In addition to our troops who have been killed in this “war of choice,” there is a vast number of casualities who have had to be Medivac’d back to the United States. Here is an excerpt on this topic from the transcript of last night’s CNN “NEWSNIGHT” with Aaron Brown. I ask you take special note of the final comment made by Mr. Brown.
BROWN: In a week when we’ve talked a good deal about bad apples in Iraq, it is time to talk of angels. We found these angels on a clunky airplane filled from ceiling to floor with the wounded of the Iraq war. They travel from Iraq to Germany and then on to Washington, the beginnings for many of a very long road back to health. At every mile they travel, they’re watched over and tended to by medics and nurses and doctors who have seen too much to be unchanged by a war that is still just a year old. NEWSNIGHT’s Beth Nissen made the journey with them this week. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thirteen hundred hours, Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. On approach, the day’s medical evacuation flight from downrange, a C-141 Starlifter bringing in sick and wounded troops from Iraq. CAPT. DAN LEGERE, MEDICAL CREW DIRECTOR: We continuously move patients out of theater. The patients that we see, most of them have trauma of one type or another from their battle injuries.
NISSEN: The war wounded, almost 20 on this flight, are all floated on to buses that will take them to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the big Army hospital nearby. The plane is immediately reconfigured for the next medevac flight to carry another set of sick and wounded troops from Landstuhl to military hospitals in the U.S. for more surgery, treatment, long-term rehab.
SMSGT. RICKY SMITH, PRIMARY LOADMASTER: These kids, they’ve done their job. And it is our job to make sure they get back to medical attention and get put back together, if you will.
NISSEN: Seventeen hundred hours: 37 patients loaded on to the plane for the long flight to the U.S. Their injuries are typical of those carried on medevac flights, especially in the last five weeks, gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, legs and arms fractured in mortar blasts, eyes ruptured by shrapnel. Two patients are in critical condition, both with spinal chord injuries. One is on a ventilator. For the ground and flight crews, seeing so many so badly injured is hard, yet hardens their sense of mission.
LEGERE: A few things that you see will really tug at your heart.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I just sympathize with them so much. And I just want to make sure that we do everything, everything possible for them.
NISSEN: That isn’t easy on board a C-141 cargo plane, an inhospitable flying hospital. The challenges start on takeoff, especially for the critical patients.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most dramatic thing here is when the airplane takes off and the nose pitches up, the head pitches down and kind of destabilizes things for us when that happens.
NISSEN: Changes in altitude, cabin pressure can cause drops in blood pressure. Turbulence can cause spikes in pain.
MAJ. STEVE GRIFFIN, AIRCRAFT COMMANDER: We try to watch out for it. We keep the smoothest flight that we can for our patients. It is their comfort level we’re concerned about. And we try to make it as comfortable as what we can for them.
NISSEN: Things are far from comfortable for the medical flight crew. Most crew members are Air Force reservists, Air National Guard. In civilian, they are E.R. nurses, EMTs. At 30,000 feet, their work is the same, but working conditions are radically different. The light is dim. Space is cramped. Stethoscopes are useless in the roar of the C-141’s engines.
TECH SGT. TIMOTHY MITZEL, MEDICAL FLIGHT CREW: We all have to wear ear plugs. We can’t hear. We can’t hear blood pressures. We can’t hear lung sounds.
NISSEN: Crew members use monitors, use informal sign language, lean in to listen to patients. For nine hours, they work to control pain, to monitor mortar and bullet wounds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You’re OK.
NISSEN: To dispense comfort.
LEGERE: The kids that we see, they’ve all got still that great spirit. You don’t ever hear any of them complaining or whining or any of the things that you really would expect seeing the disfiguring and the severe injuries that these guys have.
NISSEN: Twenty-two hundred hours: Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. Patients are off-loaded onto buses bound for Walter Reed Army Medical Center or Bethesda Naval Hospital. It is hard for the flight crew, especially the older ones, to see them go.
GRIFFIN: You don’t look at them as some stranger that is on the other side of the world. You look at them as, wow, this could have been my son or my daughter.
NISSEN: There is little time for reflection. Within hours, the medevac missions go again, back to Germany, back downrange, back home with the latest casualties of war.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Since the war began, there have been 3,000 of these flights, 40,000 patients. They haven’t lost one yet.
