“Yeeaaahhh … might have gone a bit too deep, but she’s definitely gone, your hula girl with the grass skirt that undulates her hips when you flex your bicep.”
“Rich, you were supposed to erase the pirate ship and anchor with ‘Mom’ on it!”
“Oh, those are gone too, Geo; they’re all gone!”
And it took a while to heal, yes it did, but all-in-all Rich did exactly what I asked him to do and is to this, this day of our Lord and Heavenly Father, my very favorite Green Beret Medic!
Oh, I have laid on a cot in a tent while my team medic dug in my sedated arm to extract a component of a 40mm fragmentation grenade that I had inadvertently exploded against a heavy branch in a tree several yards in front of me. I had, in rank amateur fashion, failed to account for overhead clearance before firing an M-79. The mud around me was pocked with frag spatters as one slapped me hard on my upper arm. I took a look at it and vomited in the mud beside me, then kept firing, paying new notice to the tree to my front, mind you.
“Hey Doc, Geo got hit by a frag in a … Well, let’s just say a blue-on-blue incident this afternoon.”
“Bring him in and lay him on this cot,” beckoned the Doc as he raked everything off the wooden folding travel desk, one each, OD Green in color, and laid out his medical kit. Doc dug away in my arm, all the while going on about his Grammy Merline, who was a nurse with the Red Cross during the Second World War:
“Ya know, Geo, it was practically her dying wish that I become a nurse like her. You know, help people and all. Me? I just couldn’t stomach the thought of being a “nurse,” you know — woman’s work and all. Green Beret Medic, now that sounded better to me; I wanted to become a Green Beret Medic, you know?”
I recall a longer-than-pregnant pause, then finally with a sleepy face and voice:
“I’m sorry, doc, I guess I’m supposed to say something now like: ‘That’s fascinating …’”
Yes, sir, some jabbing, slicing, and the “clink” of a frag dropping into an emesis basin later, and I was good as new, free to go back out and blow my own head off if I were so inclined.
The Iceman Cometh: Field Surgery with a Special Forces Medic
“I’ll text Frosty now and tell him who you are and give him your number,” Nick told me as he punched away on his iPhone.
Within seconds, I got a text response from the Iceman, the name I chose to give him other than Frosty, a name that matches better to an imaginary kids’ snowman at Christmas than a Green Beret Medic.
“I can be at Jackson’s old gym in a half hour,” the Iceman told me
“Duh, duh, d’I can be there in just under a half hour if I leave right now,” I stammered, then bolted out the front door to my car.
The Iceman was an old-school Green Beret Medic from the Vietnam era. He had not been drafted into a tour in Vietnam, though, and spent the war with the Tenth Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Bad Toltz, Germany.
When I arrived at Jackson’s gym there was only a beefy KTM dirt bike parked in the lot. That was not unusual as some of Jackson’s UFC fighters continued to exercise at this gym. I figured the bike to be one of theirs. Seeing as how I was a tad early, I let myself in and had a seat to check my messages.
Then, in stepped the Iceman: lean, dressed in functional rugged attire, and extending a hand in greeting. He was in his sixties but looked like he could still mop the floor with a disrespectful sort if necessary. We greeted and slung our mandatory vetting small talk until satisfied, then the Iceman cut to the chase:
“So, tell me, what troubles you; what is this problem I was told about?”
I explained and showed the Iceman the incision. He described what he thought to be the malady and why. He offered that he could cut down in and have a look. Without hesitation, I accepted the offer.
“My medical kit is in my truck, otherwise we could do it right here,” he sighed. “So, is that your KTM parked outside?” I quizzed. “Yeah, it’s mine; too nice a day not to ride. I tell you what: I’ll take care of a few things this afternoon, and I’ll give you a call about 1700hrs with the time and place for the surgery.”
That was all the more it took from him. That is what I was used to: right here and right now, what’s the sense in putting something off if your heart is pure and you mean what you say? I headed back home to take the next few hours to work my human traffic hunt until the Iceman called (if he called), and he did call. He sent the address to his place, indicating it would be more conducive to operate there since patrons of Jackson’s gym were coming and going.
I arrived at his place in roughly 15 minutes.
“Pick a couch and take a seat (there were three),” the Iceman offered as he collected his medical kit. He splayed out a set of scalpels, forceps, tweezers, scissors, and I-don’t-know-what’s on the coffee table next to the sofa. He slipped a headlamp onto his forehead and switched it on. It seemed a little pallid.
“I’m going to swap out these batteries,” he indicated as he left the room. Returning, his LED headlamp burned clear and bright.
I lay back on the couch as he snapped on rubber gloves and swabbed the target area on my gut with betadine solution.
“You might feel a few sticks as I numb the area with a topical,” he advised. I did feel at least one of the injections quite smartly, and it brought me back to the days of my hospital stay in November of 2017. How I thought nothing in the way of prods, pokes, sticks, and injections could ever phase me again — and I was right. I shifted my attention to the TV that the Iceman had thoughtfully tuned to the world news.
The Iceman momentarily flashed a scalpel in a Dexter sort of way.
“Can you feel that?” He queried, and he must have been poking my gut in trial, though I felt nothing. “Nope, not a thing,” and the word news continued.
“Just as I thought,” announced the Iceman as he held up a snarl of suture clasped in the tip of his tweezers. “Left behind by the surgeon. It happens, and honestly, I’m not at all surprised,” the Iceman confided.
All his babbling was making it hard for me to hear the news.
The Iceman finished up, cleaned up, and closed the wound with some snappy bandaging. I sat up and again felt nothing. He gave me a loading dose of an antibiotic and enough more to last me twice a day for the next three days.
“What should or shouldn’t I do, Iceman. Can I do sit-ups?”
“You are fine to do absolutely anything you want,” he affirmed.
I left the Iceman’s operating room within minutes to begin the post-op phase of my surgery. That consisted of several stops on the Albuquerque strip to engage in persistent stares at some known chokepoints for human trafficking. If I had just endured a surgery, even a minor one, I forgot about it completely as I became again routinely absorbed in the Human Traffic hunt.
I am put in memory of back on my A-Teams with my medical woes, what those teams were like with two men training in medical practices that include minor surgical procedures. Their skill and fortitude are only hampered by the nerve to allow them to try, yet they are professionally bound by their obligation not to risk your health at their expense.
“Can do, will do, if not now then when, if not me then who?”
That’s the attitude of the men of the Green Berets: keeping America free at monumental risk to themselves since 1952.
De Oppresso Liber
By God and with honor,
geo sends
Photos courtesy of Wikipedia and Greg Jackson
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