***I wrote this story about two years ago and was going to post it when I started this blog but the recent earthquake in Haiti prompted me to hold off. I think enough time has elapsed to post it now.***

This post may not be appropriate for young, squeamish or Haitian Readers 

Back story:

In the summer of 1994 the United States Army deployed air and ground forces to the small island nation of Haiti to remove the military dictator, Raul Cedras, from power and relieve the stranglehold he held on his people. For years Cedras had committed some of the worst human rights violations in the history of his already bloody country. The 82nd Airborne division, along with support assets, were immediately sent to the island nation to restore its government to a democracy. As the C-5A and C-141 transport ships were in the air, former president Jimmie Carter brokered a deal with Cedras to leave the country, thus saving the Haitian Army from certain annihilation and in the meantime saving American lives. In hours, an invasion became a "humanitarian" mission. The Military Police who had planned to conduct raids and urban combat operations found themselves in a more conventional police role as Martial Law was initiated.............

Our C-5A landed in Haiti shortly after Cedras fled his country. The nose cone raised and we drove our Humvees out into the poorest, dirtiest third world country I have ever seen. I believe Haiti is actually a "Fourth World" country and probably strives to be third world. It spends it days lounging around contemptuously griping to the Dominican Republic about how Sierra Leone and Bangladesh get all the breaks.

As we drove from the airfield to our new command post in an abandoned warehouse (that's warehouse) we were completely inundated by the sights, sounds and smells of Port Au Prince. My squad had three Humvees with three people in each truck and we snaked through the streets, alleys and crowds as quickly as we could. The squad radios we each carried squawked continuously as my squad chattered away.

"This place stinks like foot and ass!"

"Oh my god, they have open freakin' sewers!"

"Jesus people, you never seen a white guy before?"

I quietly told my guys to keep the frequency clear:

"Shut the F#$% up and keep the channel clear!!"

The immediate silence was pretty satisfying. I was, and still am, known as a non-commissioned officer who is "firm but fair". The most important thing to me is that my troops get taken care of but I tend to yell and sometimes threaten to get the results I need. My guys call it "Sergeant West going Bi-polar."

Soon we were stopped waiting for about a million Haitians to get out of our way. I happened to look over and see a young Haitian woman carrying a pot on her head. She was thin and pretty and smiled at me so I smiled back. As I watched her walk away, she stopped and put her pot on the ground. As I watched she squatted, peed in the street, picked her pot up and walked on.

As the teenage girls say nowadays: EEEEWWWW!

The radios erupted.

"Holy shit, that chick just pissed in the street!"

"Dude, that is nasty!"

"What the F@#* kind of country is this?!?!"

I let it go.

The first few weeks of our mission in Haiti were pretty gruesome. Cedras' "death squads" didn't have the luxury of fleeing the country and ended up being disarmed and losing their authority. Men that for years had been the punishing arm of a military dictator now found themselves unarmed, unprotected and the victims of the same crimes they committed. For weeks we simply responded to the murders of many former soldiers and secret policemen. We worked in three-man teams in a Humvee. There was a driver who, you guessed it, drove the Humvee.  There was also a gunner who manned the M60 machine gun in the turret. The cast was rounded out by the team leader. My gunner was a kid from Kissamee, Florida named Rohn and my Driver was a kid named Brant. They were both great at their jobs and I always considered myself lucky to have them in my team.

We would usually get a call for "dead body" and go see what we could do. We would roll up on a bunch of Haitians gathered around a dead guy. The guy usually was a victim of "cement poisoning" (which meant somebody hit him on the head real hard with a chunk of concrete) or "Morning Wood" (which meant somebody hit him on the head real hard with a stick or club) or any number of other ways to meet your maker. Once we even found a guy who got done in by "De-acceleration Trauma" (which meant somebody threw him off a building). Of course, nobody ever knew what happened and we would wait for the meat wagon to pick the guy up and go back to patrol until the next one.

One morning we were cruising the business district of Port Au Prince when we got a "dead body" call. We made our way to the location and found an old man standing next to severed head and poking it with a stick. The head didn't seem to mind but I told the old guy to quit just the same. I called in to our Command Post (CP) to let them know this was pretty much the exact opposite of a dead body. It was just a head and I didn't need to be Columbo to figure out separating his head from his body was probably a big factor in cause of death.

My request: Please advise.

While waiting for word from the CP I further investigated the crime scene. He was a black guy (big freakin' surprise there) and looked like he had just finished sparkin' a big bowl of reefer, what with his eyes half open. No blood and no body led me to believe he probably died somewhere else, probably right there in the country of Haiti. After that I was pretty much stumped. My utter perplexity was rivaled only by my complete apathy for the situation. It was pretty gross to look at but after weeks of seeing dead guys, nobody heaved or even looked ill. Rhino kind of yawned.

Finally, the radio gave us our direction.

"Roger, take the remains to the International Red Cross, maybe they can identify him and let his family know what happened to him."

Balls.

It was then that I realized the state of our Humvee. We had gear stacked from top to bottom in the back of the Humvee and had even put the back seats down to make room for more stuff. Ammo cans, rations, sleeping bags, weapons cleaning kits and all other kinds of crap were jammed into every nook and cranny. Where to put a head?

I tabled that thought and decided to tackle one problem at a time.

"Brant, grab a trash bag and collect up that head." Brant was the lowest ranking soldier in the team and therefore was the first guy I thought of to pick up a decapitated, week-old head in the tropics. Sorry there Brant, you should have gotten some college credits before you decided to serve your country.

What he said next caused quite a conundrum.

"Sergeant West, you can yell at me.  You can court martial me.  Hell, you can even beat the shit out of me right here, but there is no way I am going to pick that thing up."

Just like that. What the hell do you do to a guy who says he will take whatever you throw at him but Hell, No, he won't pick that thing up? They didn't prepare me for that one at the Primary Leadership Development Course.

I made a passing comment about his resemblance to female genitalia and told Rohn,

"Rohn, grab a bag and throw that in the truck."

"That's not fair, Sergeant! If Brant doesn't have to do it, why do I have to do it?!?"

What the hell had become of my Army?

I yelled and screamed about how they were insubordinate as I went to the truck and got a garbage bag. I told them they would both be getting an ass-kicking when we got back to the CP as I approached the "remains". I threatened that they would be seeing the commander for reductions in rank as I slipped the bag over the head. But when I got to the truck and discovered the only place for my special little cargo was between my legs on the floorboard I decided to just go ahead and give them a pass, realized that they were just kids, and threw up.

I calmly told Brant to drive to the International Red Cross as fast as he possible could.

The only bags we had in our truck were small, clear, plastic garbage bags. This meant that as we made our way through the tight turns of the busy city I first had the treat of seeing a saggy, dead face looking at me, followed by something that bared a striking resemblance to a pot roast. That was the longest five miles I have ever driven.

Ever.

Ever, ever.

As we pulled into the International Red Cross parking lot I did a perfect combat roll out of the Humvee and rushed into the Hospital with my bag-o-head.

The French doctor on duty took one look at me, the bag, the head and said:

"Get zat f$#!&ing ting out of heere!!!"

I succinctly tried to plead my case.

"But..."

"No, no, no!!! Get zat ting out of zis hospital!!"

Reason number 4,987 why I hate the goddamn French.

When I got back to the truck I tossed the head onto the floorboards with a THUD and got on the radio.

"Charlie 1, this is Charlie three-zero, the frog doctor at the Red Cross said to get the f#$%^ing head out of his hospital, over".

For 10 minutes I waited for my CP to decide what to do. Finally, they told me to go back on patrol, with the head, and they would let me know as soon as possible what to do. I swear I heard laughing in the background. Even Brant and Rohn seemed about to bust out laughing. Looking back on it 16 years later I can almost laugh about it myself.

Almost.

I asked them to repeat their transmission twice but it didn't change either time. I asked them if they wanted me to terminate the French Doctor. No, they did not. Not even with extreme prejudice? Especially not with extreme prejudice.

Crap.

For the next 45 minutes I drove around Port Au Prince Haiti, in 100 degree weather, with a week-old severed head between my feet in a cramped Humvee. If you want to live this experience yourself, put roadkill in your microwave for about six minutes on "high" and then have somebody repeatedly smash you in the face with the microwave.

Finally, I had too much.

"Brant, drive to the ocean!!"

We drove to the docks and I got out at the longest pier in all of Haiti. I found a nice sized stone, untied the bag, inserted the rock and tied it back up. I then proceeded to walk to the end of the pier and do my rendition of an Olympic hammer-tosser guy. I spun in three circles and threw the head as far as I could and the splash it made was the loveliest sound I ever heard. I rendered a rather snappy hand salute and returned to my humvee and my two newest bitches. Throwing the nastiest head I had ever seen into the nastiest stretch of ocean I had ever seen in the nastiest country I had ever seen was very cleansing and I felt pretty darn good. As we drove off we were all in very good spirits that the ordeal was finally over.

"Man, that was pretty bad" I laughed. "But it is over and we can get on with our day".

"No hard feelings, Sergeant?" they both looked at me with sheepish expressions, wanting to know that I wasn't too mad at them.

"Guys, this was a pretty unusual situation and a lot of kids your age would have done the same thing. That thing stunk bad and looked worse. Nothing in your training really prepared you for that.

Of course, you are both pretty much screwed when we get back.  Yeah, there’s hard feelings."

An hour later as we were nearing the end of our patrol I got a call from my CP. It turns out they had found a body across town without a head and they wanted me to take my prize over to the scene to see if they matched up.

As the great American orator Scooby Doo once said:

Rut-row.

I had to drive back to my CP and get my butt chewed by my Operations Sergeant. He accused me of dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an NCO and insubordination. Nobody was laughing then. Only by having him stick his head in my Humvee window and get a good lungful of the stench that still lingered there did I avoid trouble. He was too busy depositing his morning MRE into the road to really bitch anymore.

In the end, I went easy on Brant and Rohn, the French still suck and we all got to eventually leave Haiti and come home. So I guess it all turned out to be OK.

Except for the guy who got his head cut off.

It kinda sucked for him.

See Ya.