The ambush scene was chaotic. We held the south end of the site, while the other convoy attempted to find its guys.
After about ten to fifteen minutes they found the missing truck. While this was going on, we lost internal contact between the two convoys. Because we were sitting in an exposed intersection, with no one talking to us, we finally decided to move to the north part of town. When you lose communications, it gets very confusing very fast. I got my gunner to use hand and arm signals to get the other truck in the intersection to follow me. We pulled through the ambush site, found the rest of the trucks from the convoys, and loaded the wounded guys on to the truck.
We stopped and triaged the wounded to find out how bad their injuries were. It turned out that the other guys were suffering only minor wounds. About that time the Apaches arrived. We told battalion we didn’t need MEDEVAC. We loaded up and drove for forty-five minutes back to Speicher with Apaches giving over watch. We left the deceased soldier in the Humvee right where he was. The battalion commander from the infantry battalion came down and met us at the one bridge over the Tigris and led us into the base. Guys from the Combat Support Hospital (CSH) came out to remove the casualty from the truck and start processing the body.
Afterwards the guys told me that we were under fire the whole time. I remember being shot at, but it didn’t seem like a large volume of fire, and it didn’t appear to be very accurate fire. My memory only vaguely recalls that part of the engagement.
The tough part is the thinking about it after the fact. I’m filled with thoughts like It should have been me… . Why did God spare me? The guy who was killed was twenty-eight years old. He had a wife and two kids. It was his last mission. He was going home after that one mission. It was a difficult thing to swallow.
“Staff Sgt. Michael L. Deason, 28, of Farmington, MO, died on Aug 31, in Ad Dwar, Iraq, of injuries suffered when a grenade detonated on his vehicle during combat operations. Deason was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY.”
Death fills us with grief. God of all comfort, please give an extra measure of your comfort to those who have lost a loved one in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader war on terrorism.
“But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17)