In my last column, I told you about Doc Kaalberg’s service in the U.S. Army’s mighty 1st Infantry Division in Iraq. Chance or providence sent him there, but his fellow soldiers would soon thank God for him.
By November 2003, he and his guys had settled into routine. As a medic, Doc Kaalberg would float among different squads, staying outside the wire for three-day stretches.
On Nov. 18, Doc’s squad was providing extra security in an Iraqi police station. They were playing one of their thousands of games of spades.
“I’ll never forget my hand because I had every spade in the deck,” Doc told me.
Any reader who’s been deployed knows, right here, that either the Army or the war was destined to ruin Doc’s card game.
Doc received his last card. Mortars and machine guns rained down on them.
“All hell broke loose.” Everyone scrambled for their body armor and rifles, hurrying to the roof, firing as they ran. Doc’s job was to patch up the wounded, but early in the fight, he ran more ammo to where it was needed. They were burning bullets fast.
“Do not drop your f****** cards! We’re finishing that game!” he yelled at the others.
Mortars dropped in closer. A few exploded in the station’s backyard. The radio relayed the news. The Air Force was inbound to drop a 500-pound bomb danger close. The soldiers ran back into the building for cover.
A few minutes. No bomb. The Air Force must have reconsidered dropping such a bomb in the middle of the city. The radio relayed new orders: Get mobile and take the fight to the enemy. They ran toward the Bradley fighting vehicles, parked 50 feet apart so that a lucky attack would only disable one. They heard the whistle of an incoming mortar. “That’s the worst sound in the world.”
Doc’s team leader, Sgt. Perkins, tackled him into the back of Bradley One. The mortar blew up right by them. Shrapnel flew over them, a 6-inch piece striking the rubber heel of Perkins’s boot hard enough to twist his ankle but not entering his foot. Doc took cuts to his face.
For a moment, Kaalberg and Perkins laughed about the boot.
“MEDIC!”
“That’s my calling card,” Doc said.
Bradley One’s gunner, Spc. Sanchez, and driver, Spc. Anderson, had been in the turret performing checks. They tried to drop, but Anderson’s vest caught on a bolt, so neither could duck. Anderson wrapped himself around Sanchez to protect his friend, and a large piece of shrapnel sliced his tricep. Doc applied a tourniquet.
“MEDIC!”
With mortars dropping all around, Spc. Kennedy was hit on Bradley Two. He’d dodged the explosions by trying to dive head-first through the driver’s hatch, taking a 7-inch-long shrapnel spear in his buttocks. Doc stabilized it.
“Be gentle, Doc,” Kennedy groaned. “It’s my first time.”
The Iraqi police, with no tanks for shelter, had taken a direct hit. “There wasn’t much I could do to help them,” Doc said. “It sticks with me to this day.”
They rolled out at 75 mph with the enemy firing RPGs from either side of the road. Doc Kaalberg could hardly see, with so much of his own blood in his eyes. Eventually, they reached relative safety.
Anderson kept his arm. Kennedy now walks with a bit of a limp. Kaalberg eventually received his first Purple Heart for his cut-up face.
He and his comrades left Iraq in May 2004. Doc went back three more times, spending all his twenties on combat tours in Iraq.
“It was definitely the time of my life. Feels like a lifetime ago,” Doc told me. “I was just a regular guy, doing everything I could to save my guys.”
“We never finished the spades game,” Doc lamented. “Everybody claimed to have lost their cards.” Kaalberg still holds on to the hand he was dealt that day.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
