Army Docs Treats Wounded in Desert Tent
I N T H E K U W A I T I D E S E R T, April 11 -- The doctors and nurses of the 47th Combat Support Hospital were having a routine day in their tented complex in the Kuwaiti desert. Then the choppers started coming in.
After a morning spent treating soldiers for minor complaints — a soldier who accidentally pricked herself with nerve-gas antidote, another who inhaled too much desert dust — the work turned grim.
They heard the blades of the first helicopter just after 4 p.m.
It was bringing in the first of a wave of casualties that would keep the unit busy for the next 12 hours: 23 soldiers and Marines from six different incidents, including firefights over the border in Iraq.
Front-line medics carried the wounded into the CSH, or "cash," as it's said here. The sprawling, 300-bed medical complex stretches across 12 acres, all covered by air-conditioned tents pressurized to keep the desert dust out.
The complex, set up almost overnight, contains four operating rooms, radiology facilities, and labs — "anything you'd expect in a big medical center," according to the unit's commander, Col. Ray Costabile.
Gravest Injuries Treated First
The doctors worked late into the night, handling injuries like multiple gunshot wounds, open-skull injuries, amputations, and a mortar wound to the head.
The first step for each incoming casualty was triage. Regardless of rank — or even what army a soldier fights for — the rule is that the most critically wounded go to the front of the line for treatment.
One of those was a young Marine with a bullet wound to neck. One of the surgeons, Dr. Maria O'Rourke, asked the Marine's name, then whether he could open his eyes and move his toes.
O'Rourke says she feels more of a personal connection with her patients at the CSH than back home at her peacetime job at an emergency room in Washington state. "It's different because you know that person could be you, or any other soldier that I know," she said.
The Marine was obviously in pain, but putting a brave face on it. He refused to take more painkillers, writing a note saying, "I have already had morphine."
