Doctors view of Marines

This is a Marine Corps Birthday message from a Navy Doctor in Afghanistan (for the civilians among you, he is stationed a major, non-Marine base). I have left some of the forwarding blog material below. The doctor’s comments are unedited. My apologies to the priests who are addressees but you would have been extremely suspicious of editorializing had there not been scatological opinion reinforcement of the Anglo – Saxon variety.

The Corps that we served and love lives on. May God Bless Them, Us, Our Corps and Our Nation.

Remember him (The Dr. and his staff) in your prayers. They are doing a great job for our wounded Marines.

Dr. Dennihy wanted me to forward this. I am following directions. Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 1:30 PMAs an IA or individual augmentee for the army, and being stationed on a NATO base, I planned on not seeing a lot of Marines. Their primary base, “Leatherneck ” is in Helmand province and combat injured Marines are close to another Role III run by the Brits.

When a Marine crosses my path I usually engage him in one form or another and when they are in my shop I can sometimes make what’s routine for me less daunting to the Marine. Marines don’t like medical, pure and simple.

Not that I want to see Marines injured but I just want to see Marines.

Marines don’t show up to sick call with I want my mommy complaints.

Marines don’t walk the base in PT gear or with their weapons slung hap hazzardly.

Marines seldom if ever, fail to note an officer passing.

Marines taking care of their own but are appreciative of those Docs that take care of them.

Apart from my medical degree, the award, honor, ribbon, or academic acknowledgement that I am most proud of is the “Fleet Marine Force ” warfare device I earned deploying with the 2/23 Marines to Ramadi, Iraq in 2009.

Marines do show up here at KAF though and I usually take the opportunity to mess with them. Two Marines were in the chow hall on their way to Camp Leatherneck and I ask if I can join them. The two lance corporals seem a little suspicious but after I put them at ease with some old man banter they swivel their heads around and ask me…

Sir, what the ___ is this place? Everybody’s got gym clothes on and it looks like their weapons don’t even work. What’s with the hippie civilians? I explain KAF and they are both happy that they will be leaving soon.

I see Marines in primary care when they come on a consult to see ophthalmology or our neurologist the TBI specialist. The LNO, an FMF Corpsman, will grab me if they have any wound related issues. I have had two Marines seeing those specialist for eye injuries or TBIs and I have seen them for the holes where shrapnel tore into their subcutaneous space and was subsequently removed, leaving a gaping open wound.. Lucky they had been, but they were left with a big hole that would take a month to heal. I offered a delayed primary closure to the two of them telling them that it had a fifty-fifty chance of not getting infected. Like all Marines, adventuresome and for the most part trusting of a Navy doctor… an FMFdoc, they said that if it would get them back to their unit they were good to go. I scrubbed their wounds, debrided margins and sutured them up.

I see Marines in my trauma bay and usually these Marines have not been as lucky. When I know they’re coming I have on my game face and I ask the Lord for my A game. A snipers bullet to the head, a dismembering IED blast and a Marine who I will call “Rocky”.

Rocky is a recon Marine, the toughest of the tough. His face, neck and upper chest were exposed to an IED blast. He is six foot two, two hundred and 45 pounds. He comes in on a litter with only an IV and a face that looks like hamburger. His left eye is ruptured and his right is swollen shut. Thankfully he can answer me and nods and gives one word answers. I tell him we will put him to sleep and square him away.

He tells me “Doc, do what you got to do” The blinded Marine shows bearing in the face of serious injury. After the CT scan that confirms his eye rupture but has spared his brain, we clean up his face the best we can while we wait for his time in the OR. My team takes out eight stones blown into his face and neck. The smallest being the size of a peanut M&M and the largest the size of a pecan in his forehead. We saved all the stones for him. At the same time in another bay, another Marine has been shot in the head.

Luckily he is awake and although speech comes with difficulty, the bullets tract is on the periphery of the brain. He will go to Surgery with our Neurosurgeon and blessedly do well. Before he goes to the OR, I need to squeeze his hand and wish him luck. On his chest is written: “My help comes from the maker of heaven and earth ” Psalms 121.2. The third Marine unfortunately, is a fallen angel.

I am also lucky enough to have two former Marines on my trauma team. One is a now hardened experienced ICU/ER nurse. He served in Vietnam as a Recon Marine in 1968. The other is a former grunt and Hollywood Marine and is also an experienced ER nurse. These two necessary components make my trauma team the best in Afghanistan….simple as that! Today I am not seeing any Marines at the hospital. I am among them however, during a 5K run on their beloved Marine Corps Birthday. The run was fast and I ran in honor of a Marine KIA in OEF. My bib has the name of LCPL Tyler O. Griffith. I ran for him today and all the Devil Dogs in Afghanistan. I ran for all Marines but I ran the hardest for the grunts, the infantrymen that will always be the definition of warrior.

Semper Fidelis,
LCDR Dave Dennihy MC, USN Diplomat American Board of Emergency Medicine

On the morning we are to leave for Cua Viet the company office pogue, Handler, comes by our hooch and tells us that the Gunny wants our tank down to the boat loading ramp in thirty minutes.  The navy boat arrives at the boat ramp to pick us up. It is an LCT (Landing Craft Tank) which is quite a bit larger than the Mike boats or the LCU boats that we have been using thus far.  Being the salty crew that we are, we don’t dismount to ground guide the tank on to the boat.  No, I simply talk Steffo to back on to the boat via the tank’s intercom.  If the Gunny saw us doing this he’d have a cow.  Fuck a bunch of lifers.  If we can get away with it, then we do it!  We load up our tank and an amtrack on to the LCT without a flaw. The squids raise the boat ramp, we move out and in what seem to be no time we are at the mouth of the Cua Viet River.  We hear the squids talking that there is some awful weather heading our way.   One of the Marine amtrackers on board tells us that it’s going to be a real humdinger of a “typhoon” starting tonight. 

Steffo interrupts and asks, “What the heck is a typhoon?”

The amtrack commander explains that it is the same kind of a storm as a “hurricane” back in The World only that this storm is on the East Coast of Asia, so they call it a “typhoon” instead.  We off load the tank on to the south side of the river the same way we on loaded (guiding the driver over the intercom).  The boat then heads across the river to deposit the amtrack on the north side.  We report into the amtrack company office that is inside of a bunker near by.  We are ordered to hold up for a few days to see how the typhoon plays out. 

The amtrack company gunny sits back in his chair and tells us, “The one thing I was to emphasis to you young tankers.  When you drive up my beach to Charlie-four, you have got to drive in the breakers…in the water.  No matter what the sea conditions are you have to stay in the surf.  On Aug 12 of this year, one of our Otters veered from this rule, ran up on to the beach and it hit a huge mine.  The company gunny from Charlie Co, 3^rd Tanks and my best buddy, Gunny Claypool, was killed along with three other young Marines.  We could barely recognize the vehicle it was mangled so badly.  We don’t need to have Marines killed or equipment needlessly destroyed by not following SOP, do we now?”

We reply in unison, “No, Gunny.”

At first we break out one of our large tarps and sling it over the gun tube to make a shelter.  Shortly the wind begins to whip around and our heavy tarp is blown around like a sheet of newspaper.  The storm is rapidly approaching a gale force so we take shelter in a leaky canvas tent that usually houses supplies for the amtrackers chow hall.  Just as it starts to rain in earnest we heat up some C rations and then we bed down in the supply tent.  Later in the middle of the night the typhoon intensifies and the rain driven wind blows up from under the billowing tent flaps.  I swear that the tent is going to blow away with the hollowing wind but some how it stays in place.  We have to try to sleep on the soaking wet wood floor but that’s ok since EVERYTHING is soaking wet by now.  I will swear on a stack of Bibles that there is absolutely nothing that is dry.  Thankfully the next morning, even as the storm continues it’s fury, we get warm chow in the Amtrackers chow hall, thank God for small favors.  We ask the amtrack company gunny for permission to move our gear into the mess hall and we end up bedding down for the night in relative comfort.

Early the next day, it still does not appear that the storm is going to let up much, so we flag down a passing Mike boat and ask the squids to take us across the river to the north shore.  They comply and as we off load we notice that there is a large group of amtracks in what is called a laager formation…they are all facing outward in a staggered circle like a wagon train in the Wild West.  There really is nothing in the way of a defensive perimeter or a combat base for us to wait out the storm.  As you recall we were originally planning to head to “C-4” with the large convoy of amtracks and otters but the typhoon is keeping everything and everyone buttoned up.  Normally we also would have at least one more tank to come along for covering each other on our movement.  As of now no one is moving anywhere but we have been ordered to get our butts up north at once and to be ready for the rumored upcoming invasion of the North. 

I come over the intercom, “Steffo, let’s move out.”

The rain is now blowing vertically into our faces.  It stings like all get out.  I turn my face away from the rain.  I don’t know how Steffo can see to drive!  Due to heavy enemy activity in the general area, the rule for movement along the beach is that we must drive in the surf (along the part of the beach where the waves are breaking).  The reasoning is pretty clear that no antitank mine could withstand the pounding that the waves make on the shoreline so we are pretty assured that we are on the mine-free part of the beach.  As we start out on our trip north the huge typhoon induced waves are actually breaking over the top of the tank.  I am not only soaked by the heavy wind-swept rain but I am soaked by sea water.  The waves come gushing into the open drivers hatch and the surge somehow causes the escape hatch (under the driver’s seat) to come lose.  The safety wire that holds the handle in a “closed” position gets broken by the tidal surge and the heavy (150 pound?) hatch simply falls out and is lost somewhere behind us on the beach!  At the time, we are unaware that this has happened and we only discover it two days later when we drive the tank over to refuel at the “Chalie-4” OEM dump.  After one particular heavy set of wave break over my head, I look inside of the turret and I’m horrified that the sea water is swirling around “Pappy’s knees!!!  I can’t see Steffo in the drivers hatch but he must be more under water than above it!!!  To be perfectly honest, at this point, we seem to be fighting for our lives to keep on the beach and to not be washed out to sea!  Due to the total inundation of saltwater, our radios and the tank intercom are now useless.  In fact, the only thing that we get over the radios is a loud screaming noise that makes me immediately turn them off.  Boy! If we hit the shit now, we cannot call for help! 

For what seems to be hours on end, waves with out end and stinging rain that seems to cut into our skin we pull into “C-4” and much to our amazement we find that it is practically abandoned.

Charlie 4 Flood