He was pleased to see me and we stepped out into the hallway so that we wouldn't interrupt the others in the office as we caught up. I had not seen SGT Memmelsdorf since we were in Germany, because he'd had to stay back at he outset for surgery to repair his knee. One of the first things he did, besides congratulating me on receiving promotion (note I didn't say "earning" promotion), was to thank me for helping him get the surgery.
For those of you that haven't been in the military, there is a rather infantile bias against people who are legitimately hurt. Admittedly, there are often times that soldiers will feign sickness or injury to get out of work, but the malice held towards them, unfortunately, is directed towards those that are truly in need of medical attention. My former Battery commander, a genius, as many of you are well aware, fought to make SGT Memmelsdorf and one of my Gun Chiefs deploy, though SGT Memmelsdorf had no ACL and the Gun Chief had shredded his rotator cuff, as well as other ligaments and tendons in his shoulder, because he "knew" they were just trying to get out of the deployment. His argument had been that if the soldiers had really been hurt, they would have tried to get the surgeries done long before.
That line of thinking, which is tragically common, is incredibly dense because the military medical system forces one to perpetually delay care since it seems one is required to be on death's door or about to lose an appendage before treatment will be administered. I was once ordered to go on a field exercise even when I'd passed blood, and, once I'd arrived at the German post where we were doing the exercises, I had to be taken to the medical center and ultimately to an internist.
At any rate, I had to explain to the Battery Commander that the two NCOs were not cowards trying to get out of a deployment, but rather tough men who'd continued to perform their jobs even when they'd had things seriously wrong with them. "They didn't fake the Xrays and MRIs," I told him. Nonetheless, he considered them cowardly. Fortunately, I was able to coordinate with the NCOs and the doctors and they were able to be taken care of in spite of the commander's resistance. The BC did try to have me rate the Gun Chief poorly on his efficiency report, which I refused to do. But enough of this digression...
SGT Memmelsdorf told me that he'd arrived in country in April but hadn't been put back in the same battery (as the BC still thought him a coward). He'd spent some time recuperating with the headquarters element, which he'd despised, before he'd been placed into one of the line Batteries. As most of you are well aware, with the exception of my Battery, the rest of the battalion has been performing an Infantry mission. SGT Memmelsdorf told me a little of how that had been for him.
During our conversation I made mention of the fact that I'd seen no combat in my time here. He was quick to point out, as I was quick to agree, that I didn't want to see combat. He spoke of how he not only hated the country but the Iraqis themselves, particularly after what he'd seen during a firefight. His patrol had been ambushed. This in and of itself wasn't what bothered him so much; he'd been in firefights before. No, what made it so that he "loathed" the Iraqis was that they were in a particularly drawn out fire fight, ("eleven hours", "RPGs", "Just like _Blackhawk Down_") which would have been silenced immediately had his vehicle's MK-19 40mm automatic grenade launcher not malfunctioned, and when they finally had killed their attackers and searched the palm groves where they'd been attacked, they discovered "dead twelve- year- olds with RPGs". That, for him, was the point where he decided the Iraqis were animals.
We spoke for a few more minutes before he had to get on a convoy to head back downtown.
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