Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Severed bond

War forged a powerful connection between a Largo medic and the paratroopers he served with. Monday, nine buddies died.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE
Published April 25, 2007

U.S. Army Spc. Andrew Harriman winces in pain Thursday April 12 2007 while attending a physical therapy session at Womack Army Medical Center in Fort Bragg N.C.
	[AP photo]

Lying in a Fort Bragg hospital bed, Army Spc. Andrew Harriman was left numb by news that nine U.S. paratroopers were killed by a suicide bomber near Baghdad on Monday. These were his buddies. Harriman, a Largo resident who attended Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, sought to comfort them last year as a medic in the 82nd Airborne. He knew seven of them well. "I still can't wrap my brain around it," said Harriman, who was shot in Iraq on March 26.

As an Army pal disclosed their names, Harriman quietly wrote them down, fighting off guilt and tears. Could he have saved someone? Did he let his buddies down?

On Tuesday, Harriman recalled the war movies and books he loved as a kid.

"It's so cheesy and cliche," he said. "Every war movie has some derivative of it. It never made sense until I was deployed. These guys are your brothers. Reading the books about Vietnam, the psychological stuff never made sense to me. Why did they have so many problems when they came back? I couldn't understand. It's so clear now. I almost wish it wasn't."

Harriman was to be discharged Tuesday, after eight surgeries for a leg wound. He asked to stay a couple more days.

He wants to talk to someone about what he saw in Iraq.

Real-life combat

Harriman served in a platoon with most of the guys killed Monday when he arrived in Iraq last August. He saw no combat with them but the camaraderie flowed.

They played together, talked together, whined about the Army life together. They shared the ordeals of unending patrols and sore feet and the stress of never knowing when combat might explode.

Even at 23, Harriman was older than most of the 20 or so men in the platoon. Medics become like older brothers. Soldiers share their troubles with them.

"There are some medics who don't like that. I loved it," said Harriman, who kept pictures of his friends on a laptop.

But in Iraq, medics tend to bounce between units. After two months, Harriman rotated to another unit and got his first brush with real combat.

On a mid December day, his unit set up a roadblock northeast of Baghdad. It didn't take long before movement caught Harriman's eye. He saw an Iraqi with an AK-47 moving along a wall about 500 feet away.

Harriman raised his M-4 rifle and fired a half dozen rounds, yelling, "AK!" The Iraqi dropped, dead.

A U.S. tank moved up. Harriman remembers thinking it was all too surreal, like a Hollywood flick. Bullets pinged off the tank. It slowly turned its turret toward the gunfire and hammered away with a 50-caliber gun. Later, he treated his first casualty, an Iraqi police officer who survived.

The next few days, Harriman could not stop smiling. He had proven his combat mettle.

But he soon lost that sense of exultation. The scenes played out like an unending nightmare.

On one patrol, a Humvee driven by an Iraqi hit an antitank mine. It burst into flames. An Iraqi trapped inside burned to death as Harriman listened helplessly to his screams.

A day later, Harriman accompanied another convoy as a mine destroyed a truck filled with Iraqi soldiers. He ran to the scene. Limbs were strewn on the ground like so much litter.

Again, his mind played back to the movies, to that opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, when the German guns raked Army Rangers.

Harriman couldn't calm down for weeks. He was mad at the world. He said he lost his sense of humor.

A save and a close call

Even amid the horror, some things reminded Harriman why it was important to be in Iraq.

On foot patrol on March 5, Harriman and a dozen or so men walked along a deep canal under a full moon. Voices rose from the darkness.

Then, a staccato burst of machine gun fire.

The second man in line, Dary Finck, fell.

Harriman and another soldier dragged him behind a small pile of dirt. A machine gunner zeroed in on them. The rounds smacked the ground close by.

Finck said he heard the bursts of fire and sensed the confusion. Harriman helped move him, first behind the mound, then behind a wall.

Finck's groin and legs were hit. His femoral arteries spewed the life out of him.

Finck could hear the sounds of battle but couldn't utter a word. Harriman applied a tourniquet and bandages.

Then something hit Harriman's pack. He felt a liquid flow over him and wondered why, if he had been shot, he didn't feel any pain.

Harriman pulled his pack off. Inside, every IV bag had been punctured by a bullet - except one. He used that one bag to get an IV going on Finck.

Harriman wasn't scratched.

Abrupt end to tour

For Harriman, the war ended about 11 p.m. on March 26. He still isn't sure what happened.

He walked up a ramp into a giant Chinook helicopter during a mission northeast of Baghdad. He heard a burst from an automatic weapon.

The troops had heard so many rounds fired, sometimes they hardly flinched.

Then his shin felt like it had been hit by a baseball bat. He crumpled.

Three rounds had blown clean through his lower left leg. Bone shattered.

He was evacuated to Germany. On the way, he taped a sign on himself: "To Germany or bust."

Back at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, Harriman felt the guilt of being home when his friends still faced death.

Randy Withers, who taught Harriman at Farragut, said he told him in a visit, "Think what you want. You've done your part."

Harriman was ready for home. He faces a year of rehabilitation. Doctors hope his leg may fully recover.

Then came Monday.

Bonds born in conflict

Finck, now recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, heard the news on TV.

The Army has not publicly identified the dead, but he figured he must know them if they died in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, near where Finck was hit.

Then he heard the names and the confirmation. He knew them, though he served in a different platoon. He decided to talk to one of the few people he knew would understand.

He talked to Harriman by phone.

He said Harriman and that one IV bag saved his life. There will always be a bond no civilian can know.

"You know under any circumstances, when the danger comes up, your buddy's not going to run away," Finck said. "You know your buddy's always got your back."

Harriman describes the bond in similar language.

Harriman said he's already struggling with the memories, what he can tell his parents, the bouts of tears, the jolts that wake him without explanation. His friends back home can't relate to him, he said. Not now.

He knows he's never going back to Iraq. But he said part of him would go in a second to see his friends.

"It's frustrating to lie here and watch this on the news," he said.

A group of Sunni militants that includes al-Qaida operatives has claimed responsibility for Monday's attack, though the authenticity of the Internet posting could not be confirmed.

It's all hard for Harriman to accept.

"Everybody in the 82nd is a big, tough paratrooper. They refuse to get emotional. But you get closer than any brothers."

And when brothers die, Harriman said, even tough paratroopers cry.

About this story

This story was compiled after more than a half dozen lengthy interviews with Army medic Andrew Harriman over the last two weeks. Others interviewed for this story include his mother, his former teacher at Admiral Farragut Academy, a family friend and the wounded soldier Harriman helped save in Iraq. The Army declined to comment.

[Last modified April 25, 2007, 10:44:18]