soldiers scrambled for their body armor and Kevlar helmet as did I. Moving quickly I rushed to the tactical operations center to monitor the radio traffic from our higher command. Inside were master sergeant Mapes, specialist Lane and staff sergeant Gomez the three females from our unit who were working the night shift. The three were together on the floor on their knees huddled together. I quickly joined them on the floor and asked for a status report. Our reactionary force was scrambling to move towards the area that was considered the point of launce. I looked over the soldiers and said “There’s nothing we can do but pray.” So I began a prayer, a deep prayer, and an intense prayer that was laser focused as the mortar rounds continued to impact around us. After moments of intense barrages of impact rounds, it was deafly silent. The radio continued to blare with the voice of Gunner mike the soldier in charge of operations of the base. The reactionary force was rolling but because it was so quiet, it was certain that the bad guys had already packed up and left the area, which was to be the case when all was sorted out.
I think of all the situations that have arisen during my deployment in Iraq that have greatly impacted me is attending the memorials for our fallen comrades. A total of nine soldiers died during this time and I’ve attended a total of five memorials. Inside the room there is a somber atmosphere as at the head of the room is positioned the boots of the soldier with his m-16 upright between them barrel down and the Kevlar helmet resting on top of the butt stock of the weapon. During the course of the ceremony the commander and best friends will reminiscent on the soldier’s life with them. Then the most painful part of the whole darn ceremony, the part that causes deep pain within my soul, they do a roll call of a number of soldiers who are present then the final one is the soldier who is no longer with them, so when they call the soldiers name it’s silent, he calls again, silence, he calls one final time to no avail. The soldier is no longer there. The bugler outside plays taps and then the 40 gun salute completes the service. To this day it causes deep emotional distress to remember them.

I’m home now back to my wonderful life as an American professional. I go about my daily life and it almost seems as though I had never left home, but somehow there’s a difference in how I see things, in how I share things. It’s an amazing life I’ve had and hopefully more exciting adventures come my way, but not through the eyes of a soldier because I’ve called it quits after twenty five years of service. Between facing death, befriending those that would never return home and a working with a nation that doesn’t know if we’re liberators or occupiers I’m in a stand still but I know in my heart through seeing the smile on peoples faces that all in all what we’ve done is a good thing and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.