Sites compiles the accounts of soldiers, Marines, their families and friends, and also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war (including complicity in a murder) and the redemptive powers of storytelling in arresting a spiraling path of self-destruction.

He learns that war both gives and takes from those most intimately involved in it. Some struggle in perpetual disequilibrium, while others find balance, usually with the help of communities who have learned to listen, without judgment, to the real stories of the men and women it has sent to fight its battles.

Kevin Sites has spent the past decade reporting on global war and disaster for ABC, NBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News. In 2005, he became Yahoo!’s first correspondent and covered every major conflict in the world in a single year for his website, “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.” He is a recipient of the 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism and was chosen as a Harvard University Nieman Journalism Fellow in 2010.

Sites compiles the accounts of soldiers, Marines, their families and friends, and also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war (including complicity in a murder) and the redemptive powers of storytelling in arresting a spiraling path of self-destruction.

He learns that war both gives and takes from those most intimately involved in it. Some struggle in perpetual disequilibrium, while others find balance, usually with the help of communities who have learned to listen, without judgment, to the real stories of the men and women it has sent to fight its battles.

Kevin Sites has spent the past decade reporting on global war and disaster for ABC, NBC, CNN, and Yahoo! News. In 2005, he became Yahoo!’s first correspondent and covered every major conflict in the world in a single year for his website, “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone.” He is a recipient of the 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism and was chosen as a Harvard University Nieman Journalism Fellow in 2010.

“Yep, it’s a pressure pate IED with one yellow jug and a PMN mine.”

Once he gets approval from Battalion and the unit in charge of this particular “battlespace.” Cook plans on sending the robot back in with a few bricks of C4 plastic explosives—and blowing the bomb in place as he says he’s done 50 or 60 times already. But before he gets his chance—and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit) the same as feature in the Academy Awarding Winning film, “The Hurt Locker,”
arrive at the site.

Since the bomb is in a building, protocol is that they will take over the detonation duties—the same way the FBI might take over a criminal investigation from local law enforcement. Cook is not happy—but draws them a picture of the site and hands it over to them.

They accept it wordlessly and move on to their task—while 1st Platoon is told to clear the area—before potentially drawing Taliban fire by being in one place too long.

While it’s hard for Cook and the unit to give up the “BIP,” Gillespie puts it in perspective, “it doen’t matter who blows it as long as it’s gone—and that means an ANA (Afghan National Army) guy doesn’t have to die finding it (the wrong way).”

The unit continues the mission—when a few hours later, another IED is found lying on a culvert by the side of the road. Cook deploys the Talon again—and this time, since there are no building involved, he’s able to get the BIP and destroys the bomb without the “help” of the EOD.

It’s dark by the time the convoy starts heading back to FOB Ramrod, but along the way, Sgt. Dustin Russell who operates the Buffalo’s hydraulic arm, spots a blanket which clearly looks like it’s wrapped around a human body. There is even what looks like a blood-stain, over the area of the head. The driver, Pfc, Brent Hensley stops the vehicle and Russell maneuvers the arm over the blanket.

Bathed in a red interior light, he watches the monitor in front of him, deftly moving the arm into place, spearing the outside edge of the blanket and pulling it upward. As it rises, it slowly unfolds. Everyone watchs as the final fold falls, revealing—nothing. It’s empty. Russell drops it in place and the convoy heads back to base.

When it finally reaches FOB Ramrod it’s 14 hours since they first left the wire — and the odometer reading tells them that in all that time they’ve travelled a total distance of just 23 miles

It’s fact which undescores both the massive effort and cost to secure even a small portion of Afghanistan’s roadways each day, but also, at least for now, the commitment to do so.

After six hours on the road, Afghan National Army soldiers wave down the convoy and tell them about what they believe is a bomb in an abandoned building near the roadside. Staff Sgt. William Cook, a from Waynesville, Missouri — goes to work. Cook is the unit’s BIP or “Blow It in Place” guy. He has six-weeks of extra training in identifying explosive threats and destroying them. While 26-years old, with two deployments to Iraq and this one to Afghanistan, Cook still looks like a high school sophomore—but his formidable skills and knowledge have made him a Company standout. He pulls a $100,000 lawnmower-sized robot, called a Talon, from the back of one of the vehicles, and opens up his hardcase controller behind a mud wall near the house and sends the robot in. Looking at his viewing screen he sees what the robot’s camera has locked onto.

“Yep, it’s a pressure pate IED with one yellow jug and a PMN mine.”

Once he gets approval from Battalion and the unit in charge of this particular “battlespace.” Cook plans on sending the robot back in with a few bricks of C4 plastic explosives—and blowing the bomb in place as he says he’s done 50 or 60 times already. But before he gets his chance—and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit) the same as feature in the Academy Awarding Winning film, “The Hurt Locker,”
arrive at the site.

Since the bomb is in a building, protocol is that they will take over the detonation duties—the same way the FBI might take over a criminal investigation from local law enforcement. Cook is not happy—but draws them a picture of the site and hands it over to them.

They accept it wordlessly and move on to their task—while 1st Platoon is told to clear the area—before potentially drawing Taliban fire by being in one place too long.

While it’s hard for Cook and the unit to give up the “BIP,” Gillespie puts it in perspective, “it doen’t matter who blows it as long as it’s gone—and that means an ANA (Afghan National Army) guy doesn’t have to die finding it (the wrong way).”

The unit continues the mission—when a few hours later, another IED is found lying on a culvert by the side of the road. Cook deploys the Talon again—and this time, since there are no building involved, he’s able to get the BIP and destroys the bomb without the “help” of the EOD.

It’s dark by the time the convoy starts heading back to FOB Ramrod, but along the way, Sgt. Dustin Russell who operates the Buffalo’s hydraulic arm, spots a blanket which clearly looks like it’s wrapped around a human body. There is even what looks like a blood-stain, over the area of the head. The driver, Pfc, Brent Hensley stops the vehicle and Russell maneuvers the arm over the blanket.

Bathed in a red interior light, he watches the monitor in front of him, deftly moving the arm into place, spearing the outside edge of the blanket and pulling it upward. As it rises, it slowly unfolds. Everyone watchs as the final fold falls, revealing—nothing. It’s empty. Russell drops it in place and the convoy heads back to base.

When it finally reaches FOB Ramrod it’s 14 hours since they first left the wire — and the odometer reading tells them that in all that time they’ve travelled a total distance of just 23 miles

It’s fact which undescores both the massive effort and cost to secure even a small portion of Afghanistan’s roadways each day, but also, at least for now, the commitment to do so.

A few minutes later, whenBattalion Surgeon, Cpt. Matthew Rodgers discovers what Swob has done he steps into is face and demands to know why.

“Was it squirting,” Rodgers asks, and before Swob can fully answer, moves even closer, “was it an arterial bleed or was it not an arterial bleed?”

“it was squirting, sir,” Swob replies, a little shaken, “It was an arterial bleed.”

“Ok,” Rodgers says, with some suspicion, “record on your sheet the time you placed the tourniquet.”

Shortly after, Rodgers pulls Swob aside and chides him for making the decision without consulting the doctors. Swob, though surrounding by other people, momentarily appears alone and suspended in time by the gravity of his mistake.

When there’s a delay with the Medevac choppers that will transport the patients to a hospital near Kandahar Airfield, Rodgers asks Swob to un-bandage the wound, remove the second tourniquet and show him the bleed.

As Swob slowly undwinds the tourniquet, there is a small but distinct flow of blood that squirts from the wound, with each pulse of the man’s heartbeat.

“it’s bleeding through,” says Rodgers, he pauses, but then smiles, “you made the right call.”

“Should I put the tourniquet back on,” Swob asks? Rodgers knods.

“You did right.”

Without looking up, Swob, packs the wound with rolls of Kerlix, an absorbent gauze bandage—and a small, nearly imperceptible look of relief appears on his face as he re-applies the tourniquet.

At this point, the facts are sketchy, no one even knows the names of the men, but they are all security workers who either hit a roadside bomb or were attacked by the Taliban while providing protection to a commercial convoy ferrying goods to U.S. military bases in the region. They are the lucky ones so far. Two of their co-workers are already dead, killed in the attack.

While the 3.2 medics are handling the early morning trauma with fitting competence—none possess the calm conviction of Cpt. Matthew Rodgers and Specialist Michael Piegaro, who look like they’re doing nothing more challenging than the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle.

Both spent the last year working cases like this almost every day—more than more than 350 total in Afghanistan’s most volatile
region. Both are on their way home at the end of their deployments—but have responded to one last call while waiting for transport out.

Rodgers, the Battalion Surgeon attached to the 2nd Infantry Division is from Dupont, Washington and is the medical ringmaster of this event. He moves from table to table assessing the interventions, providing clear direction and advisement to the new medics, many with sweat beading on their foreheads—in what appears to be a combination of heat and intense concentration.

Rodgers is clearly qualified—in one mass casualty incident here, he claims to have treated 13 gunshot wound victims with only one other medic. All of them survived.

Rodgers offers simple but sage advice.

“I tell them the most important vital sign they can take is their own pulse,” says Rodgers, emphasizing the need for calm.

“For this table here,” he says to those treating the less seriously wounded Afghan, “I know you want to get him more stabilized, but that’s a bird spinning up out there and we have to get him packaged and ready to go…try to find a space blanket, because he’s exposed and hypothermia is a possibility.”

Meanwhile Piegaro, from West Palm Beach, Florida and just 21—is assisting the incoming Doctor, Cpt. John Gartside, pushing a paralytic medication through the patient’s IV—which will make it easier to mechanically ventilate him. While Piegaro’s medical certification level is technically just the civilian equivalent of an EMT Basic, whose normal scope of practice is limited to providing oxygen and minor
Interventions that don’t include medications or anything that breaks the skin such as setting up an IV, his work here more closely resembles that of emergency room MD.

“I work under the guidance the medical license of a PA,” says Piegaro, after the event, “and he’s extremely confidant in my abilities, especially after working so many cases like this over the last year.”

With so much kinetic activity happening here—it might be easy to miss both the minor and major trauma drama worthy of fictional TV programs like ER or Gray’s Anatomy.

For instance when Cpt. Gartside sinks an endotrachial tube into one of the severely injured Afghans, a difficult maneuver requiring both careful positioning and the inflation of a small-balloon catheter to keep it in place, Cpt. Rodgers is concerned it may have gone to deep.

The patient’s stomach is rising with each ventilation rather than his chest, indicating that the oxygen may be pumping into his stomach rather than lungs, which could cause him to vomit and occlude the very airway the medics are attempting to keep open.

While the patient seems to stabilize and his vitals reflect the increased delivery of oxygen Gartside decides to adjust the endotrachial tube by a few millimeters.