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War: Death Lurks Just Moments Away

By Stan Friedman

IRAQ (September 12, 2005) - Following is the first in a six-part series taking an in-depth look at the ministry of Evangelical Covenant Church chaplains in war-torn Iraq and the people they are called to serve.

Covenant Chaplain Jeff Saville came within moments and less than 60 yards of being killed in Iraq.

Saville had been seated in an open-air truck that made the short trip during early evening hours from Camp Ramadi across the Euphrates River to Camp Blue Diamond, where he was stationed. Saville sat with other troops in the back of a truck that afforded him the opportunity to admire the multi-hued sunset. The beauty captivated him and the amateur photographer was snapping pictures (see accompanying photo).

"I remember it all detail by detail," he says, including the exact time his truck pulled into camp. It was 5:30 p.m. "The driver was planning to park on the main street in our camp next to the sidewalk, but for some unknown reason he decided to pull into a nearby gravel parking lot instead," Saville says.

"Right after jumping off the back of the truck, I saw an orange flash about 60 yards away, right where our open-back truck would have parked," Saville recalls. "I was looking right at it when it was hit. From the flash and sound, I knew it was an incoming mortar shell that had just exploded. We had just driven through that exact spot about 90 seconds earlier. Had we parked there, we would certainly have taken a direct hit."

"When the flash occurred, I saw the silhouette of a person either running or falling forward away from the blast," he recalls. Saville and others took cover in the event more rounds attacked the convoy. "I actually didn't feel that much fear," Saville says. "You're very alert, though. You're paying attention."

Within a minute of taking cover, he was running to see if anyone had been hurt. He saw what might have been his fate. What turned out to be a 60mm mortar had exploded on the sidewalk, spraying shrapnel in all directions. Some of that shrapnel had exploded through the upper thigh of a young lance corporal.

Two medical corpsmen already had reached the soldier by the time Saville reached him. "The young man was bleeding quite profusely from his left leg," Saville recalls. "I held his right hand with my right hand, and cradled his head in my left hand."

Saville asked the soldier his name and was reminded that the two had met and spent a half hour talking several weeks before the attack. I talked with him, reassured him - despite my fear that he was losing a lot of blood - and I prayed for him." When the ambulance arrived three minutes later, "I helped roll him onto the stretcher and loaded the stretcher on the ambulance, which then drove several hundred yards to the Battalion Aid Station (BAS)."

The young soldier left two large pools of blood on the street, "each a little bigger than the side of a briefcase," Saville says. "Still wearing my helmet and flak jacket, which we are required to wear on convoys, I breathlessly ran down to the BAS where he was being treated."

The soldier was still conscious, Saville says. Two Navy medical officers and still more corpsmen feverishly worked to save his life. "One of the corpsmen handed me a plastic bag of IV fluids connected to one of his veins and told me, 'Chaps, hold it high and squeeze it hard.' Believe me, I did."

As Saville held the bag, he continued to pray, but feared for the soldier's life as the young man's skin grew increasingly more pale. Several officers and corpsmen worked to save the soldier while another radioed for a transport helicopter. Ten long minutes later, the soldier was carried on his stretcher back out to the same ambulance, which drove him to the nearby chopper landing zone. Another ten minutes, and the helicopter arrived and took him to Baghdad.

In Baghdad, the soldier immediately underwent two operations to stabilize him. Two days later, he was transferred to Landstuhl, Germany, for more surgeries, and then to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Saville later learned the soldier underwent eight surgeries, but was expected to make a full recovery.

Last February, Saville faced a similar situation, holding the hand of a wounded young officer who had been hit by shrapnel from a rocket while in the camp. Again, Saville held the soldier's hand for 45 minutes while he was being treated. Again, Saville helped carry the stretcher to the chopper that would fly the soldier for additional care. This time, however, the soldier died en route.

"Some aspects of the deployment are harder to take."

(Tomorrow: a little-known story of bravery on the part of legendary Covenanter Karl Olsson.)

(Editor's note: this online series of articles complements other exclusive material presented in the September issue of The Covenant Companion. To order just the special September issue, call Eric Gonzalez at 773-907-3311. To order a subscription to the magazine, either call Gonzalez or order online at Companion. To receive a free daily Covenant news headline service by email, please visit Newswire.

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