Army Reserve drill weekend started with an Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), which involves a lot of standing around waiting, a little bit of exercise, and more standing around.
During the course of standing around the topic of lost friends came up. The man I was talking to told how one of his company mates was killed when an IED detonated near their up armored HMMWV. The vehicle wasn’t damaged, but the man was killed by the shock wave. He was about 30 feet from the center of the blast.
I thought back to 25 July 2010 when my infantry platoon rolled out in three Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) on a planned 34-hour infiltration and overwatch mission to interdict Improvised Explosive Device (IED) emplacers that had created a belt of bombs that prevented free movement of friendly forces in the southern part of our Area of Operation (AO). We avoided a known danger area by traveling west on Hwy 1 for about three miles, and then turned south between two hills. Our lead truck had a mine roller, an expendable device designed to detonate bombs in front of the truck, and each following truck was supposed to follow in the tracks of that vehicle.
My job as Vehicle Commander (VC) was to operate the weapon system and maneuver the truck while the dismounts were out of the vehicle. When they were on, the Platoon Leader (PL) was in charge, and as we turned off the highway, he ordered me to stand up. Sitting down I had the use of a thermal scope that could see in any conditions, while standing up I only had use of an outdated set of Night Optic Device (NOD) that worked well on bright nights but became useless as ambient light decreased. This night they were little more than swimming green pixels, almost worthless, but orders were orders, so I stood on my seat, attempting to scan the hillside by holding these worthless NODs to my face (I had never been issued a “rhino mount” to connect them to the base plate mounted on my helmet, and supply didn’t have any, so I had to hand hold them, which wasn’t a big deal as long as I was on the truck). “I can’t see anything,” I complained to the PL.
“Just keep watching.” I turned to look forward, and realized we were quickly gaining on the lead truck. I reached up to pull the communication microphone in front of my lips when the explosion ripped the night. The green view disappeared, and my stand went out from under me as the truck pitched wildly. My training told me I had to get into the truck, but I could do nothing more than hang on as we tipped over, teetered on our side, and then settled back with the left side wheels on the ground. I reached to key the radio, but nothing. Fluid poured onto me from unknown sources. I looked down at the Remote Weapon System (RWS) display, but it was solid white, not the normal gray scale I was used to. My station was devastated, the control stick gone, everything out of place, yet the only pain I felt was where the underside of my arms scraped on the walk surface that surrounded my hatch. I ripped the headphones off so I could hear. “Everyone, stay put.”
“I smell fuel,” came the report from inside the truck.
The PL heard movement outside the truck and challenged. The soldier on the ground said his name. He was the rear guard on my side of the vehicle and was ejected when his retaining strap failed in the blast. With fuel spilling inside the truck, and someone already on the ground outside, the PL ordered us to dismount. We dismounted, set in security, and waited for help.
It was only after the adrenalin wore off that the extent of my injury became apparent, and only with daylight did we begin to understand the extent of the damage done by the IED. We discovered we were 18 inches out of the tracks of the lead truck, and had turned onto it, so it detonated under the third axle on the right side of the truck, directly under my work station, and rolled the 20-ton truck. Estimates ran as high as 200 lbs., although Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) stated it was 80 lbs. of Unknown Bulk Explosive (UBE), a high grade explosive similar in composition to C-4.
I couldn’t get the APFT conversation out of my mind as memories flooded me all day. When I got to my hotel room, I sat down at the desk and began to write.
“The IED that destroyed my Stryker in Afghanistan was just four feet from me, directly under my station. Four feet above an 80 lb. bomb, and here I sit pondering why I am still alive while someone else 30 feet horizontally away from a 155 round is dead. Why didn’t the shock wave kill me? Why wasn’t I sitting down where I could have been more effective, so that I would have been crushed? There is no logic or reason to war.”
In those days I walked as a son of Satan. After God won my heart, my wife shared with me that when I deployed, she pleaded with God to not bring me home. I brought nothing but misery into the home and influenced our children greatly for the cause of evil, and she saw no hope. About midnight (we were stationed in Germany which was three and a half hours behind Afghanistan) on the 25th, God woke her up with the impression to “pray for Russell.” She didn’t want to. In the restroom she picked up her Bible, (she kept it there because it was the only place she could get peace from our five, three, and two year old children), and it opened to this text:
“For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; from heaven the Lord viewed the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to release those appointed to death...” (Psalm 102:19,20).
Her prayer was halfhearted, yet she prayed for me while thousands of miles away, I rode the bomb. The ways of the Lord are a mystery to me, why He would spare the life of His enemy. This brief wake-up call touched me for a few weeks after the blast, but I continued to do evil, to be an enemy of God for another four years. Survivor guilt is normal, they say. Do not dwell on it, they say. They say a lot of things, but they cannot answer the deeper questions. Why did God spare me?
God said, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16,17). Man disobeyed, and death entered the world. The sentence continues to this day, sin leading unto death. I deserve to die.
God spared me, and my unit removed me from the battlefield due to genetic defects discovered while being checked out at the CSH (pronounced Cash, stands for Combat Support Hospital). On 19 December, 2010, the same truck (well, new truck, same bumper number) hit another IED which blew the engine out of the vehicle, killed my driver, and wounded the other three men on the vehicle. My replacement took shrapnel across his chin. I am two inches taller than he, and likely would have taken that shrapnel to my throat. Again I ask, why did God spare me? I was His enemy. I had nothing more to write that night, so I turned in.
I lay awake, mulling what I had written, mulling the memories, mulling the conversation, when my train of thoughts was derailed by this:
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God did more than just spare His enemy. He sent His son to die for me while I was still His enemy! I leaped up and went to the desk where my Bible rested, reading the verses. Romans 5 continues in verses 9 through 11,
“Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
Jesus, who knew no sin, took upon Himself my sin, and died the death I deserve to die so that He could reconcile me to God. When Christ died for us, most of those He died for were His enemies. In the combat zone, it was my fervent hope to kill my enemies. I longed for the chance to put my skills to the test and kill those who sought to kill me, and I reveled to see them die when others did get the chance. So to die for them did not even enter my mind.
Yet God did the opposite. He sent His Son, and His Son willingly died for His enemies. He gives us a hope and future because He took our sins upon Himself. He bridged the gulf between God and us that sin emplaced, and made a way that we can come to God, and He did so for those who hated Him. Yes, how can I not wonder at this?
Russell Wickham seeks the Lord with all his heart (Jeremiah 29:12).