Holding it Together: The Power of Vulnerability

I feel the gravel crunching beneath my boots. That, and my hard breathing on the run, is vivid. The rest is a haze, a blend of noise, heat, and adrenaline. A grating buzzer screams from our building while a wailing siren harmonizes from the squadron next door. They are joined by the piercing clarity of The Bell, a ringing that combines determination and urgency, and drives right through my heart to pump my legs across concrete to gravel to pitted asphalt and finally the leap upon the first metal step of the machine. The bird waits silently amidst the rush of bodies on the tarmac. Straining for our permission to spin. Heaving with release as its engines roar to life and we unleash the rotors to beat the air. A young Marine passes a slip of paper through the cockpit window then darts clear of the aircraft. No larger than the cover of a paperback and with maybe 50 words scrawled across, this paper dictates the next 30 minutes of our lives. We taxi out of the spot, passing the wall of Marines, on our way to the runway and the mission: saving lives on the sands of Iraq.

Some context: in 2006, the primary daytime mission of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 268 was casualty evacuation, or CASEVAC. We flew the CH-46 Sea Knight, affectionately known as the Phrog. We operated from an airbase situated near the well known Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. The majority of these missions were conducted between established medical pads. However, when a Marine, soldier, Iraqi, or insurgent was wounded so badly that transportation to a medical facility was too risky, we flew to the point of injury (“POI”). These could be anywhere, and were often little more than a dirt lot hastily secured by the wounded personʼs comrades. We always traveled with an escort of at least one Cobra attack helicopter, but the additional risk during these POI missions was enough that two Cobras watched our backs.

On July 27th of that year, I was assigned as the Helicopter Aircraft Commander (“HAC”) for a CASEVAC slot on the flight schedule, my first time flying this as HAC. One of my friends, himself in the HAC pipeline but not yet designated, was my copilot, and in the back were 2 Marine crew chiefs and 2 Navy corpsman. My crew had rotated into the primary spot when an urgent CASEVAC call came down that afternoon, meaning we would be the ones to take it (the other 2 crews would be on backup if something prevented us from launching). I felt the weight of our mission as I read the slip of paper and learned we were launching to a POI in the town of Karma, a notably unpleasant area northeast of Fallujah.

I was now responsible for three aircraft, 10 aircrew, and a grievously wounded Marine.

I had turned 26 just five days prior.

We raced to the zone. I worked both the controls and the radios, over-zealously reacting to the pressure by trying to do it all. I was new at the commander thing, and failed to trust my copilot, a good friend and fellow professional aviator, with some of these tasks. When we arrived and the Marine was loaded on board, the corpsmen didnʼt even bother reconnecting to the intercom; they got straight to work on the patient. My crew chief, a seasoned veteran on his third deployment to Iraq, had an uncharacteristic quiver in his voice. This was all I needed to know to understand that the situation was dire. I pushed the aircraft to its limits on the return flight, dipping the engine power in and out of warning levels. We finally delivered the young Marine to the doctors and nurses at the shock-trauma platoon back at our base. Watching them take the stretcher through the protective walls surrounding the medical tents, our whole crew was silent. This somber atmosphere persisted all the way back to the flightline. We only spoke the bare minimum to safely navigate and shutdown the aircraft.

Standing outside the now resting bird, I asked the docs what they thought his chances of survival were.

“None,” they said. He had essentially been gone as he was carried on board.

It took me days to sort out my feelings, all while continuing to conduct operations. On the one hand, this had been a great success as my first true test in an aviation role which I had been working toward for years. Going over the entire flight, from bell to dropoff, though there were things I could have done differently, I couldn’t think of any lost time. My crew did it right, and for that I was proud. But I was haunted that despite all of our effort, our textbook operation, a young man had still died while my in my care. I was quieter. I had a shorter fuse. A few days later, I broke down crying when my boss and I took a walk to discuss his frustration at mistakes I was making in my ground job. We were in the middle of Iraq, officers of Marines, professional aviators, and in that moment I added shame to my bag of emotions. Shame that I couldn’t hold it together. Shame that I felt weaker because I wasn’t just brushing it off. I knew that the reality of our business was that people die, even when we do everything “right”. Things happen which are beyond our control. But it was still affecting me, and I felt like a failure to let that happen.

A funny thing happened: I said all this to my boss. And as I talked, I cried some more. And then I started to feel better.

I started to feel better because my body and brain and heart had been a pressure cooker up until then. Pride and regret and guilt and excitement and grief and loneliness and shame had been boiling inside me for days. I wasn’t going to be able to digest them all because we’re not built that way. Without knowing it or consciously deciding this was how I would give that to myself, being vulnerable and saying what was happening gave me the release I needed. It didn’t reset me to how I was feeling before the flight. It didn’t make everything alright, or erase the painful parts of the experience. But it gave me enough relief to find a better way to fit these complex emotions together, and bring the intensity of my feelings down. It would be many years before I recognized the specifics of what happened, and even longer before I began to employ conscious vulnerability more broadly in my life as a partner, leader, and father. When I did though, it was easy for me to find the roots of in this episode.

The story about this flight represents just one line, on just one page, on just one of my flight logbooks. But it has had a profound impact on my life as a story which captures a moment of extreme personal pride right along moments of darkness and regret. Both of these things are true, and being able to grok conflicting experiences existing together has made all the difference as I have navigated my life. I hope sharing this has helped some of you unlock the power to hold these dualities, even just a little bit.