Note from the desk of the opinion editors:

This is the third part of a series that will appear every Monday this semester where we will publish the journal of Liz O'Herrin, a UW student who kept record of her experiences in Iraq and has decided to share them with the readers of The Badger Herald. We present this journal in hopes that you can gain insight to a small piece of the Iraq experience for American servicemen and women.

My roommate and I prepared to venture from the ICU to the helipad training course. But first, we must hydrate. As we went to track down water, a klaxon sounded. "INCOMING, INCOMING, INCOMING." We dive to the ground of the ICU. I try not to think about all of the blood that has spilled on the floor my face is now pressed against. The new medics must not have experienced an incoming attack before, they all get up after a short period of time. By protocol, we are not supposed to pry ourselves off the ground for several minutes. We get up, get back down, get up, get back down on the ground. Everyone is yelling. My roommate and I run to get our Kevlar and are given looks as though we are out of our damn minds, and we realize we are running through the hospital while everyone else is still flat on the ground. We ignore them all until we get to our gear, then try to explain ourselves to a major in the confusion but end up looking like idiots. We know when to shut up so we remain quiet, under desks strapped into helmets and vests like the rest of them. Except for two Marines, who continued on with their solitaire game on the computer without even blinking.

We get trained on the helipad. This is where casualties first come off the helicopters. We wheel them into the emergency department on stretches. I immediately decide this is too stressful of a situation, with the noise level of chopper blades and mass confusion and frantic hand signals. I no longer want to be part of the helipad crew.

I ask my roommate to come back with me to the ICU, as we were aware that a small Iraqi boy was coming out of surgery soon. Gunshot wound to the head. "He's not gonna make it," a surgeon said, shaking his head.

So tiny. Swollen black eyes, head wrapped in pure white bandages. I have never felt a simultaneous urge to pass out, throw up and break out into sobs. "It's time to go," I told my roommate, trying to insinuate as much urgency as humanly possible. We had seen his father earlier, with a translator. Full traditional dress, a large sweeping man.

I can't take the kids being caught up in this crap. I realized the actual blood and guts I could deal with, but not the kids. A lieutenant colonel pulled us aside and explained how hard it was to have people from the same firefight come into the hospital, to treat Iraqis and the U.S. G.I.'s they just shot, how hard it was to treat them equally. I realize I probably couldn't do it. Today is the first day I have ever looked an insurgent in the eye. I looked someone in the eye who wants to see my guts spill on the ground.

May 20

I went to the Right Start briefing today. It's a mandatory briefing that tells you absolutely nothing of importance, and consists almost entirely of powerpoint slides alternately containing common sense and phone numbers you can't write down fast enough. It's pointless. The general talked for 80 minutes about nothing. Then the command chief came up and talked a bunch about "putting warheads on terrorist foreheads." I admire his gung-ho attitude and am simultaneously offended by the blatant propaganda he is throwing at us.

Then the chaplain came up. He starts talking and seems like a good guy. Suddenly it sounds like he blew extra hard into the mike, but we all knew he didn't. We all freeze in our seats, and the murmuring starts. Then a really loud boom. I felt the concussion in my chest so hard I almost lost my breath. Someone yells for us all to get down.

Five hundred people topple off their chairs like fish out of water, wriggling for a spot on the floor. My head in crammed into somebody's ass and I'm quite sure somebody's head is crammed into mine. None of us can breathe and the Chaplain continues his briefing, facedown on the ground, deviating from the powerpoint slides. "You can stop by anytime, not just when you are in a tight spot … " We all laugh, muffled, because our faces are all crammed into someone else's ass.

Later we find out it's a planned controlled detonation that took place on base. Things are still not going smoothly at work. Bad communication leads to hard jobs in the hot sun taking hours longer than they should.