WATSONVILLE — During a seven-month stint as a combat medic in Mosul, Iraq, Watsonville High School graduate Chris Lint treated scores of injured people. One of these was a woman with a bullet wound in her thigh.
Treatment came too late, and the woman died from her wound. Worse, she was pregnant, Lint said.
The medics later inventoried the woman’s meager possessions. One of these was a 50 Dinar note, worth about 20 cents in the U.S., Lint said.
Her possessions went unclaimed, and Lint said he kept the note, a reminder he said helps him reconcile the horrors he saw there with his very different life here.
“I keep it in my wallet and I look at it every once in a while,” he said. “It’s easy to say that life sucks right now. This is what makes me realize that maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I can wait ’til next week to pay that bill. Because things can always be worse.”
Lint, 28, returned from Iraq earlier this month.
He talked about his experiences Wednesday at the weekly Watsonville Rotary luncheon.
Lint served in the United States Marine Corps from 2008-12, a lifelong goal he said was inspired by friends and family.
He served in the infantry, but was never deployed.
Upon his discharge, Lint started a cabinetmaking business in Watsonville, but said his thirst for adventure was not quite quenched by his stint in the military.
So he researched ways in which to find that deployment. He eventually connected with a friend who worked for Global Response Management, a non-governmental organization that brings emergency medical care to people living in conflict zones, with a focus on the Middle East.
That friend told Lint they needed people “tomorrow,” he said.
He then sold his Harley Davidson motorcycle to pay for his trip, temporarily shuttered his shop and took three months of EMT classes, including a tactical combat medical class.
Once he was in Iraq, Lint said he largely worked with Iraqi Special Operations Forces.
That unit has been fighting to liberate Mosul from ISIS since October 2016. The Iraqi Prime Minister declared victory in that conflict in July.
Still, the conflict continues, with residents caught in the crossfire.
“It was to the point where I was wearing their uniforms, we ate with them, slept in the same rooms,” Lint said. “When they advanced into Mosul, we advanced with them. We were legitimately infiltrated with Iraqi Special Forces.”
Lint told stories about loading dead children into ambulances alongside their injured parents, and of a time when ISIS militants discovered a way to slaughter liberated villagers as they fled through military evacuation points.
One day, Lint’s unit treated 136 people, about 50 of whom died, he said.
But Lint also said he found a brotherhood and dedication among his unit that mirrored that of the Marine Corps.
He also encountered a people whose kindness and generosity shocked him, particularly in the war-torn region.
“Families in the neighborhood we were in would bring us what I guess was their version of a five-star meal, on literally a silver platter,” Lint said. “I asked, ‘what are you having for dinner?’ And they said, ‘rice and beans.’”
Once the talk was over, Rotary member Gil Courtney invited Lint to join the club.
“What you have done is way beyond our motto of service beyond self,” Courtney said. “We would love to have you join the club.”
Before Lint gave his talk, his mother Shaz Roth said she always encouraged her son to seek adventure, and told him that airplanes can take him anywhere he wanted to go.
“This was not what I had in mind,” she said.
