Dr. King had a dream;
Gandhi had a dream;
and yes, even Alice had a dream…
I had a dream last night, and I just can’t seem to reconcile with waking up from it… before I tell you about my dream, take a few seconds to watch this video. You don’t have to watch the whole thing, just know that the people in this video are the same people I served with in Mosul… we are all human, with emotions, and yes: we all have dreams… some never made it back to complete their dreams…
some will.
Now, watch this short video, and I will tell you about my dream…
Sometimes a dream transforms a person, a nation, a generation.
I was on a week-long mission with Charlie Company, Second Platoon, at a remote location helping 1-5 Infantry to settle some local violence. We were called in because there had been numerous bold attempts on American convoys and local police forces. Our mission was to secure the peace, engage the locals and help build police stations.
Things were so bad that on our first hour, one of the up-armored humvee was hit by a foo-gas IED/Bomb. The humvee was cut in half, and I remember hearing on the radio we had one KIA and another was completely amputated below the knees.
At the time, we put news like that in our hip-pocket and simply drove on… there was no time to show any emotion, or to let fear get the best of us… there was only one thing on our minds: the mission.
As soon as our convoy pulled into the Combat Operating Base, we unloaded our gear, hurried through some chow, and gathered for a quick mission to scan the landscape to determine where would be the best position to hold for the night for over-watch and securing the small town.
It seemed like just any other mission, we knocked on doors, asked to come through and search… we accessed residential roofs to get the lay of this land… I simply followed, reciting my ABCs, Airway, Breathing, Circulation…
On one of the rooftop, I was taking a knee enjoying the scene of a peaceful neighborhood. Funny, there was not a single person out on the streets. The generator was not humming, and the air carried a strange tone of silence.
Suddenly, I felt a gush of hot air rush pass my face… I heard a swish and snap behind me…
“DOWN!”
“Doc! Get the FUCK DOWN!”
Then it registered: we are under fire…
The hot air and a swish was a AK round passing my face by inches, and it made a snapping sound behind me against the mud wall…
I will never forget that sound as long as I live… it was a sound echoing my proximity to death… a sound to remind me of the world I live in and the world beyond…
In an instant, I dropped to my stomach, as low as I possibly could… moving my ammo pouch out of the way to get even lower… I crawled to the edge of the roof, against the half-foot high mud-rail along the edges… I looked at the direction of fire… I heard bullets snap against the wall beneath me, and M4 charging behind me…
“It’s coming from the white building across the street!” someone shouted.
“Fire!” someone else yelled.
“I remembered silence after that… deep breath, prone-firing position, in through the nose, hold, trigger… I can smell the gun powder…
I put my M4 on automatic, I pulled my trigger and my life depended on it…
… …
…
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” someone shouted…
“Doc, go with team one across the street…”
I don’t remember running down the stairs… I don’t remember coming around the door to knee next to the corner of a wall.
There were four of us, two by two, we covered and ran… I ran as fast as I could across the street… I ran thinking this is where I will get hit. This is where I take a bullet…
I made it across the street, turned around the corner of a wall surrounding the white building. We entered the main gate, and ran as fast as we could up the few stairs and into the belly of the beast…
Silence…
“Clear!” “Clear!”
Room by room, we checked the building… then, suddenly:
SCREAM!!! Children are screaming!!!
My heart sank, I felt the weight on my back from my first-aids… my vest is getting tighter, I can’t breath…
The next room we reached, there were at least twenty of so kids huddled against a corner. There were two older women, teachers perhaps, leaned against the masses and attempting to protect these kids…
They were young girls… this was a girls school.
I had fired aimlessly on a school… a school where kids were still in classes…
I had pulled the trigger against children…
…
…
I had a dream last night! What you just read was not a dream… it was real… it is part of me, and forever will be…
I had a dream last night about those kids, and the time I dropped to the ground and pulled my trigger, open fired on a school… I had a dream last night and woke up confused about my duty as a human being to the welfare of this nation, of this generation…
Although I was able to justify to myself that I had not known the building was a school, or that there were kids in teh building... We were fired upon, and we returned fire... I came close to death, and that seemed reasonable enough for me to have pulled my trigger...
Last night, my dream was hazy, was confused, was almost a nightmare… I saw the kids through the building walls... and I pulled my trigger anyway... I saw the kids screaming and I saw myself looking through their eyes at us on the rooftop... I saw myself firing my M4 with a blank stare across the street... across the world of the living...
The hard part about a dream is knowing the difference between a that and a nightmare…
That wisdom, my friend, will change the world…
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