Hunter S. Thompson created a brand of journalism known as "Gonzo journalism." It's a style of journalism where reporters involve themselves in the action to a degree that they become the central figures of their own stories. I have never been a big fan of this style of writing - for my job at least. But I am a firm believer that if I want to write about something, I should at least experience it to some degree.
Now granted, you don't need to subject yourself to near death in a fiery building in order to describe it to your readers. They all know what "hot" feels like and can imagine, on their own, how miserable smoke inhalation may be. But in other cases, I think it's important to actually DO something before you tell anyone about it.
This is where the mission of 2-18 FAR's Combat Search and Rescue team comes in to play. This group of 30+ soldiers is deployed from Ft. Sill, Okla., to Djibouti for the better part of 15 months. And their mission, should it come down to it, is to pull Americans out of harm's way when things go wrong - terribly wrong.
I wanted to write a feature on these guys and what they train for. So I decided to join them on a few of their training missions. Little did I know that my version of "observer" was vastly different from theirs. They asked me to go with them on Sunday night to take part in a simulation (this is a KEY word - because to me, simulation means pretend; to them, it's a different beast all together). I met them on the flight line and geared up (flak vest, helmet, goggles, face protection, night vision goggles, and so on) and they start giving out assignments. The drill calls for four "injured personnel" to be recovered from an aircraft "accident" in the middle of the desert. And guess who one of the "victims" will be?
So I troop out to a running CH-53 helicopter with my three Army "friends" and off we go. We fly for 15 minutes and I realize it's getting awfully dark and I have no real idea where we are... And then we land - on what looks like the surface of the moon. There is nothing out there but lava rocks and powdery dirt. With the bird still running, we're sent out the back and told to start walking for about 100 meters and then lay down and act "injured" - and they take off.
So now I'm in the middle of a desert, in the dark, with three people I have known for a whopping 45 minutes. I think my dad might have warned me about this at some point in my adolescence, but it's all a little vague now. So we start walking - okay, they're "walking" and I'm half running to keep up. We walk for what to ME seems like a few miles but they assure me they have been counting and we're where we're supposed to be.
Out of nowhere I hear the sound of a helicopter coming over the mountain - and then I see gun fire! Yes, SEE. Because the 50 cal in the helo is shooting tracer rounds - about 25 meters from where we are.
I have one "IR" chem light on me. This is a glow stick (like the ones kids have on Halloween) that allows the guys in the air to see you on the ground through their night vision. At this point, I broke open several more, cracked them and starting sticking them anywhere I could find space - just to be SURE the boys in the air could see me.
After 20 minutes of laying down fire, with dust flying everywhere, 15 people came out of NOWHERE to rescue us. It was like a scene from a bad movie - guys in black carrying weapons advancing out of the smoke and dust. They did their "thing" to make sure we were who we said we were, picked us up (literally) and threw us back into a helicopter (the same one that dropped them off, but not the one that was still flying over shooting 50 caliber rounds uncomfortably close to where I was).
After what seemed like a LONG flight back to base, they said "hey, we're going to the range on Tuesday. Want to come blow things up with us?" I guess I was still shell shocked because before I knew it, my head was nodding "yes" even as my mind was screaming "YOU IDIOT - THEY TRIED TO KILL YOU ONCE.... GET AWAY...."
So Tuesday morning, at the crack of dawn (these boys like the dark I guess), I head out to the middle of the desert (yet again) with these guys. This time, we're going to throw grenades (by we, I mean me too, but I took photos so you can all see the proof - I really DO throw like a girl!), fire the AT-4 (the AT part stands for Anti Tank) and the 9mm.
Grenades make a MUCH bigger boom than I ever thought. And the whole John Wayne pull with your teeth and throw shtick? NOT SO MUCH!!! It's funny how your bravado tends to wane just a little when there is a threat of blowing yourself up!
The AT-4 has an amazing concussion...it jammed not one but two of my cameras (and these are GOOD cameras). But when they'd fired the 12th of 18 of these shoulder-mounted rockets, we had a dud. This means it fired but didn't go "boom." So now the nice (yet totally crazy) boys from EOD got to walk out to the middle of the desert, find this 84 caliber round of unexploded KABOOM and drop some C4 on it.
It was at about this point in the day that I realized the people I was writing about are straight crazy... All of them... and that just as I don't need to light myself on fire to image that it would hurt, I also don't need to follow the boys from CSAR around anymore to know that their job is SCARY!!!! So I will sit down in the next day or two and finish the feature on them. But I will complete it without anymore "hands on" experiences. Because I don't need to include myself in their story to the point that I become one of the central figures in some painful "training" accident!
In all honesty though... If it does go wrong one day and someone has to come get me, I hope like hell it's the boys of the 2-18's Charlie battery. I have never met a group of people more dedicated to what they do or more willing to put it all on the line to make sure we all get home safely. So may hats off to them. They're better men than me!
