17 December 2007

Flight


Mohammed Odeh al Rehaief.

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright took the Flyer for a 12-second, sustained flight. Thirty-two years after that, the date was picked for the first official flight of the Douglas DC-3, the most legendary aircraft of the first century of powered flight.

It is the first airplane on which I ever flew, marveling at the walk uphill to my seat next to Mom. Some of them are flying yet.

I was thinking about flight last night when the gale woke me. Bob Ryan the celebrety weatherman had advertised gusts to 50 miles an hour, and he might have been conservative on that. The building vibrated with the intensity of the wind. From the sound, it appeared the pink brick exterior was being sanded by a heavy hand.

Things were flying out there, things that were never intended to leave the ground. Waiting for something to impact the windows, I eventually nodded off again, and dreams came.

The rains had ceased at midday, and the sun came out on a washed-out world. The winds were rising, but just tickling at the collar of my jacket. I had an invitation to the estate of an old pal who does the holidays up right, a catered affair in the house that he and his wife have done up right.

The neighborhood is carefully developed countryside. Some of the lawns are as big as the footprint of Big Pink, and the houses range from large to enormous.

The hospitality was lavish and the hosts were genial. The sun was declining when I was introduced to Mohammed. I thought he might have been an ambassador, and I sidled over to my host to ask what nation he represented. My friend laughed and said the story was much better.

It was not that long ago. March of 2003 to be precise, and the results of the invasion were still a matter of conjecture. The heavy units were racing northwest along the Euphrates, and the men and women assigned to the logistics tail were struggling to keep the big machines supplied with beans, bullets and gasoline.

A lightly-armed convoy of an element of the 3rd Combat Support Battalion- the 507th Maintenance Company- was equipped with GPS navigation but took a wrong turn near the city of Nasiryah. Instead of circling the city, they drove directly into it. Their trucks and HumVeees got whacked by fighters loyal to Saddam.

It was an improvised attack, since no one in their right mind would have driven through city streets. It was symptomatic of what was to come, both in the major ground combat phase and the insurgency that followed.

I took note of it, since by the time the word began to spread on the media it was the 26th anniversary of my decision to put on the uniform of my country, and go and do whatever Uncle Sam told me to do.

Time had its advantages. I was wearing a suit, and I was watching the war from the Hubert Humphrey Building downtown, at the Department of Health and Human Services. That is too long a story to attempt to relate, but I recall standing in the cavernous lobby where big-screen televisions were always tuned to the Fox Network. Perhaps a dozen soldiers been killed or were missing. Bad as that news was, there was more. Two women were missing.

Specialist Lori Piestewa was shown on al Jazeera television as a prisoner, though she later died in captivity. The video coverage indicated another solider, a private by the name of Jessica Lynch, was still alive. Her whereabouts were unknown, but the situation was depicted as ominous for all the reasons you would expect.

That is where things began to get strange. One of the reasons I was at HHS was my frustration with the way information was being handled. In my new job, I was no longer trying to mold the message, which is just war on another level. I was just another vidiot, watching the big screen and feeling anxious.

Private Lynch was badly injured when her HumVee crashed. She had been taken to a local hospital where doctors claimed to have kept her secure from Iraqi military and security personnel who had set up shop in the facility to avoid being targeted by the Americans.

A sympathetic Iraqi managed to get word of her location to the nearest US Forces. His name, not disclosed at first, was Mohammed Odeh al Rehaief.

Mohammed was a lawyer, though that was not part of the original narrative. Fox was saying that the informant's wife was a nurse at the hospital and that he had noticed increased security while visiting her. He was told that an American prisoner was being held there, and upon further investigation, he saw an Iraqi Colonel slap Private Lynch.

In the book he wrote about the rescue, Mohammed said “My heart stopped. I knew then I must help her to be saved.” He went to the Americans, providing maps and a schedule of staff shift changes. He agreed to be wired up with a video camera to assist in mission planning.

On April Fool's Day, Marines staged a diversionary attack on Nasiriyah to attract the attention of regular Iraqi forces. A Panoply of Special Ops forces, including Delta, SEALS, Special Forces and Air Force para-rescue personnel, conducted a dramatic nighttime raid. They rescued Private Lynch and retrieved the bodies of eight other American soldiers.

You remember the media circus that followed. After learning of Mohammed's role in assisting the raid, a West Virginia group was formed, calling itself the “Friends of Mohammed.” They lobbied for his immediate flight from Iraq, for his safety, and naturalization as an American citizen. The Friends were successful, soaring on the media frenzy about the rescue.

Mohammed was in America a week later, and by the end of April, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that Mohammed had been granted immediate humanitarian asylum with his wife and five-year old daughter.

Mohammed published a book about the incident called “Because Each Life is Precious.” It was published six months after he was in the country, and reportedly made $300,000 on it.

There was a television movie about the rescue, and it was a sensation.

When I talked to him last night, he said he would autograph a copy for me. He said it was great to be in America, and I had to agree with him.

There is another version of the story that circulated later, after Private Lynch made her own story known, and some of the doctors at the hospital testified that things were not at all what the Army had claimed.

I looked Mohammed in his good eye. I was told that he had lost the right in the struggle, and I clasped his hand, deciding that I liked his version of the story better.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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