In Iraq, 'it's us versus death' (Mosul CASH Medical Unit)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/12/31/in_iraq_its_us_versus_death/

The alert hit the 399th like a shot of pure adrenaline.

"Attention on the compound," crackled the public address system. "Mass-Cal. Mass-Cal. Mass-Cal."

Mass-Cal: Military slang for mass casualties. Inbound on medevac helicopters. Due in minutes. All medical staff to the hospital. Now! Now! Now!

Already the throb of distant rotors was audible from the west. Getting louder by the second. "Three birds," said Lieutenant Colonel Mike Kolodziej, 49, of Keene, N.H., officer in charge of the medical unit's tactical operations center, which provides intelligence and forecasts of impending emergencies. "A dozen cals."

Medics were pounding down the concrete walkway to the hospital. Doctors were snapping on face masks and surgical caps. And nurses were breaking out trauma kits and hooking saline bags to IV racks. In the lab, Lieutenant Colonel David De Haas, 51, of Mount Desert, Maine, was readying red blood cells and plasma -- and already considering whether to contact Baghdad for emergency resupply by air.

The mass casualty call to action is the most dreaded in combat medicine. For sheer heart-cracking urgency, its only rival is the siren blare that warns of imminent incoming shellfire or rockets. Since arriving in Iraq in early October, the doctors, nurses, medics, and techs of the 399th Combat Support Hospital, a Massachusetts-based Army Reserve unit, have become intimately familiar with both signals.