In another life, I drove ambulances.

[Robb]

I think I've told this story before, but it seems relevant again today.

Emergency responders all have horror stories, whether they're cops or EMTs or whatever. This one isn't the worst, but it's illustrative, and I apologize if it's a touch gross.

Motorcycle vs. pickup truck, freeways speeds, blind corner, bad passing choice for the guy on the motorbike. Long story short, there were several places across the road where we and the highway patrol went to pick pieces of him up.

There's two ambulances on-scene. "My" EMT is walking toward our ambulance carrying the better part of an arm wrapped in a piece of trash bag. From a good ways away I can make out all five fingers.

Behind me, a paramedic I knew with a dozen years of experience, shouts at "my" EMT. I'll never forget it.

"Hey __________ , do you need a hand?"

And everyone laughs. Highway patrolman, medics, firefighters. I chuckled, oddly enough. Infectious laugher, I hope, because it wasn't funny.

It's a peculiar brand of laughing, that. I've run across it frequently. If you're saturated with horrible things, I think you cope with it in very human ways. Soldiers will recognize it, and reporters are just as bad.

...And if you're not in that kind of life, you're going to be appalled, and rightly.

This is where casual readers will expect me to let the soldiers in the helicopter in the Wikileaks video off the hook. Nope. They did a lot wrong, and the system they were working with was royally fucked up as well.

They don't get a pass for their actions, nor for their laughing at driving over dead bodies. Reprehensible.

I'm just telling you I know why they're laughing.

[Schema Thing]

1. respectfully I think it's a totally different laughter than that you described.

After all, the paramedic didn't just blow the arm off of the motorcycle rider with a 30 cal.

[Robb]

19. True enough.

...But the guy in the Bradley who made the remark about "Well, he's dead anyway" after he rolled over him had just shown up, too.

[Schema Thing]

23. Yes, but that is a tiny fraction of what went on in that video.

You don't have to have been in those gruesome circumstances to totally *get* gallows humor. I think your anecdote is funny as hell.


I also think men playing video games with other innocent men's lives is disgusting, sickening, and worthy of outrage.

[Robb]

24. That's the point, though, really.

Those guys in the helicopter, even. They're in the middle of horror, worst still they know on some level a lot of it is their own making.

Ramp everything I'm talking about upwards, and you're there. I think it exceeds gallows humor, to something else that probably crosses into psychiatry's territory.

[Schema Thing]

26. I guess I don't get your point in this case.

The event is outrageous because of the eagerness to kill from a relatively safe perch. The words spoken by the killers may add to the outrage, but are not the cause of the outrage. The words spoken are fairly irrelevant save for the fact that some of them appear to be lies or at best exaggerations designed to get permission to use a high-tech .30 caliber machine gun on defenseless humans.


The Iraqis were in the middle of horror. Hell, the soldiers on the ground who worked to save the children where in the middle of horror. The helicopter gunners? Not so much in this case.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. This is a funny story

in the way that you describe...

And yes I know why they are laughing. It is gallows.

But lets leave them to the side.

There is more to this story than just them... or a camera lens

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8094928

I fear that people are missing this part, because they might share in that gallows humor laughter.

Oh and Robb NOW I find out you and I shared that part of life or is it death? Been working on and off on a short story involving one of my war stories... and no it is not an accident... it is the other thing we had to do.

[Robb]

3. You're not a real writer

...until you have at least three unfinished novels sitting in a box. :hi:

To be fair, I never got shot at. I was drawn on once, but it was a case of mistaken identity, and long after I'd given up driving for chasing, and then only after I figured out how to get there before the ambulances. :D

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I got six novels, and a few shorts

does that count?

:-)

But for a long time I have chosen not to use those real life stories. These days I am starting to... and it is the ... how to keep the guilty hidden.

[unblock]

12. maybe we should form a club.

ever do cpr on an infant while the warmth slowly drains out?

i confess to engaging in a bit of gallows humor after that one.

none of us felt good about that one, especially given the signs of abuse, seeing the parents told the news, seeing them cry, knowing what we knew.

or thought we knew -- an emt rarely has all the facts.

a lot of emotions.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. I was lucky the premie did not code

But I had to declare a five year old run by dad, accident. Skull collapsed. She looked like my niece...

That was the ONLY time I did not make jokes. My partner asked if I was fine. He said I looked as white as a ghost, and I am white.

And yes perhaps we all should form a club. What to call it? The fucked up mentally, or we've seen too much for our own good?

:hugs:

[Roon]

4. When I was a kid,I wanted to be a paramedic

My nurse step mother talked me out of it.Kind of glad she did...

[MUAD_DIB]

5. My nurse mother talked us out of/vetoed are wants to drive motorcycles.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MrScorpio]

8. It's called "Gallows Humor"

It's pretty striking to observe it in action from the outside.

We should recognize it as merely a coping mechanism for dealing with horror.

[mike_c]

9. there's not a damn bit of grim humor on that video-- it's real, they were mocking their victims...

...and laughing at their suffering. Fucking pig bastards. I have no words to express my anger and disgust today.

[MadHound]

10. Having worked DOA fire scenes, I fully understand what you're talking about

And like you say, it is no excuse.

[Warpy]

11. I think that's why I'm less than freaked out about it

I can tell you that civilians absolutely could not handle hospital humor. The stuff we pull in hospitals to cut tension would gag slime mold.

The tragedy of this video was that overtired people mistook a camera lens flash for weapons fire. The tragedy was compounded by an apparent military coverup of the incident.

However, this is what war is about. All wars are like this, the slaughter of innocent civilians who were in the way being repackaged as collateral damage so that people back home won't be disgusted and the boys who caused the war can continue it.

What we need to be angry at is that this war was pursued based on lies and in order to further empire. What we need to be angry at is the waste of lives, the world's good will, our own treasury, and in a very large part our future on this rich man's war of convenience.

Wikileaks has done a service in obtaining and posting this video. It's high time everybody knows what war is really all about. It's not glory, it's filth, misery, blood, death, waste, and a bunch of rich old men getting richer.

Just excuse me if I don't waste any outrage on the troops.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. you and me

and we used to walk away from where them families hung about to ahem decompress after a bad call, or an MCI...

Oh the jokes....

:hi:

I actually wrote a standing order on that.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. That's funny, and people in that kind of job often use gallows humor to...

avoid going crazy with the misery they see.

But, you. or your co-workers, didn't throw the biker in front of the truck in the first place.

The soldiers may be reacting to the horror, but is it a good thing when it is they who created the horror? Is their version of gallows humor an attempt to mitigate the horror or assuage the guilt?

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Very technically speaking, even though they are the trigger pullers

they didn't.

You and I did. You pay taxes right?

And your representatives in Congress voted for this.

It is time the people of this country take some responsibility for what THEIR CIVILIAN LEADERS order these troops to do.

And by the way, that is not an excuse for the troops. But it is high time Americans take some fucking responsibility.

by the way, at the end of the day this is not about a couple warrant officers, or the rest of the air crew... nor is it about the dead on a dusty Baghdad street, or the Bradley, and a platoon of troops. It is about us.

Sorry if I get a tad too philosophical about this...

[Mind_your_head]

17. G_d love you all on "the front"

:hug:

In my few experiences with you all first responders "on the front"....you have been very compassionate, loving, and understanding. You're amazingly wonderful and talented at helping the bereaved begin facing their/our loss.

Thank you.

Sincerely... Thank you and Bless you!

[Skittles]

18. it's a defense mechanism

yup

[we can do it]

20. As a Retired Firefighter-Paramedic I Respectfully Disagree

Killing for no reason and laughing about it is in NO WAY the same as lightening up a horrific situation in which you are called to help.

[Schema Thing]

21. This was my point above - this is not gallows humor

this is death porn chatter.



Many of us who never were in gruesome circumstances totally *get* gallows humor.

[Brickbat]

22. As an editor and former reporter who has seen some shit, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Humans do what they have to do, sometimes. It's how we're wired.

[underpants]

25. Thank you

for your service


EMT's , as you may know, are the result of Vietnam. Vets needed jobs and someone got the idea "Hey let's put guys who have dealt with tramatic injuries IN the ambulance."


Army medics and Navy corpmen were put in place and it increased from there.