Names to Numbers
Our mission that day in November 2005 was to provide electronic IED suppression for a group of Marines as they moved in convoy from one part of the war torn Iraqi city to another. It’s what we’d been doing for several months during that deployment. It was a critically important mission, but it was often difficult to measure success. Did the troops avoid the all-too-deadly road-side bomb because of our jamming, or were there just not any road side bombs on their chosen route that day? How do you prove a negative? Our professional satisfaction (and indirect measure of success) came from fact that troops would not go on a mission, drive a convoy, or attack a target without us overhead. Even if they couldn’t prove our jamming would be a factor, they weren’t willing to chance it.
We’d only been airborne for a few minutes on our way toward Ramadi when we got the first call. The leader of the convoy we were supposed to support that day told us his mission had been cancelled at the last minute and that we were to contact a different team leader on another radio frequency. This struck us as odd because the original mission was to “visit” a local insurgent who’d made quite a name for himself as a bomb maker. We had a few more electronic tricks up our sleeve to support this mission, and those tricks required a fair amount of prior coordination. For this to be cancelled struck us as peculiar.
My co-pilot tuned one of our radios to the new frequency and contacted our new customer. In a calm and almost dispassionate tone he told us that an American helicopter had been struck by enemy fire and was down just north of the city. A rescue and recovery team was being assembled. He asked how much on-station time we had. We told him we could give him about an a hour and half of support before we had to go find a tanker for refueling. He gave us the estimated coordinates of the crash site as well as the route his team anticipated traveling to get there. From 25,000 hazy feet above the brown desertscape we weren’t able to actually see the crash site, but we were still able to make ourselves useful. I descended to a slightly lower altitude to make sure any enemy insurgents heard the roar of our engines, lest they feel emboldened to approach the crash site — it was still unclear if there were any survivors. We maintained this flight profile until a few more jets (with bombs and bullets) arrived; they’d be much better equipped to fend off an approaching enemy.
Once the rescue team left its base, we flew an overhead escort profile to provide them with electronic IED suppression. They located the crash-site, set up a defensive perimeter, and a few minutes later the team was able to inspect the wreckage. The next radio call from the team leader made clear there were no survivors. Two Americans lay dead in the mangled wreckage of their helicopter.
We’d been flying missions in support of ground troops for months, and in many cases we were in contact with them as they engaged in heavy fighting. I’d supported medevacs of wounded Americans, but this was the first time one of my missions involved fatalities. The next half an hour or so was very quiet in my cockpit. Our usual colorful banter was limited to brief updates on fuel or navigation. In time we’d burned through enough gas that we had to go get a top off from an Air Force tanker. The trips to and from the tankers were usually time to relax a little bit, maybe even break out a sandwich, but not today. There was nothing to say.
With full fuel tanks we returned over the recovery site. The team was working a plan to extract the fallen crew. Our jamming pods were back online doing their thing, but by this point the threat they meant to suppress was likely negligible. I felt helpless. And in that helplessness my mind wondered back to the States. In a few hours, somewhere back home two families would be visited by Marines and a chaplain in dress uniforms. The strange car would pull into the driveway. There’d be a knock on the door, and once it was opened the worst possible news would be delivered. In the time it took the Marine officer to utter the first few words of his script a collection of hopes, dreams, plans, ambitions — they’d be forever changed.
This week, almost 18 years later, I looked back in my logbook and noticed that after that flight I’d entered a brief parenthetical to the generic description: EWCAS RAMADI (2 KIA). The mission was electronic warfare close air support in Ramadi, and two were killed in action. As I read that entry I thought about how “2 KIA,” those four characters, they seem so sterile, so devoid of humanity, and how they represent nothing more than a mere accounting. No names, no stories, just 2 KIA. And though I never knew either man, I’m embarrassed that’s all the note I gave them in my logbook.
Thousands of American men and women were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we read these statistics it’s easy (and forgivable) to focus on the totality of the loss. But the numbers are just that — nameless and faceless and without a story. A real measure of the loss only comes into focus when we put names to the numbers.
On November 5th, 2005 Major Gerald Bloomfield II and Captain Michael Martino of Marine Light-Attack Helicopter Squadron 369 were killed when the AH-1W Super Cobra they were flying is suspected to have been hit by enemy fire before crashing near Ramadi, Iraq.
Major Bloomfield hailed from Ypsilanti, Michigan and graduated from Eastern Michigan University. He was 38 years old and was on his third tour in Iraq. He left behind his wife and 13 year old son. Captain Martino grew up in Southern California before graduating from the University of California at San Diego. He was 32 years old, and like Bloomfield, served multiple tours in Iraq. He left behind his parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews.
Today I’m going to make a long overdue edit to my logbook entry from November 5th, 2005: EWCAS RAMADI, GERALD AND MICHAEL.
Jack
