Generosity of Spirit, Intent and Action
A news story by Martin Fletcher out of The Times, London, sketches out the incredible workload and moral consternation faced by the medical staff of the 28th Combat Support Hospital - also called the China Dragons - in their daunting task assigned them by their profession and their presence as medics with the U.S. Army in Iraq.It's a picture of a dedicated group of medical professionals working in stark conditions, receiving countless mutilated, seriously injured individuals requiring immediate, skilled help.
Those being brought to the attention of the hospital range from non-combatants, civilian bystanders caught in the crossfire of battles between militias, between allied Western forces and militias; those injured in bomb blasts, both adult and children, as well as enemy combatants - who have sustained life-threatening injuries while in the process of attempting to take the lives of others, including American personnel - along with injured U.S. troops.
They make no differentiation in the quality of care, the urgency of looking after their charges to the utmost of their harried professional abilities, treating all who come under their care with similar skill and determination. Their fundamental, unjudgemental humanitarianism is clear, a testament to their dedication to their healing craft. They are uniformly informed and motivated by their pledge to heal to the best of their abilities, to do no harm.
The horrors they are subject to viewing, the conditions they assess and assiduously, humanely, deftly attempt to ameliorate is a testament to the best that pertains to the potential of human endeavours. Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" grim and gripping novel of war's casualties, that earned him the contempt and attention of Senator Joe McCarthy seems destined to be replayed in this latest theatre of war.
As when a dreadfully wounded American soldier was evacuated by helicopter, landing at the hospital located inside Baghdad's green zone, where the attending medics discovered that all four of the man's limbs had been severed or attached by nothing more than skin, in addition to having suffered burns to 70% of the rest of his person. He was treated, woke eventually, post-operatively to discover just how much his life had been altered - at the ripe old age of 19.
The doctors treat Iraqi detainees from prison camps who have been assaulted by fellow prisoners; perhaps suspected of being in collusion with their captors, or perhaps because he was a Sunni surrounded by Shia. The man had been beaten, had his tongue cut off, his eyeballs picked out of their sockets. As horrific as this spectacle was, he was only one of many such casualties.
And the 7, 8 and 10 year-old children requiring operations to remove bullets from their chests, their craniums; some survive, some sustain permanent brain damage, some cannot be saved. Most illogical of all to Western-oriented minds is the number of Iraqi civilians admitted for urgent care having fallen victim to celebratory gunfire - as many as ten at a time - when events such as soccer game wins (July Asia cup) bring people together in joyful harmony.
The soldiers, the civilians, the children, who have fallen victim to IEDs. The article points out that occasionally suicide bombers are placed in hospital stretchers close by those who were their victims - all awaiting treatment in their turn. Sometimes gruesomely enough, bits of small body parts of suicide bombers are found enmeshed in the injured flesh of victims.
"We're not judge or executioner. Our mission is extremely simple. We treat everyone who comes in here. We treat them the same and we try to save lives", Major William White, nurse-manager of the emergency room was quoted as saying. Their humane empathy for the victims of hatred whom they serve places them closer to the angels than mere humans, were angels to exist.
Insurgents or terrorists, or sectarian militia members whose injuries have been so traumatically severe as to place them beyond saving have even been provided with a Koran, an interpreter and a warm empathetic body to give human companionship, ushering them kindly into Death's implacable embrace.
From the agony of war, the ecstasy of humane treatment, however ambivalent.
Labels: Heroes and Villains, Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 16, 2007
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