Das kurze Leben des Jose Antonio Gutierrez

...All of a sudden I hear a helicopter and I see them bring somebody in real quick. A couple of minutes go by, and I see this man in a british uniform, and he goes: "you are a marine?" and I go: yes, sir. And he says, "We have one of you guys in there." He prepares me, tells me this guy is pretty beat up, I don’t think he’s gonna make it. We started talking, and he goes "I have no idea, what he’s saying". He opens up the curtain, and I see, it was a mess. I remember his head was shaved, I focused on his face, I was trying to figure out if he was one of my buddies, but at that point I said, hey this is a marine, I gotta do it. So I go up to him, and I remember, just grabbing his hand, just asking him, just remember asking him “Hey devildog, what’s going on?” First thing I just could think of.
The Chaperon is still behind me. He just whispers in my ear, and I am trying to figure what he’s saying, because I am trying to write everything down for his family. Just right then I realize, this guy’s gonna die.
And I remember I was trying to pick up his words, he wasn’t speaking correctly. And I remember I was kind of mad, because I didn’t see nobody working on him no more. I remember his whole side was just bloody, I don’t know what it was, I was just focusing on his lips. And I couldn’t hear him well, I was just so pissed off, because the vents were just so loud I remember, and I was scared to get close, so I remember just bending over a little bit, and you know just trying to figure out what he was trying to say. I just picked up a couple words, and was turning to the chaperon, I think he is asking for his grandma.
And that was it. I just remember his skin, I remember touching his hand and his head, and I don’t know, it was the room and the vents, it was just cold in there. And I remember just letting go of his hand and said, "just hang in there devildog, they’ll take care of you."

And at the same time I was thinking man, nobody is doing anything, it was a lot of things I was trying to put together and the last thing I remember was when the chaperon said, "alright, let’s go", and he went back in and I was just left alone in this long hall. Looking both ways, and I felt like I was cold and hot, and I don’t know where to go, and I felt..I felt like everything stopped, I just wished, I just wanted my mom, I just wanted something familiar. And I went back into that damn waiting room with nobody to talk to, and that was my reality-check. This is real.