CRNA in Iraq Page Three
The fighting in the North begins to intensify and we are told to prepare for many casualties as the Kirkuk offensive begins. The first casualty arrives. Not an American, nor is he a soldier; he's a BBC reporter who has stepped on a land mine.
The BBC team was out covering the war when mortars began dropping close to their vehicle. The Iraqi guide with them suggested they get out of the vehicle. When their photographer stepped out he tripped a land mine and was thrown onto a second mine. The photographer was killed. Exiting the back seat the reporter also stepped on a mine and had lost most of his foot. The BBC crew along with Special Forces medics brought him to us at the FST.
In the operating room the surgeons debrided his foot and attached external fixation devices in an attempt to save what was left of his foot. We treated this reporter for two days, taking him back to the operating room twice for further debridement. The reporter was eventually flown to the United Kingdom where, despite our best efforts, his foot had to be amputated.
I might add that perhaps a bit of history took place here as probably for the first time two CRNAs took care of a British citizen in northern Iraq. I am humbled by the sacrifice the reporters had made to take freedom of the press to its fullest. The photographer who lost his life was Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian citizen and a Pulitzer Prize winner for the work he had done reporting on the gas massacre in Halabja in 1988. He had a wife and children.
It's amazing: the war goes on and none of our guys in the North are seriously hurt. This is a good thing. We eventually find work for about ten of us, south about an hour's helicopter ride away in Ashraf. The surgical team is briefed about a group of Iranians who have been living in Iraq planning to attack Iran and oust what is left of the Khoumani regime. The group is called the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran. The PMOI have been living in Iraq for approximately twenty years, planning and building an army to attack Iran. During the recent conflict in Iraq the Iranian secret police came across and attacked the PMOI. Approximately twenty wounded have had no medical care.
We packed up our surgical equipment and flew by helicopter to Ashraf Base, home to about two thousand PMOI and a hundred or so tanks. Many of the surgical cases are wounds received from small arms fire and, to my surprise, many of them are women. The next few days we do approximately forty surgeries.
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