Calm - then sudden death in Afghan war
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and JULIE JACOBSON, Associated Press Writers
DAHANEH, Afghanistan –
The pomegranate grove looked ominous. The U.S. patrol had a tip that Taliban fighters were lying in ambush, and a Marine had his weapon trained on the trees 70 yards away. "If you see anything move from there, light it up," Cpl. Braxton Russell told him.
Thirty seconds later, a salvo of gunfire and RPGs — rocket-propelled grenades — poured out of the grove. "Casualty! We've got a casualty!" someone shouted. A grenade had hit Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard in the legs.
A Marine and son of a Marine, a devout Christian, Iraq war veteran and avid hiker, home-schooled in rural Maine, Bernard was about to become the next fatality in the deadliest month of the deadliest year since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Then they reached the pomegranate grove. The orange streaks of bullets whizzing in every direction grew visible as the light faded.
"That's when I realized there was a casualty and saw the injured Marine, about 10 yards from where I'd stood," Jacobson would write in her journal. "For the second time in my life, I watched a Marine lose his. He was hit with the RPG, which blew off one of his legs and badly mangled the other. ... I hadn't seen it happen, just heard the explosion. I hit the ground and lay as flat as I could and shot what I could of the scene."
Bernard lay on the ground, two Marines standing over him exposed, trying to help. A first tourniquet on Bernard's leg broke. A medic applied another.
"I can't breathe, I can't breathe," Bernard said. Troops crawling under the bullets dragged him to the MRAP, the mine-resistant armored vehicle that accompanied the patrol.
"The other guys kept telling him `Bernard, you're doing fine, you're doing fine. You're gonna make it. Stay with me Bernard!' He (a Marine) held Bernard's head in his hands when he seemed to go limp and tried to keep him awake. A couple more ran in with a stretcher," Jacobson recalled in the journal.
"Another RPG hit the mud wall on the other side of the street from where we were, about 5 yards away. It was a big BOOM, and I just lay my face in the dirt and everything went quiet for about 10 seconds. It was just silence like I was wearing noise-canceling headphones or like world peace had finally descended upon the earth. The air was white with sand. Then I started feeling the rubble fall down around me. And I thought, `Is this what it's like to be shell-shocked? Am I all still here? I can't believe I am.' "
"I was fine and surprised at how calm I was and that I could actually still hear."
That night, officers assembled the platoon in a darkened room of the run-down house where the Marines had camped after taking Dahaneh two days earlier. There the officers delivered the news: Bernard had died of a blood clot in his heart on the operating table.
Bernard was the 19th American to die in Afghanistan in August. Fifty-one Marines, soldiers and seamen lost their lives that month. Of the 815 Americans killed in and around Afghanistan since 2001, 151 died last year and 180 so far this year.
It had all gone very quickly. It was late afternoon when the Taliban fired their first RPGs. It was dusk when the Marine was driven away in the armored vehicle. And it was night when the patrol returning to base saw the dark silhouette of the helicopter that flew him away.
In Maine, his father described him as "humble, shy, unassuming — the very first to offer help." He didn't smoke or drink, and always opened the door for others. His friends were his church group, whom he would visit when on leave, and his sister Katy, 20.
Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard was 21 years old.
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This account is based on excerpts from an AP story was published this week by reporter Julie Jacobson while on assignment in Afghanistan.
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To this date there have been 5,154 recorded deaths of US service members since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started.
If you are troubled by this please join one of the protest efforts against the war.
Write to the President, and your elected officials to let them know how you feel.
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