Excerpted from "Operation Homecoming" edited by Andrew Carroll. Copyright 2006 by Southern Arts Foundation. Reprinted by arrangement with The Random House Publishing Group.

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From "Here, Bullet"

	During a medevac flight, Capt. Ed Hrivnak, instructor flight nurse in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, gives morphine to a soldier with a partial leg amputation. Click photo for larger image.

It will be a long week of searching,
where the open fires are fed kindling
and tender, a cook's hands lifting the bodies
of fish, supple and wet, made of silver,
to weigh them on scales there, outside.
And when the cook sees me watching on,
and our eyes meet, grim and quiet, we know
we will both be changed by this
forever, that the green ferris wheel
out on the island across from us
will remain frozen by rust
like a broken clock, and weeds
will overtake the amusement park,
and all of this will remain unspoken.
The history books will get it wrong.
Newspapers will get it wrong, too.
There will be no words of the pilot
floating unconscious downriver, the sparks
fading above him as his friend swam
to save him, a man who could have
made it to shore, though both would drown
in that same cold and unstoppable river.
No one ever promised this would be easy.
Still, no one ever said just how hard
this would be, watching how the river rolls on.

-- Sgt. Brian Turner, U.S. Army

Medevac Missions

Our patient load is 11/7 +2 and a duty passenger. That means 11 litter patients, seven walking wounded, and two attendants. Some can take care of themselves, some need lots of help. All have been waiting for us for a long time and need pain medicine and antibiotics. The patients include:

Gunshot wound to the stomach, partial amputations from a land mine, injury/struck by a tank, blast injuries, shrapnel injuries, and dislocations. The patients are mainly from the Marines and 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles). Many were involved in ambushes.

One trooper confides in me that he witnessed some Iraqi children get run over by a convoy. He was in the convoy and they had strict orders not to stop. If a vehicle stops, it is isolated and an inviting target for a rocket-propelled grenade. He tells me that some women and children have been forced out onto the road to break up the convoys so that the Iraqi irregulars can get a clear shot. But the convoys do not stop. He tells me that dealing with that image is worse than the pain of his injury.

These Marines and soldiers are good at waiting. They see we are doing our best and rarely complain. One soldier, trying to be patient, went too long between morphine shots. He tried to gut it out. He did not want to slow the loading of the airplane.

We loaded him on the bottom rack and he immediately grabbed onto the litter above him. I looked down at him and saw his knuckles turn white with a death grip on the litter crossbeam. Tears poured down his face but he did not make a sound. I grabbed the primary flight nurse and told him to give this kid some of the good stuff. The nurse said he would get the morphine when we were done loading the rest of the litter patients.

I can't blame this nurse. It was his first real casualty mission in the war. It is easy to lose sight of one patient and get caught up in what is going around you. I told the nurse to toss me a syringe of morphine and I would take care of him myself.

-- Capt. Ed Hrivnak,
U.S. Air Force Reserve
and a Pittsburgh native

Lost in Translation

"We work with a lot of Turks and Iraqis, especially Kurds. I wish that every deployed soldier had a chance to meet them because they are very different from the Arabs in the south. The Kurds love us.

I started to learn Kurdish to keep score in volleyball. Eventually I learned about two hundred words and phrases, but it wasn't so easy because they have sounds Americans can't pronounce. They can't say "left" or "six," for some reason, so I guess we're even.

One of our guys brought his guitar around to the guard shacks and played some American music for them. Note to Enrique Iglesias: Iraqis know you. For what it's worth, you rank right up there with Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Shakira.

Sometimes they'd try to join in. You haven't lived until you've seen a bunch of Iraqi soldiers, complete with AK-47s, sitting around and singing with gusto as they mangle the Beatles' "Let It Be."

"When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speak-ing words of wisdom ... Little Pea."

They really got into it.

"Little Pea, Little PEA! Little Pea, yeah, Little Pea ... Whisper words of wisdom, Little Pea."

That was a good day.

--Sgt. Sharon D. Allen, U.S. Army

"The Smell of Fresh Paint"

They hit while I was in the shower. I had been fine until this time not really reacting to what I had just seen and the little run I took to call for an ambulance. And that's when I went into shock myself or I did what they say is called coming down off the adrenaline high.

It was all I could do to keep my little legs strong, but I finally just gave into the little trembles and just sat down in the shower and cried. A few moments before, I had realized that I had now washed my body two times and didn't know why the first time wasn't good enough. ...

Since the attack, I have gone back once to see the area that was just barely lit by sunlight at dusk yesterday morning. I found several pairs of men's sandals that were just blown about like they were nothing.

And of course, pools of blood, some dark and brown, some still red and fresh, reminded me of the tragedy that occurred earlier that morning.

I saw all the cans of fresh paint that were stacked outside the building. The Koreans had hired these three Iraqi men to fix up the place for the Korean Embassy to move in. Guess the Koreans are going real estate shopping, huh?

But most of all, the veterans I spoke to last night told me I will probably smell paint sometime in the future, and it will remind me of this day, this horrible event.

-- Sgt. Tina Beller,
U.S. Army Reserve