Reality Check

Today I was on my way to the PX to buy some foot powder and browse the nick-nacks to see if anything caught my eye that someone back home might enjoy when I heard the familiar sound of a Blackhawk helicopter overhead. This is an extremely common occurance out here and as such I've grown accustomed to their flight patterns. What caught my attention about this was that this bird wasn't flying in the pattern. When that happens it usually means that it's a medevac. Sure enough, this one had a big red cross on a white background stenciled on the bottom and sides of it. This wasn't the first medevac bird to fly over on it's way to the nearby hospital, but as I watched this one fly over I was overcome with a great sense of sorrow and sympathy for whomever was being flown to the hospital. I stopped there where the bird flew over me and said a prayer asking God to take care of the person on board.

Following shortly after the medevac was a pair of Apache attack helicopters. You can't imagine how much I wanted to be one of those pilots so that I could find the badguy responsible for injuring the person on the medevac bird. Violent images of what I would have liked to do to this particular badguy crossed through my mind for quite some time. It's hard to not go into detail about exactly what I would have liked to have done to the badguy. Every time I see a medevac fly over I always say a prayer for the person on board, but there was something about this one in particular that caught me off-guard and seeing the Apache so shortly afterward really got me going. I still have quite strong feelings about the whole thing.

If you've been paying attention to what I've written, you'll notice that I never assumed that the person being medevaced was a US troop. Our medics care for any injured person be they US or coalition military, Iraqi Army/Police, civilian, even the bad guys. Try this on for size:

Read the article "Soldier gets shot and lives to save the life of the insurgent who shot him"
Watch the video "Soldier survives gunshot"