Dirt and body odor- the smells assaulted my nose when I stepped off the plane into hell. It was May 2009, and my unit had just touched down at Bagram Air Force Base (BAF) in the war-torn country of Afghanistan. It had taken days to get here and the traveling was nowhere near complete. Standing on the tarmac all you could see were the heat waves rising off the tar and the sun reflecting on the sand that was everywhere. My unit had traveled for over a week and we were all exhausted, smelly and homesick. We were staying at Bagram for a week for training before flying to another base then finally to the Forward Operating Base (FOB) that we would call home for the next year. Training went quickly for us and by the end of the day we were so tired that even the ground shaking sounds of the outgoing artillery was not enough to rouse us from the exhausting sleep we would fall in to. In what seemed like no time at all we were on our plane heading to our home…show more content… We fell into a routine and life became easier to deal with now that we had each other to confide in. In September I experienced the worst day of my life. Standing in the courtyard of the FOB I heard a scream from the gate and immediately took off running. The interpreters (terps) were trying to get the story from a man while myself and my NCO proceeded to lay the body of a five-year-old girl on the ground. We began our triage and treatment as we were getting the story from the terps. As I was checking the child I realized the story was inconsistent with her injuries. The father was claiming the child was hit by his vehicle but there was no road rash, no external injuries on her at all, until we checked her head. Once we realized what was wrong there was nothing we could do. I held that little girl in my arms as she took her last breath, covered her with a sheet before placing her in the mans vehicle and proceeded to lose my
