Search and Rescue: Irony

By Ben Wilmot

The wind whipped and rain flew at us sideways. My uniform was quickly drenched, and my hands began to seize up. Drops of water splashed into my eyes from under my rain hood, and I couldn’t help but think of that one monsoon scene from Forrest Gump— “Sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rained at night.” Suddenly, our tarp shelter collapsed, and the few minutes I had spent tying knots around trees in the biting cold and wet had been useless. I looked at Melbourne, and he stared back at me with a frown.

The sound of boots marching held no power, muted, as it was replaced with the sound of a lonesome rock displaced on the trail. They were displaced, exhausted, yet motivated footsteps that echoed intermittently throughout the dense greens and browns of Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania. The tranquility and silence gasped for air amongst the army of voices calling in cadence along the path, as we passed by our fellow squadrons, who were resting, yet eager to push past us. “Get outta the way, get outta the way, move! Bravo Squadrons coming through!” we shouted, watching the frustration on the other squadrons' faces. “Get outta the way, get outta the way, move! The best squadrons coming through!” our driven voices echoed on, cheering on our squadron and fueling the competition between us and our other Search and Rescue adversaries. This was our first training mission, and we reigned supreme. Melbourne, Kerns, Kreiger, Angelo, Wenks, Burnett and I held a pattern in the twin column lined path. We sang cadences, made impressions, and generally talked about anything that could allow us to take our minds off of walking 40 miles in heavy rucksacks across mountainous terrain in a very clearly not “14 degrees upslope”. The terrain got worse. Infrequent rocks dotting the trail turned to flattened boulders surrounded by ankle breaker-sized holes. We jumped across as chief King and our medics urged us to be careful. Burnett and I began to talk, and he kept talking about his duty position in Singapore, same as he had all week. “Yeah the Marines over there are the funniest dudes ev-”

A string of cries erupted from behind me in the line “Medic!” The flurried cries brought on an impending worry. A grimace washed over my face and my mind raced back to something our team commander said: “Bravo, we are officially in rattlesnake country.” Each rut we passed lingered in my mind—they were the perfect hiding spots for a rattlesnake. Somebody must have been bitten by a rattlesnake. I sat in anticipation, my ears tuned for any information. The radio next to me crackled to life, “Somebody rolled their ankle real bad,” came the words across in a fuzzy static. Relief washed over me like a wave on a warm summer day. My friend was not gonna die in the middle of rural Pennsylvania.

“Who?’

“Pike.”

Not a moment later we moved to a beaten path and ate our MREs as we sent out Brunsman and Krieger as runners to go find Captain Gundy and help him get up to our location. The search and rescue trainees had just started their first rescue mission. We loaded Pike onto Gundy’s Bobcat and sat waiting for orders. As they arrived, there came no relief– “Packs up everyone, we gotta make it to our campsite in 20. We’re way behind schedule so you guys better hustle!” Called Chief King. We all hastily stowed our eating gear messily in our kits and threw our packs over our shoulders. We jogged over large rocks, testing our legs’ suspension. We kept moving and everything became a blur. Our team commanders and chiefs yelled at us to keep moving. They told us that we could call a cadence, which was answered by the sound of busy panting. As we lumbered on, the air carried tumult, hostile with the sound of boots trampling across rocks, heavy breathing, and yelling. We neared the campsite, only we came eye to eye with a hill. Glaring at us with its jagged stones and steep incline, we stared back solely with hatred. Angry and motivated, we pushed up the hill. Burnett began to slow, clogging the path. I pressed my gloves up against his pack and began to push him up with my bodyweight. Our eyes cleared the brown stone-littered hill, locking eyes with a familiar face. Marked on our maps, and laying before us, was the Helo LZ, the checkpoint before AT/PT on the Appalachian trail. We laid our packs down and slowed to quench our thirst and fight the ungodly heat inside our blouses. “Put your rain gear on! There’s no time to wait, we have to set up camp.” The words went in one of my ears and simply breezed out the other.

I bailed my arms out of the hot warmth of my raingear, feeling the cool breeze of the Pennsylvania evening. Small droplets of water began to fall on me, cooling me down and reassuring my skin that our run was over. “Monty what are you doing, put your rain gear on” came a yell from my left, and I spotted Chief King staring at me. A smile came to my face, “Just enjoying the Seattle weather sir!” I shouted with a dash of pride in my voice. As I stood, arms free to the open air, rain couldn’t meet me fast enough, nor with bigger hands. The suffocating warmth emanating from me brought no cold, as if it were fighting off any true refreshment to myself. I wished the rain would pick up, so I could meet it with open arms. Out of the blue we heard a shout, “Packs up! We’re moving. Come on, we've gotta beat this storm! Rain gear on everyone!” I sighed, picking up my rain coat and moving wearily over towards my packs, like a magnet reluctant to meet its opposite once again. Flash. Thunder. The deafening irony of the situation met me like a brick wall, as I realized that I would definitely be getting some cooling rain in the future.