[undercoverbrother]

When I was overseas I remember getting a call for a women that was walking around a field looking for landmines. She was trying to end her life. The engineers cleared a path and we went and got her. We put her on a stretcher and checked her out. Her flesh was rotting off her body. She had maggots all around her neck, ears, armpits, and groin. She was filthy. She took her up to the road, and called an interpreter. My partner wanted to know what she was, last time he took the wrong nationality to a hospital, his patient was shot in the head and dumped out the door. We waited for 4 hrs on the hot road, it was about 38 degrees. As she was laying there you could see horse flies pulling out chunks of her flesh. The smell was like nothing I had ever smelt in my life. Rotting flesh has a smell all its own. It is like nothing you have ever smelt. We would give her water and swat the flies away. When the interpreter finally showed we found out that she was from an asylum in the hills. It was damaged and people just walked out through the hole in the wall. She had been living in the abandoned villages in the hills.

The smell of the women never really left me. We had to burn the blankets we used on her. We also had to bleach the stretch until it was white (had been green). My uniform never smelt the same, and my flak vest would always release some of the smell when I sweated (at least I could smell it).

That’s one bad incident. There have been more….