The other night we had a call that an urgent patient was coming in from an outside base that was going immediately to surgery. We met the patient at the flight line. We backed our ambulance up to tail of the C-130, engines running. We boarded the aircraft to get the patient, a Marine, who was intubated (breathing tube inserted) because of his level of consciousness. The flight nurse and his buddy, another Marine, were taking turns bagging, breathing for, the injured Marine. We transferred the Marine to the ambulance and drove to the hospital. I took over the bagging while we traveled. As we got out of the ambulance and entered the ER, the docs, nurses, and tech were all waiting and descended on the injured like a group of mother hens all eager to help. I continued to bag as they set up the ventilator. There was a bright light in the ER tonight. It was a TV camera. There was a film crew from one of the networks who wanted to document what we did. They like to follow a patient all the way along the process: point of injury (almost never done, haven’t seen a film crew on a helicopter going to the scene of a newly wounded soldier), medevac (helicopter), surgery and stabilization, staging for aerovac (CASF), and then the aerovac to Germany and eventually home. This is done quite a lot. While I was here last time, we had at least four different crews doing just what I had described. They usually just stay at the Green Zone and Balad and do not go out into the field.

It is very flattering to have cameras around and have the press wanting to interview you but as I was bagging the Marine and I saw the bright lights I had another thought. It goes back to one of my favorite movies, “When We Were Soldiers”. The reason there is a movie is because there was a journalist who risked his life to document the incredible feat it was to take the “hill”. When the battle was over, a helicopter landed and a lot more press jumped out in safety and wanted to tell the story. What they saw were all of the dead and injured, but that was not the story. The story was the bravery that caused the death and the injuries.

Showing what the medical people do in a war is in a very real sense showing defeat. Concentrating on the wounded and how the wounded are cared for is very nice, but none the less focuses the light on us and the wounded not on the true heroes. Yes we work hard and have an incredible track record, 96% of people who make it to our hospital survive to make it home. Our motto is “We bust ours to save yours” and it is true, the medics keep the hospital open 24 hours a day 7 days a week with no slow down for weekends or holidays. It is easy to lose track of what day of the week it is because except for church on Sunday everything else is the same.

But back to the my concern about the publicity we receive; constantly showcasing the wounded and the deaths with the steady death count that is constantly spoken of on TV and printed in everything from local papers to the “Stars and Stripes” emphasizes the tragedy of a conflict without the balance of what has been gained. When was the last time you heard a news account about the number of girls in school, how well the Kurds are running their provinces, the freedom people have to disagree without the threat of their families being murdered, how about the young girls who are no longer used by Sadaam’s sons and then tossed aside, what about all the medical care that is given to men, women and children who are injured in normal traffic accidents. The cameras did not spend any time filming all of the humanitarian care we are giving. What about all of the heroism, when men jump on grenades to save their buddies. Most of the reporting from here is done from the safety of a base like Balad or from the “Green Zone”. Laura Ingram tried to talk about this when she was interviewed on NBC after traveling outside of the green zone and no one wanted to let her give her viewpoint.

The media seems so compassionate when they are filming the hospital but I doubt the purity of their motives and I long to hear the real story told by a reported who is brave enough to stand side by side with the real heroes of this conflict, the soldiers and Marines on the ground.

Solis Deo Gloria

More thoughts to come