Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq

by Dave Hnida

  We landed in the furnace known as Kuwait City shortly before midnight and were quickly herded onto buses for a quick trip to Camp Buehring, the usual stopover for troops heading into Iraq. It was a time for soldiers fresh from the States to adjust body clocks as well as to the scorching temperatures of the Middle East. But I don’t know if anyone truly acclimated to the heat, you simply suffered through it as you waited for the oven timer to ring at the end of your deployment. Although our watches said 11 P.M., our bodies said 9 A.M. and our brains said … nothing. The Army could have flown us the long way to Kansas City for all we knew. The group was deathly quiet as many wiped the dribble of openmouthed sleep onto their sleeves while staggering in a semidrunken line toward the waiting vehicles. I held on to the back of Rick’s uniform as he put his hand on the person in front of him and so forth all the way up to the front of the line. We looked like a group of preschoolers on a field trip as we shuffled to the buses. Those who managed to take in the surroundings mumbled disappointment. Far from looking like a war zone, Kuwait International Airport was a mirror image of every major airport in America.

  We slid into our seats and a few tried to steal a glance at the scenery as we pulled away, but the interior of the bus was dark and there were thick curtains over the windows—supposedly to keep anyone with evil intentions from seeing a bus filled with arriving American troops. But as our wheels rolled along the modern superhighway, I couldn’t help but wonder why someone with a bomb or rocket-

  propelled grenade—as well as half a brain—couldn’t just add it all up as a juicy target. We might as well have had banners with big letters and flashing lights on the side of the locally chartered bus proclaiming: “Welcome to Kuwait! Thanks for saving our asses in 1991.”

  The trip from Kuwait International to our next stop, Camp Buehring, was forty miles—thirty-eight on paved highway, then two more across the surface of the moon, craters and all. A dark potholed dirt road, which we traversed at about 4 mph. We slammed into each other with each bump and at one point heard a warning scream from the back of the bus about an overripe bladder ready to burst with the next jolt. We weren’t given the chance to urinate as we transitioned from plane to bus to Buehring. Lesson learned: pee whenever you can, wherever you can—even in front of a group of people. The Army couldn’t care less about your urinary tract.

  We finally pulled up to the gate at 3 A.M. where a spry, full-bird colonel jumped on board. Sporting a big dark battle patch on his sleeve with slanted white stripes, he belonged to the 3rd Infantry Division and needed to hitch a ride onto the base. As the colonel grabbed a seat up front, someone spied the patch and groggily mumbled, “3rd Infantry,” to which the fully awake colonel jumped up and screamed the 3rd ID’s slogan, which dated back to World War I: “ROCK OF THE MARNE!” Rick had been sleeping soundly on my shoulder and the battle cry startled and confused him.

  “What did he say? Top of the morning?”

  I stifled a laugh. “No, Ricky, Rock of the Marne.”

  “That’s what I said. Top of the morning. That’s nice of him but man, it’s late.”

  “No, Rick. Rock—of—the—Marne. Go back to sleep.”

  “Which Rocky movie was that? Three or Four?”

  With that, I bit off a loud laugh and now had the eyes of one pissed-off colonel centered on my face. I was punchy with a severe case of the giggles and waiting for the teacher at the front of the classroom to yell at me.

  “No, Ricky, it was Rocky Ten, where he beats the shit out of the Nazis.”

  “He didn’t fight the Nazis.”

  More clipped bursts of stifled laughter.

  “Yes he did, it was the one where he dumped Adrian for Eva Braun at the end.”

  “Oh. Missed that one.”

  “Major, you got a problem back there?” Colonel Marne had steam coming out of his ears and was staring at us like misbehaving school kids.

  “Ah, no, sir. My buddy here and me, uh, we were just telling some stories.”

  “Well, shape up! You’re in theater now.” Meaning the war zone. No laughing allowed.

  “Roger that, sir, and by the way, top of the morning to you.”

  Now wide awake, Rick almost peed his pants laughing. The colonel shook his head. “You’re a bunch of damned doctors, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, just looking for the golf course.”

  Buehring was a dump—its soil hard as concrete with about an inch of fine powdery sand on top, every step morphed into a walk on the moon, leaving astronaut footprints behind. The air was hot and filled with fine particles that we inhaled with every breath. Someone complained about the baritone hum and thumping of the ever-

  present generators that powered lights that made 4 A.M. seem like high noon. It was a noise that would follow us the rest of our deployment. The bright lights didn’t scare away the cat-sized kangaroo rats that roamed the camp, and I was a little freaked about the deadly desert vipers that had a reputation for slithering into porta-johns. I was now paranoid to sit on the pot and have something sink its fangs into my dangling parts.

  We finally bedded down at about 4:30 in a cavernous Quonset-type tent. It seemed like there were hundreds of these identical white huts lined up. To play it safe, I wrote the number of our hut in ink on my wrist so I wouldn’t wander into the wrong one, day or night. After forming a human conveyor belt, we passed our overstuffed duffels down the line and dumped them into a big pile in the middle of the giant tent, then collapsed in a heap—asleep within seconds.

  The tent was bare-bones, the cots sand- and dust-covered, with our body armor used as makeshift pillows. Most of us woke less than an hour later; I was shaking violently and had icicles on my mustache. Too hot outside, now too cold inside—the air conditioner had been preset to subarctic temperatures. In the dark, I dug through my gear, pulling out my sleeping bags, extra uniform gloves, and some of the winter gear we’d been issued at Benning. I shivered my way back to sleep, sucking in frozen dust particles with each breath.

  As the days crawled by, we renamed our camp from Buehring to Boring. It was clear we were just wasting time until we could catch a flight into Tikrit. A slow depression began to sink into the group—the weather was suffocating with temperatures tickling the 120 mark, that is, until we trudged back to our subzero tent for a frigid night of shaking and shimmying. Instead of clear desert skies, we baked under an ominous dark gray overcast, which at times opened up and angrily pelted us with large globs of muddy rain. The food sucked, and to squander time, we were forced to endure lecture after lecture on subjects such as first-aid (make sure you elevate the legs!) and IEDs (don’t step on them, they’re bad!), and suffer through training sessions on the military computer system of the future, which meant we wouldn’t be using it this deployment.

  Our only good day at Boring included an hour-long, kidney-bruising bus ride to the firing range located somewhere out in the middle of Nowhere, Kuwait, where we needed to pop in and fire a clip of ammo to make sure our weapons had survived the long journey over the ocean. The quick session produced no jams, no misdirected shots, and best of all, no springs flying through the air looking for a face to lacerate.

  For a lot of the group, the trip was a scenic wonderland—they’d never seen the endless desert of the Middle East or the Bedouins who inhabited it. Look at those camels, man. Very cool. I’d had my fill of sandy landscape from the thousands of convoy miles logged my last trip—yet still looked out and stared at the Bedouins, simple people who spent their entire lives moving from place to place in the desert. I wondered how much they knew or even cared about this war—this conflict was probably just one more through the centuries they and their ancestors tried to avoid.

  After firing, we returned to the camp for more lectures, and were told we’d now be busing to a different base, where we’d actually catch our flight into Iraq. Once again, we underwent the drill of packing, dragging, lugging, and finally forming a fire bucket brigade to get our obese duffel bags into our new home
at Camp Ali Al Saleem. Here the accommodations were anything but cavernous; our bunk beds touched, and as a group we had to decide the best direction to sleep to avoid shoving our reeking feet under the nose of the guy in the next bunk.

  Buehring was an amusement park compared to Al Saleem; there wasn’t much to do except wait in an endless line for a fifteen-minute Internet slot or a quick phone call to home. Even the thrill of some fast food from the Golden Arches, nicknamed “McArab’s” because of its Arabic signage, didn’t last more than a few happy meals. But our boredom had one saving grace; we finally had the time to get to know each other a little better.

  My buddy since day one on the bus at Benning was the fifty-four-year-old clean-shaven, disciplined conformist from a rural and conservative part of Oklahoma. Rick Reutlinger’s uniform always looked sharp, he had perfected a snappy salute, and was always respectful of his superiors. In other words, everything I was not. But a long summer together would give me a chance to corrupt him.

  Bernard Harrison was a handsome, debonair heart surgeon from Minneapolis. He even had a slick pencil-thin mustache that added an air of suave. Prim and proper, the name “Bernard” fit him perfectly, which made it a slam dunk to christen him “Harry” instead. He was forty-nine, single, and had the chiseled body of a stud twenty years younger. The women would love him when we got to Tikrit.

  Our third surgeon was thirty-five-year-old Ian Nunnally, the youngest of the group. Known as “Little Buddha,” Ian had served as an enlisted soldier more than a decade before, so he knew his way around the military. Fresh from residency, Ian was quiet as we started our journey and we hoped he’d loosen up over time. We didn’t know if it was worry over the war, us, or something else.

  Our bone man was a square-jawed forty-four-year-old orthopedist named Bill Stanton from Fort Pierce, Florida. “Wild Bill” was regular Army for years and had served in places like Kosovo before leaving the military and going into private practice. He rejoined after 9/11 and asked to be sent to the war. Bill was a graduate of West Point and wore the huge ring of the military academy. He had the easy look of someone’s older brother; I felt like I’d known him for years.

  Mike Barron, the family doctor from St. Louis, was slated to work with me in the ER. Mike was an infantry officer in the Marines, then performed an abrupt about-face leaving the Corps and going off to medical school. He was on the faculty of the St. Louis University School of Medicine and now hoped to go out and medically minister to the Iraqi civilian population as well as our own wounded.

  We couldn’t quite get a handle on our other ER doc, Gerry Maloney. In the real world, Gerry was a thirty-eight-year-old toxicologist who was smart as hell and loved the Army. Or at least loved the idea of the Army and its unique language. A conversation with Gerry usually consisted of mil-language with a touch of reality sprinkled in.

  When Rick and I would run into Gerry, we’d ask, “What’s shaking, babe?”

  “Zulu.”

  “What the hell is Zulu?”

  “Zulu. Zero. Nothing. C’mon, guys, it’s SOP to know the lingo. You’ll need it once those air jockeys get us in country.”

  Despite the heavy doses of “Maloney baloney,” we loved Gerry and decided the best way to handle him would be to adopt him as our group mascot. “Gerry, you are an Alpha Sierra Sierra, but you’re our Alpha Sierra Sierra.”

  The doctor with the highest military rank was a crusty character we called Charlie Brown, an affectionate nickname that evolved from his real name of Robert Blok to Blockhead to Charlie Brown. Charlie was a full-bird colonel, one step below general. He seemed to know every rule and regulation ever invented by the Army, including the recommended distance from tent to latrine. I’m sure he even counted the steps. He was our anesthesiologist, and was in charge of a group of four nurse anesthetists who would accompany us to the CSH, the combat support hospital.

  As we talked, I discovered I had the least amount of military experience in the group, a relative baby with just over three years in the service. But I did have one bit of priceless experience none of the others did—combat. I didn’t know what the conditions would be like when we finally got into Iraq, but I knew, as physicians, we wouldn’t be allowed “outside the wire,” meaning allowed off base. Physicians, especially surgeons, were in short supply, so it was a rare doctor who was allowed to travel around unencumbered like I did three years before. Hell, I doubted we’d even be allowed to dip a toe into the sand outside the fence.

  As we lounged in our tent, I offered one piece of what I hoped was sage advice: don’t talk politics. I had a feeling the group was fairly split when it came to conservative versus liberal, with me sitting smack dab on the center post of the political fence, but I knew the minute we started talking politics, we would implode as a group. We all agreed to put political opinions to pasture for the duration.

  Weather in Iraq seemed to be a big issue—sandstorms were walloping the country, grounding a lot of aircraft, especially those transporting fresh troops into the war zone. After close to a week of false alarms, we got word we’d join a larger group on an eight o’clock evening flight to Tikrit. So, in a classic hurry-up-and-wait, we packed our duffels yet again and chain-carried them to the loading area at 2 P.M. The staging terminal was actually several miles from the airfield, and in some ways reminded me of an overcrowded Greyhound bus terminal. It was open-air, with separate roped-off areas under thin corrugated metal roofs that seemed to magnify rather than protect from the rays of the sun. Penned like cattle, we found scores of roasting soldiers lined up for the day’s flights: Baghdad, Mosul, Taji, Q-West, and many more destinations; some names I recognized, others seemed completely foreign, which was appropriate considering they were foreign, at least to us tourists.

  Our group sat until 5 P.M. behind the chalkboard that said “Tikrit” and were thankful when we were finally herded onto a bus that took us straight to the airfield and our C-130 sitting on the tarmac. We were told to drink as much as we could, use the porta-johns, then hold tight. The “hold tight” part lasted more than two hours as the plane sat and repetitively revved its engines. Finally, an Air Force guy walked over and gave us the bad news: no flight, engine problems. Sorry, fellas.

  Bummed out, we filed onto the bus and headed back to the terminal. At the halfway point, the bus unexpectedly pulled a multi-

  g-force U-turn and zoomed back to the airfield. Problem solved, the flight was a now a hurry-up-and-go. We once again formed our weaving antlike procession, and funneled onto the plane through its rear ramp door.

  On board we found we had more people than seats, but flying the friendly skies of the U.S. Air Force meant you never had to worry about being bumped—the human shoehorn technique worked for them. The inside of our C-130 was like any other, a dimly lit tube with two long parallel aisles, sort of like narrow hallways, where the web seats faced each other. It was a claustrophobe’s nightmare: our knees touched the knees of the people across from us and we had to twist our shoulders at a weird angle so we’d all fit. The overbooking also meant your butt didn’t exactly fit into the natural groove of the webbing; instead most of us were treated to metal support rods trying to give us a rectal exam through our uniforms. As the ramp of the plane closed, applause and whistles traveled up and down the line of seats. But the cheers dissolved into grumbles, then curses, as we continued to sit on the tarmac for another hour feeling the coarse vibrations of the engines being tested and retested by a sadistic pilot.

  Problem solved my ass. If it was 120 degrees outside the plane, it had to be 30 degrees hotter inside. And we were in full battle rattle with Kevlar helmets, flak vests, and combat gear—to say nothing of the overstretched bladders from all the water we were told to drink. We wanted to document our suffering for some complaint-to-be-filed-later to the secretary of the air force, but the pictures we took didn’t come out—it was so hot and humid in the flying oven, the lenses of our cameras fogged over. The sweat ran like a broken faucet from inside our helmets a
nd poured off our chins. When a few of the guys started getting lethargic and began to heave, we knew heatstroke was imminent and this playing with the engines bullshit had to stop.

  A young crewmember in a brown jumpsuit came back and said it would just be a few minutes more; his open mouth was met with the threat of a bullet to the head if the ramp wasn’t opened—now. There was no way we were going to keel over from heat injury because of some asshole jerking around with the engines. It was shit or get off the plane. At first, I don’t think he believed his passengers were serious, but we were already in group protection mode. None of us was going to sit quietly as one of our own collapsed from heatstroke. Wide-eyed, the airman watched as a hand reached toward a holster, only to be saved by a sudden jerk forward that told us we were either on our way to Tikrit … or the nearest jail.

  The flight took less than an hour. Since C-130s aren’t insulated, we shivered most of the trip as our sweat turned to ice water when we reached flying altitude. A few of the guys said the hell with it, and simply pissed their pants to relieve bladder spasms and abdominal pain. No bag of peanuts and a soft drink on this flight. Deliverance came with a landing that was different from any other I’d done before in the Army—rather than spiral in from ten thousand feet in a stomach-dropping free fall to avoid an enemy rocket, we skimmed the treetops at high speed for miles before the wheels kissed the pavement. Cramps were rubbed from muscles and wobbly knees gingerly tested before we filed off into the night and re-formed as a group. Once again, we stood and stared like lost children, wondering where we were and who would help us. The questions were answered quickly as a group of brand-new black Chevy Suburbans appeared from the darkness—it was a group from the hospital sent to fetch us and our belongings.