Lonesome Dove - Unit's Heroine Medic

My marriage was over. After six years it was gone - stuffed, and shafted - and I needed a place where I could brood for a bit, and then get on with the rest of my life.

I figured my deputy could babysit the business, while Katerina began splashing the settlement she'd danced away with. The geography says Hawaii is four thousand miles, one continent, and one ocean away from Galveston. That seemed about far enough. I booked a ticket to Honolulu and told Willy Carstens I'd be back on deck in three weeks.

I began to break in a new life with four days loafing around the famed Royal Hawaiian Hotel, challenging myself to little more than an occasional beer, a deck chair that earned tips for the hotel's beach boys, and a view of Waikiki's bikinis -- the good, the bad, and those who shouldn't have.

Then I caught myself a morning flight out to Kauai, "The Garden Isle." My next-door neighbour, Alfie Schwab, had tipped me off to an old weatherboard holiday rental that was not too flash but over-compensated for this with a back lawn that dipped straight down onto a white sand beach. He'd stayed there twice and maintained it was about three steps better than paradise, and an ideal spot to lose yourself.

The house needed a rental car for access, and I booked it with a local island agency because the smaller joints rip you off more sunnily than their big brothers at Hertz and Avis.

"Good choice taking the convertible. Life's better topless," joked the old guy who owned the place. "Give my daughter Sammy the paperwork. She's got your keys. Step outside, and you've got that new Mustang she's hosing."

His daughter was thirty-ish; a tall, slim, brunette, and in anyone's language, a looker. But oddly, she was wearing long slacks despite the tropical heat, and these were covered in splash-marks from her cleaning work. As she stepped towards me, I saw the daughter carried a slight limp, and favoured her right side.

"Your car's ready to rumble. So where are you heading off to?" she asked.

"I hope I've got lucky. I've booked an old house a friend suggested. It's right on the beach, near Hanalei."

"Ah, Han-a-lei. It's as lovely as it sounds, and not more than an hour from here," she said. "Let me match up your driving license and the papers, then you're on your way." I passed my license to her. She glanced at it, then bent her head to examine the details more closely.

"Daniel Scott Thurlow, from Galveston." she read out. She looked up at me and studied my face. "I think that must be Captain Dan Thurlow, decorated in Afghanistan. Tenth Mountain Division, Third Brigade Combat.

"Yeah, that's gotta be you," she murmured, and shifted her sunglasses up onto her hair. The eyes were mesmerising - deep brown with distinctive green flecked irises. Her right eye, I realized, was slightly lazy.

I'd done my best to leave Afghanistan behind when I finally left the armed forces. But who was this mystery woman who knew me? While I couldn't place her, it wasn't a face to forget.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Afghanistan in 2011. The Tenth's Third Brigade is called The Spartans after the ancient Greece's super-warriors, whose motto said you return from battle "With your Shield, Or on It."

That sounded fine at home base in Fort Drum, but not so great two days out on patrol from Forward Operating Base Pasab, in the Pakistan border country. We'd lost more than one hundred men since the war begun and were now working gingerly through one of the Taliban's heartlands -- a terror zone where the villages had shrunk as scared families fled to the regional capital of Kandahar.

It was strongly rumoured that Mullah Omar, the 6ft 6-inch religious zealot who founded the Taliban, was being protected somewhere near us. I had one of my three platoons with me - about forty men in it. We were three miles south of Highway One, and a month into the brigade's mission to break the Taliban's hold on the Zihar region. This meant pushing their terror south of the Arghandab River and freeing up the main route down into Pakistan. We'd also begun building the first of twenty new schools where Afghan girls too could be free to join classrooms.

Unlike most of Afghanistan, much of Zahir is flat and rich, its orchards and vineyards irrigated by channels pulling water from the river. But Zahir was also deadly. The Taliban had fields and tracks sown with mines, and in the villages, thick-walled baked mud homes, with their small grilled windows, sometimes made nasty machine gun nests.

I paused my platoon a hundred yards short of a small village, because we'd had a sudden medical emergency back down the line. In front of us three women in burqas helped by their children, were lifting buckets from a well, and putting them on a cart.

"Reporting on Urlich," snapped Corporal Browning, a wiry NCO whose competence I trusted. "It's acute appendicitis. Bloody hell! We need to chopper him out. Real fast, according to Lonesome Dove."

"Lonesome Dove? Who the fuck's Lonesome Dove?"

I'll give Browning his credit -- he blushed. "Sorry, that's Private Anoki, the stand-in medic. Turns out she's part Sioux Indian. Anoki doesn't know it yet, but she's been called Lonesome Dove. It kinda makes sense. She's the first woman we've had in the platoon, she'll be back at base in a week anyway, and she's also alone. So -- we have Lonesome Dove, like in that book and TV series."

"Well, if you say so. And how's our temporary Medic shaping up?"

"It's early, but she seems good at what she does. The guys like her - and the guessing is that behind the dark glasses and helmet, Lonesome Dove may be a treat."

Lonesome Dove -- Private Anoki. By now I should have spent some time with the fill-in Medic. It was my fault, but there'd been no real chance. Her presence had come as a surprise. Hadlee, a stand-up guy who'd been the Medic for six months, broke his ankle skylarking the night before we left Pasab's tent base. One hour before we drove out through the heavily armed base gates, the army (which doesn't always know best) took Anoki from its mobile "gypsy medic" team and assigned her to us. Women weren't yet meant to be risked on direct ground contact patrols, but it wasn't the very first-time necessity had stretched this rule.

The drama with Urlich's rumbling appendix had slowed us down, and instead of being front and back of the column, both our MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles were now at the rear.

"Okay, a chopper can set down in the village," I told Browning. "I'll slip back to see Urlich and have a word with Lonesome Dove. We'll need her to...."

Suddenly my ears were singing, and I was hard on the ground beside Browning. A rocket had smashed into the light vehicle leading the column, and a trail of bullets chased past my face. I rolled into the ditch by the track and checked behind me. The platoon had also dived for the ditches or scrambled behind the MRAPs. Peeping through a gap in some vines, I saw gun barrels juddering from slit windows in two of the mud huts.

"We want camouflage, we need to go backwards into the orchards so we're screened and can start to circle them," called Browning. "Sir -- quickly."

"No, we'll stick here a moment. They may have put mines behind us." Like as not the setup we faced was from the Taliban playbook for village ambushes. They'd shelter machine gun nests behind a couple of mud house walls on the village fringe and then try to push you backwards off the entrance track -- and straight into mine traps they'd laid in wait.

The MRAPS are nearly five tons, with tough protective metal sidewalls, a 50-calibre machine gun, and a grenade launcher. I waved to McKean and Carmichael and immediately they began firing over our heads towards the two Taliban gun positions. But it was difficult because their firing line was part obscured by the damaged light vehicle in front, with its driver slumped over the wheel. Its second man, was now on the ground, writhing in agony, but also in line of fire.

"That's Julio Perez," said Corporal Browning. "We could get him if...."

Another fierce volley of AK 47 fire whipped our ditch edges. It also ran a line of puffs between us and Perez, who was about 40 yards out. "Perez, can you get to the ditch," I yelled, "Three yards to your left."

Perez hunched on the ground, moaning loudly, sometimes screaming. He had immediate shelter behind the light vehicle, but that couldn't last. There'd either be another rocket, or he'd be flanked. If he got to the ditch, we could crawl closer to him, narrowing the exposed zone down to about 15 yards. Browning yelled instructions again and I did too. But Perez either couldn't hear or was unable to move. An AK47 raked the space in front of him again.

"Maybe I should go?" asked Browning.

"No, they'll have you in three seconds. He's not gonna move, so the best thing is we push up close with the MRVPS, and then try to pull him aboard," I said. But as I turned to signal the MRVPs a figure bolted past me, heading towards the crying, wounded Perez. It hit the ground once, surrounded by dust puffs from AK47 bullets, then crouched and rushed forward again.

"What the... "

"It's fucking Lonesome Dove," screeched Browning. It was too late to call her back because she was halfway to her target. Medic Anoki hit the ground again as another stream of bullets burst round her, then sprinted the last fifteen yards to the shelter of the vehicle, where Perez lay. She flipped him onto his back, tore his shirt open and began working rapidly round his abdomen while tracer marks skidded past her crouched position. It was pure fortune she'd reached Perez, and there seemed no way she could make it back.

"Anoki, stay with Perez till we get our MRVPs abreast of you. You got me? REMAIN THERE," I bellowed. Lonesome Dove gave me what looked like a thumbs up, but may have been the opposite. It didn't matter because another rocket immediately smashed into the vehicle protecting her. Ten seconds later everyone, the Taliban included, saw Anoki stagger out from the smoke and dust, with Perez slung over her shoulder.

Browning and me poured our M4s towards the Taliban positions to help give her cover, and the MRAPs, which had now got a slightly better sight-line, re-opened their fire. But the drama of Anoki/Lonesome Dove, carrying Perez, had become the Taliban's total focus. She wheeled, jigged, and staggered through a screen of spiteful metal, and suddenly she was immediately in front of me.

"In here, with us," I yelled. She pushed Perez down to my arms. then followed into the ditch herself.

"Shit! Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm right, but Perez - only maybe. The guy driving the truck's dead. Perez needs a Medivac chopper fast, or we'll lose him too," she said.

"We've called Pasab. They've diverted another mission that was already airborne, so they'll be here in minutes," said Browning.

Anoki passed me back a syringe she'd stuck in Perez's arm; she snapped on a pair of surgical gloves to begin feeling beneath the soldier's ribs, then began applying combat dressings she'd ripped from her kit. "Quik Clot Gauze. It's the newest version. Makes a much better job staunching bleeding wounds, so it'll buy him more time," she told me.

I don't clearly recall the massive thud of the incoming mortar, but I remember the stabbing, searing pain before I passed out. The platoon's mission report says that the shell wounded Browning, me, and Lonesome Dove, who was leaned over Perez.

The Taliban forces slid away as soon as they heard the approaching whirr of two attack Apaches and the Chinook medivac. On board the Chinook, I came to again, and realized one medic had begun frantically taping me, and a second was putting a needle into Browning who was writhing, his boots rat-tat-tatting on the chopper's bloody floor. Lonesome Dove slumped opposite, was bleeding too, staring in shock through dark brown eyes, with vivid green flecks.

"You were terrific," I told her, but her eyes had rolled up in her head. I took her hand. Thirty seconds later, my injections kicked in and I was pretty much under.

The choppers carried five wounded and one body back to Pasab. Plus Urlich who strangely was the only survivor not to eventually walk from the Field Hospital. Urlich's appendix finally ruptured during the flight, and at base they couldn't save him.

I was in our hospital for three weeks. Two days before I was due for discharge, I got an urgent message from Galveston. My dad, the second generation to run the family's shrimp fleet and processing business, had dropped dead on the docks. This tour was my second, and because it was due to end in two months, they decided to send me home early.

The day before I left, I took a jeep and a box of candy treats, and drove to a place near Siab Jan, where we'd built one of our first schools. There'd been few girls in the region who dared attend school for fear of the Taliban's violent reprisals against both them and their families. Now two of the classes included a row of girls-- eight and nine-year-olds happily crowded at their desks, wearing white hair scarves.

That was back in a time when we still dared to hope. I said my goodbyes to Browning and Perez, and to the rest of the team but I missed Private Anoki. Lonesome Dove's wounds had meant she needed to be sent on to Kandahar.

"She said to tell you 'Heaps of thanks' for what you did in the chopper," said Browning. I stared at him puzzled, having no idea what he meant. And I never saw Private Anoki again. I did, however, spot her in a news picture eighteen months later. A general was pinning the Silver Star for valour onto her tunic. You could barely see her face between the flags, salutes, and hats.

I'd known her for about forty minutes.

xxxxxxxxx

With the top down, I drove the rented Mustang up to Hanalei, my mind grappling with the rental car attendant's face. I'd been about to ask her the "how-come-you-know-me?" when the office door flew open, and the older guy called: "Sammy -- we've got a guy who'll take a SUV for four whole weeks, but only if its ready now. Can you get that red RAV4 cleared -- super urgent, like?" And so, she vanished, with no time for explanations.

I found the house about two miles past the Hanalei village. I lifted my bags up three steps, opened the door, walked out to the wooden front veranda, and there it sat -- a small paradise. Bright purple bougainvillea vines framed a lush green lawn buttoned with white hibiscus trees and frangipani. Beyond that, the beach, the sparkling bay, and....

And suddenly I saw the possible connection to the girl who'd signed out the car. Her slight limp was unfamiliar, and I didn't know any girl with a lazy eye. But her eyes were brown with distinctive green flecks. Plus, she had the high cheekbones, and the smooth brown skin - perhaps these added up to Private Anoki? On the other hand, I'd never seen the medic when she wasn't hidden under our unit's tussock covered helmet and camouflage gear. Also, Mountain Division had several women in support sections who'd likely recognize me. But Lonesome Dove? It did seem a chance.

I found the rental agency's number in the Mustang's glove box and called. "The girl with the hose? You mean Sammy?" her dad asked warily but brought her to the phone.

"It's Dan Thurlow speaking. I picked up a car this morning," I told her. "I hope that by some chance I'm right. Is it Private Anoki I'm speaking to? Were you a medic at the Pasab base in Afghanistan?"

"Well, it was Corporal Aniko when I finished up. But yes, and it's plain Sammy Aniko now. I'm sorry I had to rush off on you, which must have seemed rude. But I thought there was no way you'd remember me because we barely met each other. It was just a few minutes of pure bedlam."

"Remember you? How could I forget? We shared the worst chopper ride of my life. Yours too I guess?"

"You're not wrong there," she said. We chatted briefly, and to my relief Sammy Aniko said "Fine, yes we can get together for dinner." She recommended an Italian place called Bar Acuda, for the next evening.

I got to Bar Acuda five minutes early. When Corporal Anoki walked in, she was likely the best-looking girl the restaurant had hosted in a month. She'd let her dark hair down to her shoulders and wore an ankle length red flowered mu-mu, which clung to her trim body. Her high heels looked a damn sight sexier than the boots and camouflage gear.

"What sort of odds against us meeting again? It has to be worth survivors' champagne," I suggested as she sat, and she agreed.

"So, its eight years, and you're here on Kauai. What's been your journey since Afghanistan?" I asked once we'd settled.

"Mainly emergency department nursing or theatre surgery. Here and there, but mostly Southern California. Then Dad called a year back. He's by himself and needs to sell up the rental business so he can get himself retired. He'd built a good fleet -- eighty cars- but the books were disorganised. And he'd never really cottoned to the 'hows' of web-marketing, which make all the difference when you are a local taking on the big guys.

"It's much more profitable now, but he still needs a buyer. So, I'm still here hosing cars and doing office stuff with him. But that's my main things - how about you?"

"A vaguely similar tale. The family had Gulf shrimp boats and a processing factory in Galveston. When my dad died the business was in a hole. But we managed to fix it by widening out to restaurant supplies, then doing their laundry too, then the same for all the tourist hotels. We've still got a few boats, but now it's more sheets than shrimps.

"Personally - I'm recently divorced and beginning to realize it's a blessing," I said. Sammy nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, I understand. I've been there too... But how's your body holding up? Last time I saw Captain Thurlow he was-- as much as I can remember - a mess. Shrapnel all places."

"I'm good now. Turned out it wasn't as bad as it first looked. My left arm's scarred, my side's still got road maps, and it gives me grief when it's cold. But everything's working now. How about you?"

"They needed to take me back to Kandahar. The surgeons were brilliant and with my being a medic, they gave me the full 'home-team' treatment. But they took out eight bits of Taliban tin, and the rehab took ages. You'll have noticed my leg's not quite right.

"Then there's this," she said gesturing to her right eye. "One spike entered above my ear and damaged nerve endings. I can see fine, but what spooks me is my eye's gone a touch lazy," she said.

"Nah, you'd hardly know," I said. "And I can tell you this -- Lonesome Dove looks in very good shape!"

"What did you say? Lonesome Who?"

"Lonesome Dove. You didn't know? The platoon liked you so they nick-named you Lonesome Dove."

"Lonesome Dove? Huh? Lonesome - - oh I get it - the medic girl is by herself, and she's Indian too. The name sounds rather nice -- perhaps I could like it." She smiled to herself. "Dad's mom is Sioux. Gran insisted -no, she flat out demanded -- that my middle name be Red Wing, after her own mom. But Red Wing got dumped when I went to school."

"Did Red Wing make it to your Silver Star citation?"

"So, you know about the Silver Star? Yep, it's there and it's on my driving license too. Samantha Red Wing Anoki. But that's a handful. It's just 'Sammy' - okay?"

"I rather like Lonesome Dove."

"Okay then. Just with you."

"Another thing. The guys said you left me a thankyou message when you were sent on from base hospital. It's you who was the hero that day. I can't figure what the 'thanks' was for," I said.

"Me the hero? How about your Silver Star from the Kush battle? You were admired at base. And I had Captain Thurlow holding my hand the whole way home in the chopper. You talked with me, you calmed me, you helped me make it. All of this while you were wounded and in a lot of pain. Jeez, you made a huge difference!"