Windle Serves Tennessee in Legislature and Iraq
From Wednesday’s Nashville Scene: If a mortar shell had hit a little closer, hit a little harder, John Mark Windle’s last meal on earth would have been served by the U.S. military. And he wouldn’t even have finished it. If a mortar shell had hit a little closer, hit a little harder, John Mark Windle’s last meal on earth would have been served by the U.S. military. And he wouldn’t even have finished it. Windle, a major in the National Guard, was transferring detainees in Tikrit, an Iraqi city northwest of Baghdad that once housed the presidential palace of Saddam Hussein. It was regarded as a thicket of insurgency, the uppermost point of the “Sunni Triangle” occupied in part by armed Sunni Muslim loyalists. After transferring prisoners, Windle and a couple of soldiers crowded inside a massive mess tent to eat lunch. There were maybe 700 people inside.
Almost finished with lunch, the Tennessee native heard a distant thud. Another came a couple seconds behind, louder. It was mortar fire. “That’s going out,” Windle told one of the soldiers eating lunch nearby—he thinks. Or maybe he said, “That’s us, isn’t it,” referring to U.S. mortar units. Windle can’t remember exactly what he said.
In fact, Windle can’t remember much about anything that happened in the next few moments. He does not remember whether it was the third or fourth round that came down next, came down almost on top of the mess hall, scrambling everyone outside. He does not know whether he was hit with shrapnel or the butt of an M-4. Whatever it was knocked him to the ground, where he remained for a few seconds before staggering to the door.
Windle does remember hearing a soldier say, “He’s bleeding.” He remembers because he was surprised to learn the soldier was talking about him. Before he knew it, a full-bird colonel had wrapped his forehead in gauze. At some point somebody took a camera out of Windle’s pocket. Whoever it was took a couple of photos, then stuck the camera back inside.
The major was taken to a hospital, where he spent three days. Doctors had to monitor him because one of his eyes remained dilated, indicating he’d suffered a concussion. But Windle saw four other soldiers injured that day, two with stomach wounds. “There were people hurt a lot worse than I was,” he says.
