Saturday, February 7, 2009

Letter 10
















February 1, 2009
Letter 10
Balad, Iraq

Everyone:

This has been a busy two weeks since my last letter. We continue to be down two doctors for our clinic which means no days off for the rest of us. We have been working non-stop everyday for about a month and it is starting to wear me down a bit. Between working 8 hours a day and then going immediately back to my CHU (Container housing unit…sometimes called a connex housing unit) to work on my Butler stuff has kept me busy until wee hours in the morning. The only other thing that I do regularly is go to the gym and eat. I guess this is good as it makes the time pass by quickly and you know what they say about idle hands!

I have lots of stories for this letter so lets get started. One of our doctors is a family doctor from Tennessee name Major Altman. Major Altman is a bit of a prankster and has been tormenting the rest of us innocent medical providers on a fairly regular basis. Anyway, Major Altman received a tasking to go to a base south of Baghdad for the next 6 weeks. Being the good soldier he packed his bags and went back to the clinic to finish his patient notes. Major Romig, a PA from Illinois, has received the majority of Dr. Altman’s “abuse”. The rest of us kept Dr. Altman busy in the clinic while Major Romig went to the PX and bought several packages of women’s underwear. He then “broke into” Major Altman’s room and took out all of his underwear and replaced them with the newly purchased women’s variety and repacked his bag. Now, I neglected to tell you that the base that Major Altman is travelling to is a small austere place with no PX or other “creature comforts”. About 12 hours later we received a phone call from base X with a simple phrase “good one”. We of course had to ask “commando or women’s”…..a pause……..a small voice replied back “I’m wearing them”. This caused a large round of belly laughs from the PAs and a sense of justice passed through the clinic.

It has not been all smooth sailing these past two weeks. In an incredible show of bad taste our active duty unit that we work for has decided that they no longer want our Indiana National Guard unit to wear their patch. We have since been ordered to stop wearing their patch as our combat patch, even though we have had an official patch ceremony. What can you say…it is ok, I am proud to wear my 76th BCT patch from my parent unit and of whom I deployed to Afghanistan in 2004/2005. We had Indiana citizen soldiers killed on that deployment and I will wear that patch proudly to honor them, rather than an active duty unit that would rather protect its own patch.

I must tell you another story that I found entertaining. I was seeing an Iraqi patient with Dr. McPhee (has since left Iraq), and we were trying to tell him that he needed to get any future care from a local doctor and that we cannot continue to see him as he is not a US citizen or soldier. He looked up at us and seriously said…”but it is dangerous out there” we were like “but you live out-there” he responded “I KNOW”. We ended up arranging some more care for him, but I found it interesting as he would rather come to the Americans.

This leads me to the next event. We had a mass casualty exercise (MASCAL) to demonstrate the American model to about 12 Iraqi doctors. The Iraqi medical system simply does not work. They are unorganized and egocentric. They will not accept any medical training certificates or validations if it is written in English (must be in Arabic). They also have no means or measure for ensuring competency. Anyway, we set this exercise up and it seemed to go pretty well and the patients were all moulaged to add to the realism of the experience. Here I am during the exercise with the “immediate” category patients.


You can kind of get an idea of the numbers as this is just one area where we were seeing patients, and they are all lined up. I was responsible for the three that you see in the picture and all three were badly injured. What made it difficult was that we were supposed to be in “full battle rattle” (I was still seeing real patients inside so I “escaped” this). It is hard to show the “organized chaos” that is present with having so many patients. Of course they are playing their parts, yelling if able, asking for their friends, having non-injured people trying to enter the area looking for people. I believe that the military handles this better than the civilian sector. I would have included some pictures of the Iraqi doctors but we are not allowed to show their faces if the pictures are going to be published.

Below is an action shot of me moving to another patient and giving evacuation orders to 1LT Nott the big guy on my left for the patient that I just finished up working on.


We almost had the opportunity a few nights later to actually perform a MASCAL for real. At about 9 PM we received a rocket attack of 5-10 rockets. These actually landed pretty close to our clinic. The sound was unbelievable, and it rattled everything in my CHU. It sent us all scurrying for cover. This is one of the first sustained or multiple indirect fire attacks that we have had since being here in Balad (usually the attacks are mortars and are 1 or 2). I have since decided that rockets are much worse than mortars! What made this more unbelievable is that the rockets actually ripped through a civilian living area just down the street. Nobody was killed...I do not know how. It destroyed three CHUs but two of them the residents were not home. The third had a person that was in bed and had just lain down for the night. Next to where his bed is are sandbags. These sandbags shielded his bed. The rest of his CHU was shredded. Below is a picture of the his CHU



I am not sure if you can see all the shrapnel holes, but these are the ones that actually went all the way through the building. If you look to the right there is a piece of cardboard taped to the wall which is where the majority of the blast hit. The person inside is about as fortunate as can be, and I have no idea how he survived. We saw lots of minor injuries associated with the attack. It certainly brings things back to perspective real quick.

Working in the clinic has allowed us to meet all kinds of people. One of our favorites is a guy named Baresh, we call him “boris”. He is Turkish and we have starting having dinner with him and his colleagues every Sunday. They spend a lot of time cooking for us and it is good to have some real food. Below is Baresh with me and Dr. Perez.


Dr. /LTC Perez is a family doctor from Guam. It is really interesting talking with him about “island life”…Shel…want to move to Guam? If you look at the left lower corner of the picture you may just see the edge of a fancy tea cup. This is for serving Turkish coffee after our meal. It is kind of similar to an espresso. It was good, a little thick, but ok. After taking a few drinks of the coffee, Baresh asks us if we liked it…being good guest we quickly tell him how great we think it is….he proceeds to tells us he hates it. What I like about this picture is that it really almost shows three different regions of the World sharing a meal and having a good time together, especially here.

We closed out today with a physical fitness test or physical training (PT) test. This is the lovely Army test that active duty likes to make us do in a combat zone to ensure that we are physically fit. It consist of 2 minutes of military style push-ups, 2 minutes of full sit-ups and a 2 mile run for time. Here I am in the middle of my push-ups


I chose this picture because there are a lot of items to point out. (My $5 haircut is not one of them). We are doing the test inside Holt Stadium in our base. It used to be a soccer field and track. Rumor has it that there were numerous public executions here. Somebody even said it is the infamous site where the Iraqi National Soccer team lost and were later tortured for losing. In front of the stadium and to the right are of course bunkers for any mortar attacks. The track behind me is concrete and in really bad shape. Finally, This was taken today (Feb 1st …sorry I am in shorts and a t-shirt and I have heard that it is cold with feet of snow back home in Indiana). Below is me immediately after running my two miles.


Ignore the toothpaste on my lower lip…or maybe it is that I am rabid? I am holding what position I finished in the company on the run…not to brag but I put in the fastest time at 13:36. It could also be the number of months before I get to come home on leave! It looks like I get another shot at leave and may get to come home toward the end of February. Of course, it is at the Army’s discretion.

I have received several email requesting pictures of different aircraft or other “cool Army stuff” from some kids. One of the more popular requests is for the Predators. Here is one flying over our base providing security for us.


I know it is a bit hard to see, but I will give you a better picture below. Apparently there is at least one predator up at all times. I do not know for sure as they are pretty quiet and we only occasionally see one. Here is it up close


I will try to add some pictures of our base in the next letter. I know that I have still yet to give you a “tour” of our clinic…maybe next time. I wanted to take a few moments and thank everybody again who has been helping my family out. I also must continue to get a shout out to Shelby, my wife, as she is handling 4 children, working, and keeping our house from falling down. Not so sure that I could do that job. Keep praying for our soldiers…to my Butler PA students…how is the drink from the firehouse? It will get better. To everyone, NEVER FORGET what our soldiers are doing for our freedoms overseas. NEVER FORGET the sacrifice of the families, and NEVER FORGET that we live in the greatest nation on earth, recession or not, it still provides more freedom and opportunity than anywhere else in the World. Stay safe with the winter weather, and keep your prayers coming.

Major Roscoe