Inside America's combat hospitals
Updated on 11 September 2007
A special report from the combat medical hospitals in Iraq, shows the physical and psychological cost of the war.
"Every day someone's dying, every day we're putting people in bodybags."Major William White, Nurse Manager
At Baghdad's Combat Support Hospital, the Black Hawks are coming in thick and fast, ferrying America's war-wounded straight off the battlefield; more than 27,000 of them in four-and-a-bit years.
They are bloodying these operating tables day in, day out, more since the surge say the military medics; more US troops to be injured -- or killed.
"We had the surge; and it kinda waxes and wanes; I don't know. We've had a lot more casualties coming in," says Major William White, Nurse Manager.
"That's the most horrific thing I've seen in my ten years in medicine. Can you ever be 100 per cent prepared for what you see? No."Paul Corcoran, Chief Surgeon
War wounds
The US takes almost half its casualties in Anbar Province,northwest of Baghdad. Orderlies and gurneys are on permanent standby at the Al-Asad Combat Hospital.
Soldiers witnessing their buddies cut down like this are being left wth deep psychological scars.
The Pentagon also acknowledges that acute combat stress has hugely increased due to longer deployments and multiple tours. Medical staff are strung-out and permanently wired.
As another soldier dies on the table, Paul Corcoran, Chief Surgeon, says, "I think the first sets of people we saw that were victims of IEDs [improvised explosive device] and these vehicle-bourne-IEDs - it's just unbelievable the amount of destruction that you see from these weapons."
"There was another Marine who was trying to pull me to safety, he ended up getting six to seven shots all over his body. He passed away trying to save me."Randy Rudino, US Marine
Trying to cope
And how do the soldiers relax? They fight. Marines versus Army, organised by the medics - even women soldiers slug it out.
They do this for hour after hour and there's no better place to be knocked out than in the precincts of a combat hospital.
The Department of Defence admits one in five soldiers will suffer mental health problems as a result of their deployment. Added to this is the survivor guilt of three Marines who've just "neutralised" eight insurgents.
US Marine Lt Chris Ferguson says, "I was hit with a grazing round on the face. Then my helmet and once on the finger." US Marine Moses Cardinez describes how he felt the impact, adding, "It was the second hit that brought me down. I saw my Sergeant on the floor."
"...dreams of indiscrimate violence, witnessing violent acts, my wife doing bad things, seeing my mother, who died ten years ago, in a bad situation; recurring dreams I haven't had for a while that my mother was decapitated in front of me."US soldier (unnamed)
Soldiers' nightmares
Marine Psychiatrist Beverley Dexter visits her boys to administer her "No More Nightmares" handout, part of her pre-packaged Post Traumatic Stress Disorder kit.
She says, "There's reliable research that 17 to 20 per cent of combat troops are going to develop PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder]. Is that a lot of pople? Yes, it's a huge number of people. In fact I am sure there are many more we would refer to as the walking emotionally wounded."
One of her emotionally wounded is chain-smoking outside the hospital. He is on suicide watch, shadowed by a minder. 118 US soldiers have killed themselves in Iraq since 2003, proportionally much higher than anywhere else.
"The most common sort of dreams are seeing either yourself or someone you love in a coffin or with their head blown off or you badly harming or killing someone you love or them badly harming or killing you..." adds Dexter.
The psychiatrist employs progressive psychotherapies. She teaches coping skills to broken men before sending them back to battle, deemed fighting-fit.
Stigma
Another soldier on the ward is also under close guard. He had allegedly threatened to kill his superiors and had pulled a gun on a comrade.
In the US military, there's a stigma attached to asking for help.
The soldier says, "It's more like you worry about the repercussions, people might look at you different. Others in your unit might wonder if you're capable of doing your job. I've lost count of how many times I've been asked that question; you just get asked that too much."
Losing faith?
When it's downtime in intensive care, nurses are cleaning their weapons. Medics work 12-hour shifts with one day off a week and they are flat out for three months at a stretch.
Home comforts provide brief respite from the nightmare - pizza parties in a fortified safe zone in temperatures close to 50 degrees as good as it gets in this hospital hothouse.
And for America's Christian soldiers, their faith is a bedrock of meaning in the madness. Psychiatrists say soldiers can endure as long as they believe they are accomplishing something.
But there are signs of psychological corrosion of setting in, with some losing faith in their mission here.
And as the Black Hawks continue to deliver the wounded out of the hot night, cold comfort from General David Petraeus. His message to servicemen and women adrift in this war is that achieving US objectives will neither be quick nor easy.
Warning: some readers may find some of the pictures in Jonathan Milller's report disturbing
Freelance cameraman Ashwin Raman spent two months embedded with US medical teams at the Flash circular red cross at Baghdad, 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad and in the Shade Anbar province, north-west Anbar province, scene of some of the heaviest fighting - and the Mark Al Asad and Flash Red Cross Al-Asad Multi-forces Combat Hospital which bears the brunt of the injured..
