War is not glamorous and no one comes home unscathed.
It’s real.
Hollister resident Jorge Sanchez, 21, found out exactly how real
war is after spending five months with his United States Navy
battalion in the Middle East.
War is not glamorous and no one comes home unscathed.
It’s real.
Hollister resident Jorge Sanchez, 21, found out exactly how real war is after spending five months with his United States Navy battalion in the Middle East.
Sanchez, a specialist in the Navy, joined after he graduated from San Benito High School in 2000. He didn’t feel he was quite ready for college, so his mother encouraged him to join the Navy.
He thought the Navy was the most appropriate way to work toward his goal of becoming an X-ray technician by obtaining medic training through the military.
“I wanted to see the world and serve my country,” he said, “do my time.”
He survived boot camp and core school in Chicago, which gave him his medic training, and served in Japan for a year. When fighting broke out in Iraq “seeing the world” took a decidedly gruesome twist.
He wasn’t even old enough to legally have a drink, but he was going to war.
When his mother, Celia Jimenez, learned he was going to be stationed in Iraq she felt a heavy burden of guilt for encouraging him to join the military.
“I thought, it’s going to be my fault if something happens to him,” she said. “He’s my only son. I just thought, I don’t want to lose my son.”
When he left for Kuwait in January 2003, he felt a combination of fear and excitement. Because he was going with the friends he’d made in his battalion he was more comfortable than if he had been going all alone, he said.
His battalion spent two months in Kuwait training for their time in Iraq – they took classes on what to expect, what to do in a medical situation if they were alone with a patient and they prepared their minds for the realities of war.
During the war he spent time in Nasiriyah, Basrah and Baghdad. After the initial combat phase ended he spent four months in Karbala, helping to stabilize it.
He was stationed as one of the medics with a scout sniper unit of the United States Marines. The unit would patrol areas, do recognizance missions and snipe, he said.
One of his first missions with the unit proved to be one of his most memorable experiences of the war.
“We went into an area where the enemy had been and one of my staff sergeants stepped on a (land) mine and blew his leg off,” he said.
While Sanchez was trying to help the sergeant, he looked up in time to witness one of his fellow medics detonate another mine. One of the medic’s legs was torn off when he was running over to help the fallen sergeant.
Assistance came in to help the other medic so Sanchez was able stay with the sergeant. He aligned the fractured bones, stopped the bleeding and gave him an IV, but most important, talked to him and tried to calm him down.
“His leg was just coming apart – his skin was falling off and parts of his fingers were missing,” he said. “He was just screaming and crying. That’s when I knew it was for real.”
After this incident Sanchez had nightmares for a few nights. He would see the man’s fingers blow off in his mind. To get through the grisly day-to-day experiences he had to disconnect himself to maintain any sense of rationality.
“You can’t get weak. If you get weak, you start losing it,” he said.
While her son was trying to save people’s lives thousands of miles away, Jimenez was in Hollister, trying to keep her sanity.
She heard from her son four times in the five months he was stationed in Kuwait and Iraq. Not knowing what was happening or if he was dead or alive was the most difficult thing to cope with, she said.
Every time she turned on the television she saw another explosion or heard of another ambush. Every time she wondered if he was there, if he was all right. If he was ever coming home.
“If I didn’t get any calls or any knocks on my door, I thought he must be alive still,” she said. “I did a lot of praying – it was the only thing I could do.”
Support from her family, church and coworkers helped her through the difficult ordeal, but more importantly she relied on prayer. The few times she was able to talk to her son she told him to pray for guidance, and it is the same advice she has for families and soldiers who are in the same situation.
“When you don’t know what to do and you’re overwhelmed, ask God for help,” she said. “When you feel lost, just pray.”
