Bullets, blood and bravery on the 999 run in Afghanistan

Times Online ^ | 4/20/08 | Stuart Webb

[Dawnsblood]

“We’d fly in under fire to save one of the guys,” says RAF pilot Dan Padbury. But as we approach he is told to hold his Chinook helicopter close by while US special forces fight the Taliban on the ground and clear the airspace for an assault by “fast air” – military slang for the jet fighters that are about to attack.

The battle rages on. Meanwhile, we are kept in an extreme holding pattern. In fact, the Chinook is circling so low that you could almost stick your hand out of the open windows and touch the ground. There are 16 people in here with me – members of the forces’ medical emergency response team (MERT) – risking their lives in the hope of saving one.

Among them are a paramedic, a trauma nurse and two doctors – one of whom is also an anaesthetist. Their skills and equipment make the MERT the most advanced first-response airborne combat medical team in the world.

Today’s team leader, trauma nurse Squadron Leader Charlie Atherton, tells me that she was called out on Christmas Eve to rescue a Royal Marine commando who had stepped on a mine. She found him lying in the crater caused by the explosion. He had lost three limbs, so Charlie’s first instinctive response was to hold his one remaining hand.

[2banana]

Unable to find a vein for the drip, the medical team use a new method, perfected in combat medicine, which involves drilling directly into the hip bone to administer fluids straight into the marrow. By the time they get the Taliban fighter to Camp Bastion, they have stabilised him, effectively saving his life. The damage to his leg is so severe, however, that it will later have to be amputated.

Cool medical stuff...

[21twelve]

Thank you for the post. All I know of war is what I’ve seen in the movies and read about and heard about. But, I’m always amazed at our soldiers for going into harms way - and even more impressed with the medics. The story talks about the new advances in being able to treat the wounded on the chopper - but the heroics are the same as always.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Later the crew find out that the two civilians they have rescued are in fact Taliban, blown up while planting their own roadside bomb.
> A man has been shot four times and is bleeding to death. He will die within the hour if we don’t take off – and even though he is a Taliban fighter, the team decide to launch.
> Though these are military rescue flights, the MERT team are just as likely to be out saving a member of the Taliban as one of their own troops.
> By the time they get the Taliban fighter to Camp Bastion, they have stabilised him, effectively saving his life.

I am constantly amazed at what a classy outfit our Warriors are. Bags I the enemy would not treat them nearly so well, were the tables turned.

And you just know somehow that these Taliban soldiers were probably not being saved so that they could be waterboarded later. It will be out of common decency.