Thomas A. Middleton - Sabers Edge: A Combat Medic in Ramadi, Iraq

I was working at my desk in the Fire Marshals Office one afternoon in June 2004 when the phone rang. Fire Marshals Office, Middleton, I answered.

Interruptions like this drove me crazy. Working an office job at the firehouse, I no longer felt like a firefighter. I walked past the big red trucks in the morning and listened to the guys talk about their adventures over morning coffee, but I no longer felt like one of them. When I was a line firefighter, I lived their life of derring-do, solving problems by spraying large volumes of water at them now I issued code violations and taught kids to stop, drop, and roll.

Id been a career firefighter in Burlington, Vermont, for ten years before I transferred to my new job as the assistant fire marshal. I still enjoyed the camaraderie in the firehouse, but I sorely missed the satisfaction of saving lives and the challenge of rushing into a nice hot blaze and knocking it down. Pulling people back from the brink of death or delivering babies into the world were some of the most rewarding things a man could do. Now I had to find satisfaction in testing smoke detectors.

Sergeant Middleton, the brigade just went on alert. I was about to get back into the lifesaving business. The rumors had been flying for months that my National Guard unit would mobilize, and finally it was happening. I often joked that my unit was so far down the list for mobilization that the Boy Scouts would be called up before they got to us. No one ever anticipated that we would be sent to fight in the worst, most violent place on earth, Ramadi, Iraq.

Although I worked in fire prevention, I was still a firefighter when neededI just didnt feel like one. It had been three years since I had fought a real fire, a three-alarm blaze that destroyed a historic former National Guard armory that was now home to a nightclub known as Sha Na Nas. It had been a cold Friday morning in November, and I was at the station, loading up my truck and heading out to an elementary school when the call came in.

Engines 1, 2, 3, Tower 1, Rescue 1, Car 12, respond to a reported structure fire at Sha Na Nas, 101 Main Street, cross streets are Pine to St Paul, time out 0908, KCB999.

I tossed the last of my stuff in the back of my SUV and pulled out into the rush-hour traffic, heading north for the elementary school, gritting my teeth like a caged beast while my brothers ran for the trucks.

All responding units, we are receiving multiple calls, reporting flames visible from the roof. The tone in the dispatchers voice told me this was a real fire.

To hell with teaching, I thought to myself, as I whipped the truck around behind Engine 2, and stepped on it.

I pulled up at the fire right behind the first arriving units, and got my firefighting gear on. I went to the incident commander with an airpack on my back, hoping to fight fire, but expecting him to ask me to deal with the news media. I waited for a moment with him while the initial reports came over the radio from the first units in the building. I couldnt believe what I heard next.

Command from Engine 1, we are on the second floor in the office spaces, and people are still working in them. We are sending them out now. The area is clear.

While flames raged above their heads, the office staff was completely unaware. The fire was above the reach of the sprinkler system and there were no smoke detectors in the unoccupied space in the attic. Command from Engine 1, we poked through the ceiling, and there is heavy fire in the attic. We broke open a sprinkler head, but it is beneath the fire. Were getting soaked and we need to open the roof! Can someone shut down the sprinkler system?

Find the sprinkler valve and turn it off, then get up on the roof with a chainsaw and help Tower 1 open the roof, Battalion Chief Michael Richard said to me. I need a trench cut, or were going to lose the building!