Posted on 12/24/2004 5:47:52 PM PST by Critical Bill
With maimed soldiers pouring into the emergency room, Army Maj. Michael Cohen was at the center of a nightmare from which he could not run. Cohen is a Bucks County native, a military doctor, and was the chief ER surgeon at the U.S. base in Mosul during Tuesday's mess-hall bombing.
"No one had any idea what was about to take place," Cohen wrote of the moments after the attack. "We asked one of the newly arrived soldiers how many people were injured, and he said, 'A lot. There are bodies everywhere.'... As I stepped outside, I couldn't believe what was going on."
Also sweating through the action was Cohen's mother, Debbie Cohen, 59, a former Hebrew school teacher glued to the flat-screen computer monitor that sits by the window of her bedroom in Langhorne. Each morning, she logs onto the Web site where her son provides blow-by-blow accounts of shrapnel wounds and medical miracles as an emergency-room doctor with the 67th Combat Support Hospital unit.
"I was hysterical. Hysterical," she said. "As his mother, I want to smack him and say, 'Come home now!' But he's an amazing kid and I respect him."
Iraq (news - web sites) is unquestionably a war of the Information Age, observed from all angles. The infrared eyes of Predator surveillance drones watch from the skies over Iraq, while military parents watch with red-rimmed eyes from home, reading any of the dozens of Web logs maintained by military units and individual soldiers in the field.
Cohen's Web log provides a medical twist to the genre, with gripping accounts of removing lungs and catheterizing urethras, and of blood parasites spread by sand flies.
He describes downcast American soldiers queuing in the hospital for hours to see a dying comrade one more time, and on a different day, a wounded Iraqi insurgent quoting Shakespeare on the examination table. There is the dreaded thud of insurgent mortar attacks against the base, the subsequent cry of "Bunkers! Bunkers!" and later, the inevitable crackle of the medical dispatch radio, "EMT, TOC," signaling casualties.
Readers watch Cohen face grisly injuries with an urgent "Oh my God" flashing across his brain but never, ever escaping his lips.
The Web log is available to civilians, insurgents and military moms alike at www.67cshdocs.com.
For Cohen's family back home, the level of access to their son's life in Iraq has been overwhelming, but they would never give it up. It provides reassuring balance to the television news updates that beam into his mother's bedroom.
"Sometimes it's hard getting up in the morning and turning on the television," said Debbie Cohen, a Headstart reading coach for the Philadelphia School District who lives with her husband, Stan, in the Villas at Shady Brook retirement community. "Reading Michael's site has been comforting. We know where he is, and a lot of times we really do believe he is safe."
Cohen, 35, graduated from Council Rock High School and joined the Army, guided by the theory that military service would be essential for his boyhood dream of becoming the first Jewish president of the United States.
Cohen had been in Iraq for about a year by Tuesday, when the explosion now believed to be the work of a suicide bomber ripped through the crowded mess hall at lunchtime, killing 22 and wounding 69.
In his earliest postings, Cohen had called the Mosul base "one swimming pool short of a country club," and had even run an Army-organized half-marathon along the perimeter, with an armed humvee escort. "We do get a lot of mortars," he wrote months earlier, "but this location is great."
On Tuesday, Cohen found himself in one of the worst attacks on American forces yet.
"I felt my heart plummet. I knew we were in big trouble," he wrote. Stepping outside, he saw 30 more casualties lined on the ground. The head wounds, chest wounds, and abdominal wounds were too many for the ER beds, too many for the available rickshaws and tables dragged in as gurneys. Medics from the 67th and a range of other units and nationalities - an Albanian, a Turk, a Korean - aided the effort.
"It was an amazing feeling seeing all of these people coming out to help," he wrote.
Reached by e-mail in Iraq yesterday, Cohen wrote: "Bombing a dining facility during lunch or dinner was a nightmare situation that we always knew could happen and just hoped it never would. The results were worse than we ever imagined."
Also reaching Cohen by e-mail yesterday was his mother, with a loving, teasing message meant to evoke memories of his early childhood.
"I reminded him of the time when he was 7 years old, standing at the top of the stairs, and he said, 'Mommy, what does C-H-A-O-S mean?' " Debbie Cohen said.
"I think he knows exactly what that means now."
Maj. Cohen's Diary
Around midday I heard a report on the radio, something I will not soon forget: "The DFAC (dining facility) on Marez just took a direct hit. No report of injuries or number of casualties."
... Two trucks and 2 Stryker vehicles pulled up and the mass chaos began. Each vehicle carried at least 3 casualties and on initial assessment, most seemed seriously injured. The situation quickly became overwhelming... . We were doing our best to triage... but they were arriving too quickly... . We did not have enough rickshaws or stands so we were putting the litters on the floor and treating patients there. While this was going on, more patients were accumulating outside.
... Just about every medic on our FOB [forward operating base] and on Marez showed up to help... . People were coming out of the woodwork. There were docs showing up as well. A Turkish physician who works with a local subcontractor showed up to help out. Earlier in the day a Republic of Korea (ROK) physician brought a ROK soldier in with pericarditis. Now the ROK physician was helping out. The Albanian commando physician stopped by to help out.
... We had just started to get a good grasp of who needed to be transferred and where the patients were located when there was a large boom. Sounded like a mortar. Boom. Another mortar, a little closer. Boom. Yet another, sounding even closer. The fourth boom landed on the roof of the hospital.
... By definition a mass casualty situation is when the number of patients and their injuries exceed the available resources. This was the mass casualty of all mass casualties.
Same to you. My daughter (Army medic) just arrived at Mosul this afternoon (early Christmas morn in Mosul) and got a tour of the hospital. She said both the sick clinic and hospital are covered with shrapnel holes. Of all the places to get posted, she gets Marez. Scared but ready---love the Army.
BTTT
God bless the men and women in the US military. And may He bless you and keep you safe.
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