GWOT VI - Impressment
Feb. 10th, 2020 05:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Impressment
The least I could do was to be there when the children were brought in.
Knowing what was going to happen - which would be called a mass migration if it were not in the middle of a genocide - I'd designated a primary and an alternate medical care site. When the medical platoon and the Red Lion section had evacuated Camp Golf, I'd needed somewhere for them to go. And it would have been nice if I could get wounded out by air, but I couldn't. So it had to be convenient to the Missouri River, and from there by water to Camp O'Wheat - the hopefully still secret forward operating base behind American lines in Nebraska.
A hospital is not a building. It's a collection of services. Beds (or as in our case, planks on trestles, a trick as old as the 1st Civil War) are easy. Surgical rooms need very bright light. But the part that makes it a hospital is X-ray, laboratory and diagnostic imaging. We had two portable X-ray units, one small portable lab (in Pelican cases) and two ultrasound imaging devices. And yes, these were capable of transcranial. I'd insisted. Plus medications and supplies, rather hard to come by in Iowa.
My command post was very mobile. In a mobile fight, it had to be. Two trucks towing trailers and an off-road capable camper van towing a generator. So I combined tasks, a check of the hospital with meeting the Task Force 17 paramedic.
The first thing I noticed was that the truck had been badly shot up. They'd had to repair it to get it running.
The next thing I noticed was the thin runnel of blood from the drain in the truck bed.
Then I was stepping back to make room as the medical/surgical staff rushed forward.
Six tiny bodies dumped to the side. No time to be nice about it. But the looseness with which they flopped would stick with all of us forever.
The medic bike was weaving back and forth. I rushed over and helped him dismount.
It wasn't the medic. It was an injured soldier, who couldn't get the kickstand down until I steadied him.
"MEDIC!" I called out promptly. Punch drunk with exhaustion and loss of blood. I hoped. He limped over to the truck, started to look in the bed, thought better of it and slid down to the ground.
The TF17 paramedic had followed his patients into surgery. At some point along the way, he must have traded out the bike so that he could climb into the truck bed and render in-transit care. It's always the little details that get you…
The refugee driver was crying next to the bodies. Rocking and gasping. She'd driven as fast and long as she ever had in her life, knowing that her own child .… oh Christ, children, I realized from how she kept going back and forth … were in the back. And now she was here, and would probably live.
It is perhaps the most horrible thing in the world for a parent to outlive a child. And she had.
The other injured California soldier saluted after limping out of the truck. His right ankle was twice the size of the left, and he put no weight on it. The tourniquet and pressure bandage on the left however was holding. I returned it, muttered "at ease, lean on the truck" and motioned my orderly to go get a chair.
"Major. They were killing everyone when we arrived. We're holding what we've got, but they took out the gun truck and killed Sergeant Erickson. There's at least two hundred more wounded there, over half can't be moved."
The medics were still busy with the children. So I got him seated on the chair, took a set of vitals and checked neuros and pulses on his legs myself. He'd made it this far, but he was going to need surgery on at least one of the legs if not both.
I went over to the first soldier, who was still conscious - barely - and had no obvious external bleeding that wasn't controlled. Someone handed me a bottle of water which I handed to him. I had to prompt him twice before he drank. OK, technically he shouldn't because he might need surgery, but it would be hours before a surgeon could get to him.
"Your injuries, soldier?"
"Grenade close in. My ears are still ringing. Lots of shrapnel. Medic checked me over. Nothing bleeding I think."
I made sure.
By then, medical orderlies were ready to take them to the waiting area.
I then did one of the more difficult things I've done in my life.
I followed the blood trail from the stretchers into the triage tent.
###
The kids who had made it this far were 1) afflicted with survivable injuries and 2) tough little hombres and chicas. They had already learned the toughest lesson of a survivor - try not to cry, even when you're in agony.
The Task Force paramedic finally extricated himself from treatment. He discarded his torn gloves, washed his hands at the ready sink.
I shook his hand before he had time to try to salute.
"Good job," I said. I wanted that first and foremost in his mind.
"I need you here. I heard your report to Control. You did everything you could. Never doubt that. Report to the battle surgeon for duty here."
He looked at me with the thousand yard stare of those who have seen what mere mortal men should never see. Then he looked around, a nurse took him in hand, and dragged him to sit down and have his own vitals taken. Likely just exhaustion, but it costs nothing to check.
Something grew and grew inside me.
I'm told that other people see red when they become enraged.
I see… black and white. No colors anymore. Not much white, all shades of black. To quote the song, my whole world is black.
I had already calculated the medical logistics here. It wasn't just our wounded, or the children just brought in. It was refugees before the genocide began, the survivors of genocides-present and genocides-to-come.
This improvised hospital was already overloaded. Even if I had the transport - which I didn't - and the neutrality of hospital buses would be respected - which it wouldn't - those casualties at the 17 camp would get no help here. And likely doom others who could have been helped.
The two gleaming ambulances at the fire station in Council Bluff taunted me.
Medicos Sin Fronteres had already pulled out. They operated in war zones, not wars, and the massacre at Rodeo Gulch had them running for the Nebraska border. Their credentials would likely get them across.
There wasn't anything this war needed me for at the moment anyway.
Audacity. More audacity. Always and forever, audacity.
Technically Council Bluffs was a neutral town. Actually it was under firm militia control, but they relied on the presence of the UN forces. And the State Police and the local sheriff. The militia forces were out in the field, hunting … us. Californians and refugees.
I hadn't ordered mortar bombardment. The occupation had already told anyone who cared that Iowa was at war.
I knew where the militia forces were at all times. This wasn't a formal battlefield with clear lines of control. I could literally drive around them, drive to Council Bluffs …
###
I put together a scratch team. I needed six shooters and at least as many drivers. I needed Bear Force. But I had what I had.
My orderly and bodyguards made three. I stole two sentries and an MP from the hospital. Impressed two refugees as drivers. A third volunteered. She had dried her eyes and come to me, asking to join the California Republic forces. Not technically how it's done, but I no longer cared, and gave her a ballcap.
"Put up your right hand."
She did, cap clenched in her left.
"I take oath of my free will and with no mental reservations. I swear to uphold the Constitution of the State of California and the rule of law, to obey the superior officers appointed over me, and carry out my duties to put myself between the people of California and those who would harm them."
She did.
"Private, you are now a combatant soldier of the California Republic."
Two more refugees who watched volunteered immediately as drivers. I didn't swear them in. No time, and they weren't nearly at as high risk of self-harm as the woman who had just lost her son and daughter.
I outlined the objective briefly. The Californians grinned. The refugees caught our infection and grinned as well.
I issued pistols and grenades to those who didn't have them.
We would have to hurry, to do this in time for darkness to cover our retreat.
###
"911, what is your emergency?"
"My husband is sick, suddenly, he says his heart hurts, he's on medications."
###
The Council Bluffs ambulance pulled up to the isolated house and barn. It was escorted by a sheriff's SUV.
The medics got out and went inside. That was fine.
The deputy got out of his cruiser and went to his trunk.
I keyed the bullhorn.
"You are under sniper observation! Put your hands up or die! VIVA CALIFORNIA!"
He complied, which was good because I'd spoken true.
We stripped him down to his (freshly soiled) underwear and tied him up in the barn. He would eventually get loose.
The medics were hustled right back out again. We made them help strip the ambulance of all portable equipment, quickly - a routine mass casualty drill - and one of our vehicles left to take them and the gear back.
We needed the ambulance. And we would use the police SUV.
###
The ambulance responded Code 3 to the hospital, as ambulances do.
The police SUV drove Code 2 to the main fire station.
I could only be in one place at a time, so I'd chosen the hospital. Greater risk for greater reward.
###
"I'm your relief," the California Republic soldier in the sheriff's jacket said to the deputy on overwatch at the fire station, a second wearing a sheriff's shirt following.
"Wait a…" he started to say, then he saw the machine pistols and froze.
One covered his mouth with a hand while the other zapped him with a stun gun, a vicious ten second jolt. They cuffed him, dragged him to the back of the SUV, and threw him in like it had been rehearsed.
Then they moved quickly to the second ambulance, parked on the apron out front.
A paramedic and firefighter-EMT saw them walk up.
"What can we …. oh shit!"
"Hands up. Walk towards us," the soldier commanded in a fierce tone at a low volume.
"Get in the back. Sit down and shut up."
They did. One soldier drove - the ambulance keys being in the rig, of course. The other soldier zip tied the captives into the back seats.
And the second ambulance also responded, Code 3, to the hospital.
###
We were dressed in our California Republic uniforms for this part. We would use the paralysis of routine to make our entry, and then assert dominance over the environment.
I unloaded the gurney. The refugee-turned-private was lying on it. Others surrounded us.
We rushed in, crying "Help! Help!"
The staff rushed up and we took control of them, pushing and shoving them past the patient towards the ambulance. Zip ties were waiting.
I looked around quickly. I'd had a floor plan of the hospital, just in case. But I hadn't planned to do _this_.
Laboratory, that way. Pharmacy just beyond.
The nurse's station, two nurses and a PA, just starting to react to us.
I rushed into the station, machine pistol at ready, not quite pointed.
"They need you at the ambulance bay. Go now."
Patients were starting to stare at us. I looked around quickly. Crash carts. Medication secure storage system. Where were the floor keys?
A hospital security guard looked around the corner.
Saw us.
Deliberately kept walking towards us with his hands held high.
"How can I help?" he said deliberately. "No one needs to get hurt, you can take whatever you want."
"I need staff. I need medications."
I made a snap decision.
"Take me to Pharmacy."
Behind me, a California soldier overrode the medications cabinet with the floor keys and started scooping them into patient property bags.
That was just the ER medications. Not bad to have, but not all that useful either.
The waiting room was nearly empty, a good thing.
But it angered me, so many people in need of urgent care, and these arrogant rich assholes not lifting a finger to help anyone who wasn't just like them.
The patients just stared as the guard walked me to the Pharmacy area.
He didn't try to fuck with me, which was good.
The pharmacist saw us coming.
This was a situation where policy, practices, systems and procedures would all conspire to fuck me.
Every pharmacy, everywhere, is designed to resist armed robbery, and no matter what clothing we happened to be wearing, I was at the moment just another armed robber.
The pharmacist looked at the guard, then looked at me. He was on the secure side of the half-height window, which happened to be open but be closed in a moment. If I let it.
He had a panic button or a foot trip. I knew it, the guard knew it, every junkie who had ever shot up knew it.
He stepped back one pace.
"What do you need?" he said slowly.
"All your antibiotics."
He blinked. But he neither moved closer nor farther away.
"Who are you?" he asked next.
"California Republic. Officer."
He opened the door. I motioned the guard ahead of me.
Now the three of us were standing on the pharmacy side, and I had committed a whole host of major felony criminal offenses.
The pharmacist had a medications cart. He'd been stocking it, for release to the floor nurses.
Now he started moving swiftly around the room, dumping large bottles and boxes, piling it high.
"Here you go."
"No alarms," I warned.
"No alarms," he agreed, and without prompting laid down on the floor and covered his head with his hands.
The guard pushed the cart while I walked with him.
The patients were all stock-still in their treatment wards as a California Republic soldier openly displayed her machine pistol, like a statue.
The ambulances were loaded. Mostly with staff, somewhat with stuff.
The guard and I walked past and the soldier covered our retreat, then followed.
The three of us heaved the cart into the back of the ambulance.
"Lie down and turn your head," I ordered the guard.
I still hadn't pointed a gun at anyone.
We drove away.
Sometimes it really is that easy.
###
It was a tense ride back. But we easily dodged the spreading nets of enraged Council Bluffs police, sheriffs and militia looking for two stolen ambulances full of kidnapped medical personnel.
"Doctors, nurses, technicians. By my authority as expedition commander, I am impressing you into involuntary medical service with the California Republic. You are all prisoners of war, but medical prisoners of war. You will be treated with respect but you must not attempt to escape or to communicate. Report to the battle surgeon for your duty assignments.
"Take all of this to the medical logistics tent. Document what we took so that we can compensate the local government after the war."
Two ER doctors. Seven nurses, one of them a Mobile Intensive Care Nurse. Three PAs - one had tried to fight us, and failed. Two paramedics, a firefighter EMT and two hospital EMTs. A phlebotomist and an X-ray tech.
Not a bad haul.
And they would be here to bear witness to all that happened here, and happened next too.
The least I could do was to be there when the children were brought in.
Knowing what was going to happen - which would be called a mass migration if it were not in the middle of a genocide - I'd designated a primary and an alternate medical care site. When the medical platoon and the Red Lion section had evacuated Camp Golf, I'd needed somewhere for them to go. And it would have been nice if I could get wounded out by air, but I couldn't. So it had to be convenient to the Missouri River, and from there by water to Camp O'Wheat - the hopefully still secret forward operating base behind American lines in Nebraska.
A hospital is not a building. It's a collection of services. Beds (or as in our case, planks on trestles, a trick as old as the 1st Civil War) are easy. Surgical rooms need very bright light. But the part that makes it a hospital is X-ray, laboratory and diagnostic imaging. We had two portable X-ray units, one small portable lab (in Pelican cases) and two ultrasound imaging devices. And yes, these were capable of transcranial. I'd insisted. Plus medications and supplies, rather hard to come by in Iowa.
My command post was very mobile. In a mobile fight, it had to be. Two trucks towing trailers and an off-road capable camper van towing a generator. So I combined tasks, a check of the hospital with meeting the Task Force 17 paramedic.
The first thing I noticed was that the truck had been badly shot up. They'd had to repair it to get it running.
The next thing I noticed was the thin runnel of blood from the drain in the truck bed.
Then I was stepping back to make room as the medical/surgical staff rushed forward.
Six tiny bodies dumped to the side. No time to be nice about it. But the looseness with which they flopped would stick with all of us forever.
The medic bike was weaving back and forth. I rushed over and helped him dismount.
It wasn't the medic. It was an injured soldier, who couldn't get the kickstand down until I steadied him.
"MEDIC!" I called out promptly. Punch drunk with exhaustion and loss of blood. I hoped. He limped over to the truck, started to look in the bed, thought better of it and slid down to the ground.
The TF17 paramedic had followed his patients into surgery. At some point along the way, he must have traded out the bike so that he could climb into the truck bed and render in-transit care. It's always the little details that get you…
The refugee driver was crying next to the bodies. Rocking and gasping. She'd driven as fast and long as she ever had in her life, knowing that her own child .… oh Christ, children, I realized from how she kept going back and forth … were in the back. And now she was here, and would probably live.
It is perhaps the most horrible thing in the world for a parent to outlive a child. And she had.
The other injured California soldier saluted after limping out of the truck. His right ankle was twice the size of the left, and he put no weight on it. The tourniquet and pressure bandage on the left however was holding. I returned it, muttered "at ease, lean on the truck" and motioned my orderly to go get a chair.
"Major. They were killing everyone when we arrived. We're holding what we've got, but they took out the gun truck and killed Sergeant Erickson. There's at least two hundred more wounded there, over half can't be moved."
The medics were still busy with the children. So I got him seated on the chair, took a set of vitals and checked neuros and pulses on his legs myself. He'd made it this far, but he was going to need surgery on at least one of the legs if not both.
I went over to the first soldier, who was still conscious - barely - and had no obvious external bleeding that wasn't controlled. Someone handed me a bottle of water which I handed to him. I had to prompt him twice before he drank. OK, technically he shouldn't because he might need surgery, but it would be hours before a surgeon could get to him.
"Your injuries, soldier?"
"Grenade close in. My ears are still ringing. Lots of shrapnel. Medic checked me over. Nothing bleeding I think."
I made sure.
By then, medical orderlies were ready to take them to the waiting area.
I then did one of the more difficult things I've done in my life.
I followed the blood trail from the stretchers into the triage tent.
###
The kids who had made it this far were 1) afflicted with survivable injuries and 2) tough little hombres and chicas. They had already learned the toughest lesson of a survivor - try not to cry, even when you're in agony.
The Task Force paramedic finally extricated himself from treatment. He discarded his torn gloves, washed his hands at the ready sink.
I shook his hand before he had time to try to salute.
"Good job," I said. I wanted that first and foremost in his mind.
"I need you here. I heard your report to Control. You did everything you could. Never doubt that. Report to the battle surgeon for duty here."
He looked at me with the thousand yard stare of those who have seen what mere mortal men should never see. Then he looked around, a nurse took him in hand, and dragged him to sit down and have his own vitals taken. Likely just exhaustion, but it costs nothing to check.
Something grew and grew inside me.
I'm told that other people see red when they become enraged.
I see… black and white. No colors anymore. Not much white, all shades of black. To quote the song, my whole world is black.
I had already calculated the medical logistics here. It wasn't just our wounded, or the children just brought in. It was refugees before the genocide began, the survivors of genocides-present and genocides-to-come.
This improvised hospital was already overloaded. Even if I had the transport - which I didn't - and the neutrality of hospital buses would be respected - which it wouldn't - those casualties at the 17 camp would get no help here. And likely doom others who could have been helped.
The two gleaming ambulances at the fire station in Council Bluff taunted me.
Medicos Sin Fronteres had already pulled out. They operated in war zones, not wars, and the massacre at Rodeo Gulch had them running for the Nebraska border. Their credentials would likely get them across.
There wasn't anything this war needed me for at the moment anyway.
Audacity. More audacity. Always and forever, audacity.
Technically Council Bluffs was a neutral town. Actually it was under firm militia control, but they relied on the presence of the UN forces. And the State Police and the local sheriff. The militia forces were out in the field, hunting … us. Californians and refugees.
I hadn't ordered mortar bombardment. The occupation had already told anyone who cared that Iowa was at war.
I knew where the militia forces were at all times. This wasn't a formal battlefield with clear lines of control. I could literally drive around them, drive to Council Bluffs …
###
I put together a scratch team. I needed six shooters and at least as many drivers. I needed Bear Force. But I had what I had.
My orderly and bodyguards made three. I stole two sentries and an MP from the hospital. Impressed two refugees as drivers. A third volunteered. She had dried her eyes and come to me, asking to join the California Republic forces. Not technically how it's done, but I no longer cared, and gave her a ballcap.
"Put up your right hand."
She did, cap clenched in her left.
"I take oath of my free will and with no mental reservations. I swear to uphold the Constitution of the State of California and the rule of law, to obey the superior officers appointed over me, and carry out my duties to put myself between the people of California and those who would harm them."
She did.
"Private, you are now a combatant soldier of the California Republic."
Two more refugees who watched volunteered immediately as drivers. I didn't swear them in. No time, and they weren't nearly at as high risk of self-harm as the woman who had just lost her son and daughter.
I outlined the objective briefly. The Californians grinned. The refugees caught our infection and grinned as well.
I issued pistols and grenades to those who didn't have them.
We would have to hurry, to do this in time for darkness to cover our retreat.
###
"911, what is your emergency?"
"My husband is sick, suddenly, he says his heart hurts, he's on medications."
###
The Council Bluffs ambulance pulled up to the isolated house and barn. It was escorted by a sheriff's SUV.
The medics got out and went inside. That was fine.
The deputy got out of his cruiser and went to his trunk.
I keyed the bullhorn.
"You are under sniper observation! Put your hands up or die! VIVA CALIFORNIA!"
He complied, which was good because I'd spoken true.
We stripped him down to his (freshly soiled) underwear and tied him up in the barn. He would eventually get loose.
The medics were hustled right back out again. We made them help strip the ambulance of all portable equipment, quickly - a routine mass casualty drill - and one of our vehicles left to take them and the gear back.
We needed the ambulance. And we would use the police SUV.
###
The ambulance responded Code 3 to the hospital, as ambulances do.
The police SUV drove Code 2 to the main fire station.
I could only be in one place at a time, so I'd chosen the hospital. Greater risk for greater reward.
###
"I'm your relief," the California Republic soldier in the sheriff's jacket said to the deputy on overwatch at the fire station, a second wearing a sheriff's shirt following.
"Wait a…" he started to say, then he saw the machine pistols and froze.
One covered his mouth with a hand while the other zapped him with a stun gun, a vicious ten second jolt. They cuffed him, dragged him to the back of the SUV, and threw him in like it had been rehearsed.
Then they moved quickly to the second ambulance, parked on the apron out front.
A paramedic and firefighter-EMT saw them walk up.
"What can we …. oh shit!"
"Hands up. Walk towards us," the soldier commanded in a fierce tone at a low volume.
"Get in the back. Sit down and shut up."
They did. One soldier drove - the ambulance keys being in the rig, of course. The other soldier zip tied the captives into the back seats.
And the second ambulance also responded, Code 3, to the hospital.
###
We were dressed in our California Republic uniforms for this part. We would use the paralysis of routine to make our entry, and then assert dominance over the environment.
I unloaded the gurney. The refugee-turned-private was lying on it. Others surrounded us.
We rushed in, crying "Help! Help!"
The staff rushed up and we took control of them, pushing and shoving them past the patient towards the ambulance. Zip ties were waiting.
I looked around quickly. I'd had a floor plan of the hospital, just in case. But I hadn't planned to do _this_.
Laboratory, that way. Pharmacy just beyond.
The nurse's station, two nurses and a PA, just starting to react to us.
I rushed into the station, machine pistol at ready, not quite pointed.
"They need you at the ambulance bay. Go now."
Patients were starting to stare at us. I looked around quickly. Crash carts. Medication secure storage system. Where were the floor keys?
A hospital security guard looked around the corner.
Saw us.
Deliberately kept walking towards us with his hands held high.
"How can I help?" he said deliberately. "No one needs to get hurt, you can take whatever you want."
"I need staff. I need medications."
I made a snap decision.
"Take me to Pharmacy."
Behind me, a California soldier overrode the medications cabinet with the floor keys and started scooping them into patient property bags.
That was just the ER medications. Not bad to have, but not all that useful either.
The waiting room was nearly empty, a good thing.
But it angered me, so many people in need of urgent care, and these arrogant rich assholes not lifting a finger to help anyone who wasn't just like them.
The patients just stared as the guard walked me to the Pharmacy area.
He didn't try to fuck with me, which was good.
The pharmacist saw us coming.
This was a situation where policy, practices, systems and procedures would all conspire to fuck me.
Every pharmacy, everywhere, is designed to resist armed robbery, and no matter what clothing we happened to be wearing, I was at the moment just another armed robber.
The pharmacist looked at the guard, then looked at me. He was on the secure side of the half-height window, which happened to be open but be closed in a moment. If I let it.
He had a panic button or a foot trip. I knew it, the guard knew it, every junkie who had ever shot up knew it.
He stepped back one pace.
"What do you need?" he said slowly.
"All your antibiotics."
He blinked. But he neither moved closer nor farther away.
"Who are you?" he asked next.
"California Republic. Officer."
He opened the door. I motioned the guard ahead of me.
Now the three of us were standing on the pharmacy side, and I had committed a whole host of major felony criminal offenses.
The pharmacist had a medications cart. He'd been stocking it, for release to the floor nurses.
Now he started moving swiftly around the room, dumping large bottles and boxes, piling it high.
"Here you go."
"No alarms," I warned.
"No alarms," he agreed, and without prompting laid down on the floor and covered his head with his hands.
The guard pushed the cart while I walked with him.
The patients were all stock-still in their treatment wards as a California Republic soldier openly displayed her machine pistol, like a statue.
The ambulances were loaded. Mostly with staff, somewhat with stuff.
The guard and I walked past and the soldier covered our retreat, then followed.
The three of us heaved the cart into the back of the ambulance.
"Lie down and turn your head," I ordered the guard.
I still hadn't pointed a gun at anyone.
We drove away.
Sometimes it really is that easy.
###
It was a tense ride back. But we easily dodged the spreading nets of enraged Council Bluffs police, sheriffs and militia looking for two stolen ambulances full of kidnapped medical personnel.
"Doctors, nurses, technicians. By my authority as expedition commander, I am impressing you into involuntary medical service with the California Republic. You are all prisoners of war, but medical prisoners of war. You will be treated with respect but you must not attempt to escape or to communicate. Report to the battle surgeon for your duty assignments.
"Take all of this to the medical logistics tent. Document what we took so that we can compensate the local government after the war."
Two ER doctors. Seven nurses, one of them a Mobile Intensive Care Nurse. Three PAs - one had tried to fight us, and failed. Two paramedics, a firefighter EMT and two hospital EMTs. A phlebotomist and an X-ray tech.
Not a bad haul.
And they would be here to bear witness to all that happened here, and happened next too.
