Prayers and Concerns - Sent and Recieved / Sunrise in Kandahar, Afghanistan Part 2

The other day, I posted a quick note to this blog along with a picture of the sunrise here in Kandahar, Afghanistan -  I had sent the same picture to some close friends back home with the same info I had blogged about how we here in Afghanistan were concerned for our fellow citizens back home and how they were effected by Hurricane Sandy.

Well, yesterday I got a note back from a fellow veteran who had shared my note and picture with some of the people he knows back home.

Here is what he sent back to me - The note is from a police department dispatcher who has been pulling 16 hours shifts the last few days. I wanted to share her reply....

Thank you for sharing. That was a beautiful sunrise and it struck me funny. 

 

How kind (your friend's) words and thoughts were. It struck me funny because you know everyday, I pray for our Troops, Veterans and their loved ones. They are always on my mind, their safety, their well being, & peace of mind, their families and loved ones here. I think of them all alot. 

 

You know I have "my things". Whether its the flags and signs on the front lawn or standing as a Patriot Guard at the funerals, supporting those left here while their loved ones are over there you know my heart, thoughts and prayers are for the kids (of all ages) in the military.

 

 It was a beautiful sunrise but it sure tickled me that one of those awesome (people) over there had us in the way of Sandy in his thoughts and prayers. Luckily Sandy only slapped us around on the cape and didn't full out kick our asses. I have been griping about all the people who have done stupid things during the storm and being upset with all the people who have called in bitching about the inconvenience of no power, trees down, wires down, no phones, etc, moving barricades from closed beach roads and driving thru because they wont detour and go around. 

 

I have listened to and dealt with it for two days, telling the really pushy ones how lucky they have it, they could be over in Afghanistan and really dealing with hardships. So to come home tonight and see that (your friend) is over there and thinking of us here struck me funny and one of the sweetest things that has come my way in quite some time.

 

So thanks - you put the smile in my heart tonight.

 

THIS is the power of what we can do when we think of others and what it means just to send along a quick note of concern and a prayer that others are safe.  Think of how much greater we could be if all shared her sentiment??

 

My Mom's three favorite words were : Kindness, Consideration & Courtesy.  She told us over and over again these were the things that would make a difference in how we lived our lives.

 

So to my friend's first responder friend on Cape Cod - right back at ya !!  I appreciate that others are worried & concerned about us.  I am glad to send along my best wishes, thoughts and prayers to all effected by Hurricane Sandy.  I hope to hear better news as the days pass and people try to pick up the pieces.

 

Here is another picture of the sunrise here in Afghanistan that I took.....a beautiful sky in a land where too many are facing tough days also - To all back home, be well - you are in our thoughts and prayers.

 

 

Echoes from a Sacred Space at FOB Frontenac, Afghanistan

The enclosed info was something I had seen back in early 2010 when I was doing a bit of FOB-Hopping around Afghanistan. I came across it in some notes I had rediscovered.

What I had witnessed at FOB FRONTENAC - The name comes from Fort Frontenac, a French fort and trading post located in what is now Kingston, Ontario

– I went there on a two day helicopter hop from hell.  I was there to do a town hall meeting and see if any of their staff would work for the company I was working with at the time.  I had wrenched the crap outta my arm getting off a helo about three weeks earlier and it was killing me.
 
The Pain was an " 11 " on the scale of  1-10 as I managed to have two tendons pop off the bone in my right arm in the process of getting blown off my feet by prop wash from a helo.

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper.  Then, I saw something that put it all in perspective.  Here are my notes from back then.  I am still in awe of what was on this FOB out in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan.  Here's what I had written in 2010:

FOB FRONTENAC - AFGHANISTAN

The picture directly below is from Micheal Yon's report on this Sacred Space -- the others enclosed are the ones I took while I was there.

Enclosed are pictures from Camp Frontenac - a small FOB about 20 miles north of Kandahar...I took a hop there over the last week to do a meet n' greet with some potential new employees from another company. Middleboro Jones riding our company helicopters to get there and then getting stuck there for a day as there were no flights back that day....The next day, I caught a hop back to Kandahar with the Special Forces guys in a helicopter with no lettering or markings on it....if you want to get to where you need to go here, sometimes you have to just go with the flow...no questions asked.

Next to the Chapel, the Chaplain has erected a teepee which holds the pictures of the 21 soldiers lost from the 1-17, the Buffalo Brigade - to see this beautiful sacred space in the midst of all the harshness of the environment here is something beyond words. I stepped into the teepee and viewed the pictures and said a prayer.

There are moments of ultimate beauty here in a harsh landscape, and moments of incredible clarity - seeing how precious life really is.....It is something that is lost on most us during our day-to-day existence. We lose sight of what is really important, and how quickly it can be taken from us if we are not careful.

A prayer for the Brave Buffalo Soldiers and one of thankfulness for all that the LORD has provided to me. I am truly blessed and I was grateful for the reminder.

The Toughest Job in the NAVY - The FAITH of a NAVY SEAL's WIFE

Over my desk at Bagram is a card that I was given by one of the local chaplains. It says, " Be With Me LORD, When I Am In Trouble, Be With Me LORD. I pray Pslam 91 the Soldiers Psalm."

Psalm 91 is a powerful message to all those in perilous places.

1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the LORD,He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler,and from the noisome pestilence.

4 He shall cover thee with his feathers,and under his wings shalt thou trust:
his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

6 nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

7 A thousand shall fall at thy side,and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge,even the Most High, thy habitation;

10 there shall no evil befall thee,neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

12 They shall bear thee up in their hands,lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:I will be with him in trouble;
I will deliver him, and honor him.

16 With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.


The FAITH it takes to trust your life and all you are to a power higher than yourself is not something everyone shares. I have felt the power of HIS presence and all that he has done to keep me safe while I travel in Afghanistan and other places across the Middle East.

Enclosed are the words of the wife of a Navy Seal. She puts her faith in a powerful message of how she is able to bear up under what we who have been deployed call " The Toughest Job in the Navy". Her message is one of faith and love for her husband and prayers for all who go in harm's way.

My Faith: The uncertainty of a Navy SEAL wife
By Leeana Tankersley, Special to CNN

On Saturday, my husband and I received news of a downed helicopter in Afghanistan with 22 SEALs aboard. I have been a SEAL wife for eight years—our entire relationship taking place during wartime—but we have never experienced this magnitude of loss.

We have been living in the Middle East for three weeks now, recently relocated for our next tour. Here, the fight feels so much closer, the losses more tangible.

I immediately thought of those wives and mothers—a wife and a mother myself—who would be waking up to the tragic news that their loved one was gone. I thought of how many times my husband has stepped onto a helicopter.

Forces in Afghanistan kill militants involved in downing of copter

And I thought back to another tragedy in the SEAL community, the death of Marc Lee in 2006, the first SEAL killed in the Iraq war.

When the news of Marc’s death arrived, my husband—not home two weeks from deployment himself—got on a plane and headed to New York to go meet Marc’s widow, Maya.

The Navy assigned Steve to be her liaison, helping her from the hours after she learned of her husband’s death through the first few weeks of grief, as she navigated innumerable decisions and logistics.

Steve called me a couple times while he was in New York to say things like, “You know I love you, right? You know I really love you.”

And I would say, “I know, honey. I know you do.”

After his trip to New York, he escorted Maya and her mother back to San Diego, where Marc was buried.

Kansas boy wants the world to recognize fallen dad

He sat beside Maya as her official escort on the day she laid her husband to rest. It was the saddest day I can remember.

Hot sun burned my chest red as we sat in the August heat perched atop Point Loma, high above the San Diego harbor, looking out onto the ocean. We sat in rows of wooden folding chairs set up between the graves.

The sight of it all is suffocating, every headstone a father, son, or brother, a mother, sister, or daughter. Each with his or her own story of life and death.

Seated in front of a large picture of Marc and huge sprays of flowers, we waited for the black Suburban to arrive. Fellow SEALs, with quivering chins, brought the casket to the front as bagpipers breathed “Amazing Grace.”

The Suburban arrived, and my handsome husband in his Service Dress Blues emerged, extending his hand for Maya, who stepped out in a black halter dress with a flowing skirt. Dark red rigatoni ringlets framed her large sunglasses.

A widow at 25.

Maya grasped my husband’s arm as they made their way to the front row. An officer knelt down in front of Maya and presented her with the flag from Marc’s casket. “On behalf of a grateful nation,” he began, reciting the words no woman would ever want to hear.

Later, he told me that the SEALs present at the grave took turns pushing a Trident (the SEAL insignia) pin into the side of Marc’s casket. Before it was lowered into the ground, my husband knelt down next to Maya as she said her final words to Marc.

Marc’s death and the death of the 22 SEALs in Saturday’s tragedy speak to the utter lack of assurances life offers us.

No matter how much I believe in and trust God, no matter how spiritual I am, no matter how much I pray on my husband’s behalf, I have no guarantees that God will spare him.

Does my believing make his job any less dangerous? Does it bring back those we’ve lost? Or prevent another devastating loss like Saturday’s from happening?

No. I have to make peace with the fact that even my most fervent prayers may not spare a soul.

So does my believing change anything?

Yes, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. This is the truth I hold on to, the bit of faith I can cling to. In our greatest pain, he sees us. May that sliver of hope somehow matter to all those who grieving today.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Leeana Tankersley. Editor's Note: Leeana Tankersley is the author of Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places (Zondervan 2009), a spiritual memoir of the year she lived in the Middle East with her Navy SEAL husband.

Every so often.....

Or a LOT more often than you have been doing before.....prayer is the original version of Instant Messenging.....try it.....it works.

A Soldier's Night Before Christmas

God Bless all who are away from home and in harm's way.

All our hopes & prayers that they arrive home safe & sound.

“A small segment of our country is bearing the burden of these wars,’’

This is a good example how one person can show extraordinary LEADERSHIP, and by doing so, serve as an example for others on how things SHOULD BE.....

Thanks to Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe for a great story and thanks to Rabbi Raphael Kanter for putting in place a great idea he saw in practice elsewhere.....If more remembered what was important, like they do, we would be a better nation.


Kevin Cullen
Remembering the fallen of our forgotten wars
By Kevin Cullen
Globe Columnist / October 31, 2010

NEW BEDFORD — The cantor, Nathaniel Schudrich, carried the Torah down the center aisle of the chapel yesterday, and the people stepped from the pews to touch it, gently, like an old friend.

They said “A Prayer for Our Country,’’ the people of Tifereth Israel, and then Charles Gorfinkle, the president of the congregation, stood up.

Sometimes Dr. Daniel Nussbaum reads the names, but yesterday it was Charlie Gorfinkle’s turn. He put the list of names on a lectern and began to read.

“Marine Corporal Kristopher D. Greer, 25, of Ashland City, Tennessee,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Rabbi Raphael Kanter got the idea a few years ago while attending a service at the Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York.

“In the middle of the service, someone in the congregation stood up and just started reading the names of the servicemen and women who died most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan,’’ Rabbi Kanter was saying.

“Army Private First Class Bradley D. Rappuhn, 24, of Grand Ledge, Michigan,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Rabbi Kanter sat in the synagogue in New York and was profoundly moved, listening to the names, the ages, the hometowns of young Americans who died so far away, in forgotten wars, wars forgotten even as they still rage.

“Army Sergeant Andrew C. Nicol, 23, of Kensington, New Hampshire,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

“It was simple, it was dignified, and I thought it was so necessary,’’ Rabbi Kanter said.

Rabbi Kanter came back to Tifereth Israel in New Bedford and got up at the Shabbat service and explained what he wanted to do.

“Marine Private First Class Vincent E. Gammone, the third, 19, of Christiana, Tennessee,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

So the rabbi began reading the names of the war dead.

“Marine Lance Corporal Kevin M. Cornelius, 20, of Ashtabula, Ohio,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Many people in the congregation opposed the wars. But no one opposed honoring and remembering the young people sent to fight them. After a while, the rabbi asked members of the congregation to take turns reading the names of those most recently killed. They do it every week.

“Marine Corporal Max W. Donahue, 23, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Somebody asked whether it was appropriate to read the names at bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah services, when the young people of the congregation celebrate their coming of age in their faith. Those are joyous occasions.

“Rabbi Kanter said it was important that we read the names, even at bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs,’’ Cantor Schudrich said. “Our young people need to hear these names and honor the people whose names are read. So often, I’m struck by the ages of our military people who die in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are so young.’’

“Army Sergeant Faith R. Hinkley, 23, of Colorado Springs, Colorado,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Rabbi Kanter said his congregation’s simple act of remembrance is born of a conviction that the wars are too invisible. Most Americans don’t have a loved one serving. Most Americans go through every day not giving the wars a passing thought.

“A small segment of our country is bearing the burden of these wars,’’ Rabbi Kanter said. “Why is it when our veterans come home, their care is so poor? If the children of the rich and powerful were fighting these wars, it wouldn’t be the case. In fact, we wouldn’t be fighting these wars. I think the draft should come back. It’s unconscionable that we’re not sharing the burden of war equally. I wonder how quickly we would go to war, and whether we would prosecute wars the same way, if we had a draft, if the burden was shared.’’

So, in this, the most political of seasons, when politicians talk about everything but the wars that are bankrupting the nation and robbing us of so many fine young men and women, a congregation at a synagogue in New Bedford reminds itself every week what honor and sacrifice really mean.

They pause, they listen, they remember.

“Army Master Sergeant Jared N. Van Aalst, 34, of Laconia, New Hampshire,’’ Charlie Gorfinkle said.

Charlie Gorfinkle finished reading but, for a moment, his eyes lingered on the small, thumbnail photos next to each of the names. The faces were young and fresh, and you could see Charlie Gorfinkle looking at them, not so much as if he knew them, but that he wished he had.

Charlie Gorfinkle exhaled, and then he said, “Let us pray for the day when there are no longer any names to read.’’

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company

Combat Medics go into the battlezone and pray, "God, help me get to those who need my care"

On the Battlefield, the one person you want close by and able to respond when you need them is the Medic. Most go by the moniker " Doc" and have the task of responding at a moments notice....Doesn't matter whether they are Army, Navy or Air Force, it is always one team-one fight. and the fight is to save lives. Period.

Medics handle routine issues. Upset stomachs, rashes, small abrasions - no different than what your local clinic would see at sick call....

THEN, there are the moments where a Medic is the only person who is going to make sure that a fellow warrior is going to see another day. Many warriors are trained in the basics of combat medicine, (I myself was certified as a Combat Medic prior to being deployed to Fallujah in 2004) but the really serious work of bringing them back alive falls into the hands of those who make Combat Care their raison d'etre or "reason for being "

The prayer they most use is the The Combat Medic's Prayer

Oh, Lord
I ask for your divine strength
to meet the demands of my profession.
Help me to be the finest medic,
both technically and tactically.

If I am called to the battlefield,
give me the courage to conserve our fighting forces
by providing medical care to all who are in needs.

If I am called to a mission of peace,
give me the strength to lead by caring
for those who need my assistance.

Finally Lord,
help me to take care of my own
spiritual, physical, and emotional needs.

Teach me to trust
in your presence and never-failing love.

AMEN


I salute these dedicated professionals along with the aircrews that fly the helicopters for their uncompromising focus on flying into the fires of hell and placing themselves in harms way, all that others may live...

Read on and gain insight in a small glimpse of what they do at "just another day at the office".


Military medics combine ultramodern and time-honored methods to save lives on the battlefield

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 16, 2010; 8:14 PM

IN FORWARD OPERATING BASE WILSON The first sign this isn't a routine pickup is the rhythmic right and left banking of the helicopter.

It's the kind of thing kids do on bikes to feel the thrill of heeling over. Only this is done to make the aircraft a less easy target.

At 6:09 p.m., Dustoff 57 has just left this base deep in Taliban-infiltrated Kandahar province, headed for a POI, or point of injury. On board are two pilots, a crew chief and a flight medic, as well as two litters for carrying the wounded and numerous black nylon bags stuffed with ultramodern medical gear and some of the oldest lifesaving tricks of the battlefield. That combination of new and old - of specially developed porcelain-powder gauze and old-fashioned tourniquets - is key to keeping gravely wounded soldiers alive in the minutes before they get to the hospital. It's also the basis of evolving frontline strategies that may eventually trickle down in modified form to civilian ambulances, emergency rooms and trauma centers in the United States.

Somewhere ahead of the aircraft is a soldier who minutes earlier stepped on an improvised explosive device, the signature weapon of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the helicopter crew knows is that he's "category A" - critical.

The sun is down but there is still a little pink in the western sky. Beneath the helicopter, the ground is made of what the troops call "moon dust." Fine-grained and dry, it is a color not as dark as dirt and not as light as sand.

The aircraft weaves over compounds enclosed by mud walls and surrounded by fields of grapes and vegetables. Farther away on the sere, unirrigated plain are the domed tents of herdsmen, their cooking fires glowing like terrestrial stars.

The trip out takes nine minutes.

The helicopter lands, stirring up a cloud of moon dust that nearly obscures six soldiers kneeling and standing around the wounded man, 50 feet from the aircraft. Their headlamps make tiny blue searchlights. The 28-year-old flight medic, Sgt. Cole Reece, runs toward them.

Cpl. Deanna Helfrich, 22, the crew chief, climbs out of her window and walks around the nose of the aircraft trailing a communication cable that allows her to talk to the rest of the crew. She stands near the open door where the wounded soldier will be brought, holding her rifle.

The weapon is a reminder: The crew is here to save lives, but Rule 1 of the Basic Management Plan for Care Under Fire is: "Return fire and take cover."

There is no enemy fire this evening, but there is so much dust in the air and the rotors are spinning so fast that the leading edges of the blades light up like sparklers, flint on steel.

Fifteen minutes have now passed since the soldier was wounded. The details of how it happened don't matter to Reece. There are a limited number of things he can do between this nameless spot and the hospital at Kandahar Airfield, where they will soon be headed. What he needs to know he will see and feel for himself.

Speed, simplicity and priority have always been the hallmarks of emergency medicine. The new battlefield care that flight medics like Reece and others on the ground practice takes those attributes to the extreme.

Gone from their repertoire are difficult or time-consuming maneuvers, such as routinely hanging bags of intravenous fluids. On the ground, medics no longer carry stethoscopes or blood pressure cuffs. They are trained instead to evaluate a patient's status by observation and pulse, to tolerate abnormal vital signs such as low blood pressure, to let the patient position himself if he's having trouble breathing - and above all to have a heightened awareness that too much medicine can endanger the mission and still not save the patient.

Four people run to the helicopter with the stretcher holding the wounded soldier. He lies on his back partially wrapped in a foil blanket. His chest is bare. In the middle of it is an "intraosseous device," a large-bore needle that has been punched into his breastbone by the medic on the ground. It's used to infuse fluids and drugs directly into the circulatory system when a vein can't be found. It's a no-nonsense technology, used occasionally in World War II, that fell out of favor when cheap and durable plastic tubing made IV catheters ubiquitous in the postwar years. Until they were revived for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, intraosseus devices were used almost exclusively in infants whose veins were too small to find.

On each leg the soldier has a tourniquet, ratcheted down and locked to stop all bleeding below it. These ancient devices went out of military use more than half a century ago because of concern that they caused tissue damage. But research in the past 15 years has shown that they can be left on for two hours without causing permanent harm to limbs. Now every soldier carries a tourniquet and is instructed to put one on any severely bleeding limb and not think of taking it off.

Tourniquets have saved at least 1,000 lives, and possibly as many as 2,000, in the past eight years. This soldier is almost certainly one of them. They're a big part of why only about 10 percent of casualties in these wars have died, compared with 16 percent in Vietnam.

On the soldier's left leg, the tourniquet is above the knee. Both bones below his knee are broken, and the limb is bent unnaturally inward. The tourniquet on his right leg is lower, below the knee; how badly his foot is injured is hard to tell from the dressings. His left hand is splinted and bandaged, too.

Whether he will need an amputation is uncertain. The hospital where he's headed treated 16 patients in September who needed at least one limb amputated. Half were U.S. soldiers, and the monthly number has been climbing since March.

The man is covered in moon dust, and pale beneath it, but conscious and able to pay some attention to Reece. He's gotten 10 mg of morphine, not a lot.

First thing, the medic hooks a plastic tube to an oxygen tank and leans forward and puts a face mask on the soldier's head. He tells him over the din of the engine that he'll be okay, that they'll be at the hospital in 10 minutes.

After three minutes on the ground, the helicopter takes off.

Staunching the blood

The interior of the helicopter is lit by a single overhead light, headlamps and the glow of instruments. Reece tells Helfrich to check the tourniquets; things sometimes move in transit. He then pulls back the foil blanket and inspects. A tangle of dry grass lies directly over the soldier's navel.

The medic sees that a laceration in the soldier's left groin is still bleeding. This, too, is a signature wound of the two wars - a deep, dangerous injury just outside the protective veil of body armor and unable to be treated with a tourniquet. It's a wound from which a person can easily bleed to death. Death from blood loss has always been the greatest hazard of war wounds.

A recent analysis found that of soldiers deemed to have "potentially survivable" wounds, 80 percent died of bleeding. Usually the wound site was a part of the body where a tourniquet couldn't be applied.

The best option - not ideal - is to stuff the gash with Combat Gauze, a battlefield treatment new to the current wars. It's a bandage impregnated with a kind of powdered porcelain that stimulates clotting. The medic on the ground had already packed the wound with it. Reece unwraps some more, lays it across the injury and asks Helfrich to apply direct pressure.

He undoes the Velcro sleeve of a blood-pressure cuff and puts it on the soldier's right arm. He puts three stick-on EKG leads on the man's chest and abdomen, a right triangle. The man reaches up and touches his forehead, a self-confirming gesture. When he's done, the medic gently takes the hand and puts on the ring finger the toothless plastic jaws of a pulse oximeter - a device that measures the oxygen content of the blood through the skin. The soldier has lost a lot of blood. If his breathing falters and he can't oxygenate what's left, he will die.

The first blood pressure reading is 96/40. Normal is 120/80. The soldier's heart rate is way over 100, but the exact number is irrelevant. Nobody who's just had something blow up in front of him has a normal heart rate even if the blast has done nothing to him.

Every minute or so, Reece puts his right hand, which is in a black rubber glove, onto the soldier's head and rubs the center of his forehead. This is to stimulate him and gauge his level of consciousness. It may also reassure.

The pulse oximeter gives a reassuring reading. Several minutes into the trip the medic senses the soldier becoming drowsy and inserts a green plastic tube into his left nostril. This "nasopharyngeal airway" will make it easier, if the man becomes unconscious, for Reece to keep him alive.

While blood pressure somewhat below normal is considered all right - and even preferred - in severely injured patients, a diminishing level of consciousness is not a good sign.

Reece reaches for a 500-milliliter bag of Hextend - an intravenous fluid containing starch molecules that help boost blood pressure by preventing the watery part of blood from leaking out of vessels, as often happens in massive trauma. He squeezes the bag to make it run in more quickly through the device in the soldier's breast bone.

The soldier's next blood pressure reading is 116/71.

Just two minutes away, Reece leans forward and tells the patient they're almost there.

Communication glitch

Eleven minutes after lifting off from the POI, the helicopter lands at the so-called Role 3, or fully equipped, hospital at Kandahar Airfield, about 30 miles to the east of the also well-fortified Forward Operating Base Wilson. There, surgeons will take care of the injuries before transferring the patient, probably within two days, to the huge military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and there, after a week or so, to the United States.

But something has happened in the usually smooth communication between dispatch center, aircraft and hospital. No ambulance pulls up to the helicopter. Reece and Helfrich wait.

They wait.

The pilots radio the dispatcher that they've arrived with a critically injured soldier. Reece and Helfrich, helmeted and inaudible, gesture wildly to people outside the emergency room door to come over.

Two other patients have also recently arrived. But that's not the problem. There's an available ambulance 100 yards away. But it doesn't move.

Five minutes after touchdown, it finally drives up and the injured man is rushed into the back. Reece says later he was one minute from having the crew carry the patient to the emergency room themselves, even though running that distance with a trauma patient on a litter is just about the last thing you want to do.

It's been 28 minutes since the helicopter left Forward Operating Base Wilson. The ambulance, with Reece in it, disappears into a pool of greenish light at the hospital entrance.

In 10 minutes, the medic returns and the helicopter takes off to begin the refueling, restocking and cleaning that will make it ready, in less than an hour, for the next call.

It's for an Afghan man, described as a Taliban fighter, who has stepped on a land mine.