Posted on 08/08/2004 9:01:08 PM PDT by neverdem
RESCUE TEAMS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 5 - For days, an unnatural quiet had settled on the Army's 45th Medical Company, one of four airborne medical evacuation units supporting 130,000 American troops in Iraq.
Little was heard of the three rings on the radios carried by the standby crews for the Black Hawk helicopters, signaling casualties requiring urgent airlift after a bomb or an ambush or a firefight somewhere out in the 125-degree heat of the Iraqi summer.
But the dog days of August, and the long hours of watching James Bond movies and Nascar races on the Pentagon's TV channel, ended abruptly for the unit on Thursday, about the time crews were rotating out for lunch at the Taji military base, a few miles out in the scrubland beyond Baghdad's northwestern outskirts.
After weeks of relative quiet, American troops were taking casualties in renewed fighting in Najaf and in Sadr City, strongholds of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
For Chief Warrant Officer Joseph E. Carroll, 33, of Boulder, Colo., co-pilot of "Medicine Man 23," one of the 12 Black Hawks the company flies in Iraq, the fighting brought a return to the tightly disciplined, hair-trigger routines that have taken the unit through nearly 1,400 missions, carrying more than 2,000 sick or wounded American and Iraqis, since it arrived from its base in Germany six months ago.
Running to the helicopter with another pilot, a crew chief and a flight medic, Mr. Carroll had the helicopter airborne in barely three minutes, headed out for a First Cavalry Division base known as War Eagle, on the edge of Sadr City, where medics waited with five American soldiers who had sustained shrapnel wounds when they were hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Barely 20 minutes after takeoff from Taji, the Black Hawk, with red crosses on its nose and fuselage denoting an unarmed air ambulance, was racing back west across the Tigris River, low and fast to guard against ground fire, for a touchdown beside the American-run Ibn Sina military hospital in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone.
Within an hour, Black Hawks and Humvees delivered 15 wounded soldiers to the hospital, setting off frenetic activity in the trauma center, a 100-yard dash for medics who pushed the stretcher trolleys from the landing zone, adjusting intravenous drips as they raced across the burning tarmac to the center's glass doors.
At least two of the soldiers were scheduled for neurosurgery for shrapnel and gunshot wounds to the head, and others faced painful days, possibly weeks, recovering from less life-threatening wounds to the neck, chest and legs.
But by nightfall, all 15 had been stabilized, and a number were walking around, and even preparing to return to their units. In a war in which more than 900 soldiers have died and nearly 6,000 have been wounded, the day's toll, though worse than on many recent days, was still far below the worst that Ibn Sina's medical teams knew, back in April, when Mr. Sadr, the cleric, ignited an uprising that on some days sent dozens of wounded Americans to the hospital.
According to Maj. Christopher M. Knapp, 40, of Muskego, Wis., the unit commander, only about 1 percent of the wounded soldiers carried aboard the helicopters have died on board. Col. John J. Donnelly, chief of staff of the Army's Second Medical Brigade, said the death rate among wounded soldiers is about 8 percent in Iraq, down from 15 percent in Vietnam.
For Mr. Carroll and more than 100 other crewmen at Taji, Thursday was one more day to tick off in a slow countdown to the end of their 12-month hitch here. Flying medevac missions is an intensely hazardous undertaking in Iraq, where the unarmed Black Hawks have frequently come under ground fire.
"I've seen tracer fire going past the nose of the aircraft at night, so close that after we've landed we have had to check the rotors for damage," Mr. Carroll said, relaxing between missions at Taji, a huge American encampment that used to be the headquarters of Mr. Hussein's armored units, and a site for secret weapons development projects.
Other pilots described making steep, terrain-hugging turns after coming under rocket fire, or seeing the launch smoke, then hearing the boom, from surface-to-air missiles fired by insurgents crouching on rooftops or hiding in palm groves. Some even described people throwing stones, though for every account of hostility from people on the ground there were others describing Iraqis waving as the helicopters fly by, and even, in one case, a village where the words "We love you America" had been traced in the dirt.
To Mr. Carroll, as well as other crewmen, the risks of being shot down are offset by what they describe, after months of escaping damage or injury in flight, to be the insurgents' amateurishness with weapons.
"The Iraqis have shown that they don't have any marksmanship," he said.
Other pilots are less confident, and say the unit has been riding its luck. In January, shortly before the 45th Medical Company arrived, another unit flying Black Hawks lost an aircraft, with nine soldiers killed, when a rocket-propelled grenade caused the pilot to pull sharply away from his flight path, striking power lines that brought the helicopter down.
One of those killed was Chief Warrant Officer Aaron A. Weaver, a pilot who survived the bloody 1993 ambush in Somalia recounted in the movie "Black Hawk Down," then contracted cancer, before recovering and returning to flying in Iraq. Mr. Weaver was flying to Baghdad as a passenger, for a cancer check-up, when he was killed.
Facing an enemy with scant respect for the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on ambulances, is far from the only challenge.
In Iraq, there are sudden sandstorms, children's kites that fly almost invisibly from myriad rooftops, and the searing heat, now at its worst, which degrades avionics systems, exhausts crews and causes huge thermals that can turn any flight into a succession of gut-wrenching bumps.
But worst of all are the power lines that sweep across the landscape, many of them poorly mapped, or not mapped at all. Compounding the threat, many lines were looted for their copper wire after the American invasion last year. Many of these have now been repaired, so that aircrews can be confronted, without notice, with power lines that have suddenly reappeared.
Traveling aboard the Black Hawks, over three days of day and night missions, a reporter embedded with the unit listened as the crew's "backenders," the crew chief and the flight medic. watched through the open hatches where Black Hawks ferrying soldiers into combat have machine guns.
"Wires right at two o'clock, two miles," one crew chief urged over his headset, as the helicopter flew south toward a base near Al Mussayib to pick up two marines injured when their Humvee hit a land mine.
On another mission, to pick up an American soldier with suspected appendicitis from the prison at Abu Ghraib, the pilots asked the backenders to keep a special eye out for anybody on the ground preparing to fire a weapon.
Otherwise, the crews' exchanges as they skimmed low across the terrain betrayed little tension. Rarely if ever venturing outside the Taji base, except aboard the helicopters, they have their own perspective on Iraq.
In their world, Mr. Hussein's ousted regime is ever-present, in the form of the huge palaces that loom over Iraqi cities' desultory stretches of two- and three-story concrete buildings. The palaces, bombed and derelict now, or converted into American military bases, serve as helpful reference points along the ever-varying flight paths the pilots follow, especially in Baghdad.
But from the air, too, more starkly than on the ground, there is also the new world of Iraq beyond Mr. Hussein, a world where almost every roof has a satellite television dish, banned by the ousted dictator except for his acolytes; where markets that were once nearly deserted for lack of spending power are now crowded from dawn to dusk; where almost every open space, as the sun sets, is busy these days with men and young boys playing pick-up games of soccer.
"Down there, right now, that's the new Iraq", said Capt. Roderick P. Stout, 28, of Gainesville, Fla., commanding a flight that carried the soldier from Abu Ghraib to the Ibn Sina hospital. "They're out there playing, they're out there shopping. That's good."
Joao Silva for The New York Times
At an American-run military hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad, medics attended on Thursday to a soldier airlifted out after a firefight in Najaf.
Joao Silva for The New York Times
An American marine wounded in fighting in Najaf was unloaded from a helicopter of the Army's 45th Medical Company in Baghdad on Thursday. Renewed fighting in Iraq interrupted weeks of relative calm for the company and other American medevac units.
Thanks for the post. "We love you America" made me cry. Wished we could hear more of these kinds of stories.
ping
Thought of Art on this one
John Burns back at the NY Times is very good news.
Brave Blackhawk pilots at work last week, recovering our wounded troops...
....from the air, too, more starkly than on the ground, there is also the new world of Iraq...where almost every roof has a satellite television dish...markets...are now crowded from dawn to dusk; where almost every open space, as the sun sets, is busy these days with men and young boys playing pick-up games of soccer.
Capt. Roderick P. Stout, 28, of Gainesville, Fla., "Down there, right now, that's the new Iraq.."
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