Unsung Heroes.

[Colin]

Here's to the unsung heroes of Afghanistan. The frontline medics who, through their outstanding skill, expertise and dedication, pull so many of our young men from the jaws of death. It is good to know that there is at least one area where our troops receive the best there is.

God bless the doctors and nurses at the joint UK/US medical facility in Camp Bastion.

Frontline medics: The men and women fighting to save soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan

It has been a bloody summer in Afghanistan. But for the young medics on the front line, confronting tragedy is just part of the job

A neat queue of khaki ambulances, their lights flashing, is primed by the side of the landing site as two American Pave Hawk helicopters appear over the desert horizon and sweep down. The rotor blades are still thudding as the first ambulances rush forward to meet them. Bent double by the down-draft, their crews carry four laden stretchers from the belly of the aircraft.


Seconds later, the Pave Hawks lift off just in time for a giant RAF Chinook to make its thunderous descent. With a precision choreographed over a thousand rehearsals, more khaki vehicles, each of them emblazoned with a giant red cross, arrive in swift sequence. Their blue lights are still blinking as they cover the few hundred metres to where the doctors and surgeons are waiting expectantly on the steps of the field hospital. It is a good sign – an indication to the medics that these patients can still be saved.

As each ambulance backs up to the door, a team springs forward before disappearing with the patient through the double doors. One vehicle is swiftly replaced by another as 13 more casualties are off-loaded in rapid succession. The loudspeaker echoes across the British military base of Camp Bastion: "All trauma teams to the hospital".

Inside the emergency ward, a young British soldier clutches a cloth to his bloody face, another lies back on a stretcher, his features pale with shock, while a third stares down numbly at a bandaged leg stained red with his own blood. An American marine manages a weak thumbs up, while an Afghan in a wheelchair glares around himself in confused terror.

Within seconds, however, this relative serenity is shattered as every bay in the ward fills up, doctors and nurses buzzing around each newly arrived casualty. Some of the injured are wheeled quickly away to the operating theatre; the hospital prides itself that from landing site to surgical table takes just four minutes.

Welcome to just another day in the relentless, exhausting and frequently heart-breaking life of the military field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan.

during the bloodiest summer since the US-led mission began in 2001, the public has watched with horror as the death toll in Afghanistan has mounted. But what quickly becomes clear on a visit to Camp Bastion is how many young men are snatched away from that list of fatalities on a daily, even hourly, basis. Nobody is considered beyond hope in this hospital.

Read more at: Frontline medics: The men and women fighting to save soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan - Asia, World - The Independent

"The only thing they ever want to know is how their buddy is, how they are doing," says American nurse Lieutenant Junior Grade Jill Mott, who is 24. "You try and keep them together as they heal better together. The thing that is amazing with your soldiers is they come in with broken bones, blown up, and they are making jokes. They are very cheeky."

According to Captain Joseph Rappold, the senior American surgeon, the book has not yet been written on the techniques developed at Bastion. The College of Emergency Medicine in the UK has even dedicated its national conference next year to the advances that have been learnt in the field hospital. "If there is a success story over here, it is this hospital," says Captain Rappold. "What we have learnt in Afghanistan is now implemented in UK and US hospitals. You just would not see these types of injuries, these triple amputations, anywhere else other than in this war zone, this horrible place.

"We have no special gizmos or gadgets," he continues. "Only when you see it and have to deal with it, do you appreciate the devastating nature of the wounds and develop the ability we have to save these young men's lives. It is just an experimental process of learning. It is a great privilege to save the lives of these kids."