Healing the wounds of war

By CANDACE CHASE

The Daily Inter Lake

Bill Brockett of Kalispell remembers one day when he was having lunch with friends and got a cell phone call from his wife, Brenda.

"She called me and here I was having lunch at Spencers and she's over there in Afghanistan under mortar attack," he said with a wry laugh.

A captain in the Army Reserve, Brenda Brockett, 58, said she has no regrets about volunteering to serve at a Combat Support Hospital, the Army's modern equivalent of the MASH made famous by the television series.

She spoke with the Daily Inter Lake during a recent leave from duty in Afghanistan. In civilian life, she works as an emergency room or acute care nurse at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

Brockett said she first deployed with her whole unit to Turkey in 2003. But when that country refused to allow the coalition in, she ended up staying in the states through 2004, developing a system to efficiently treat injured National Guard and reservist soldiers.

"Whatever they needed, we got for them," Brockett said. "We really were empowered to move them through the system."

She was then approached last fall to serve in the 500-member support hospital.

Brockett said she mulled over the request, then decided she was in. She said people may argue about Iraq but she said the invasion of Afghanistan was a direct response to the attack on America on Sept. 11.

"I volunteered to go to a little rural remote firebase," Brockett recalled. "We got to [Firebase] Ripley [in January] and lo and behold it's a special forces firebase."

Coalition forces in the area included Dutch, Australian, British, French, Egyptian, Croatian, Canadian and German troops.

Brockett also learned that the location near Tarin Kwot held a special spot in the hearts of the Taliban, the ethnic Sunni Muslim terrorists who are hosts to Osama bin Laden. They consider the area their ancestral birthplace.

And by the way, they want it back. Badly.

"You could stand on the steps of my room and see the war fight," she said.

Brockett remembers sitting on those steps one day watching Dutch Apache airships shoot at bad guys just outside the "Aussie Camp."

Yet Brockett said she never felt any fear at the base. She had complete confidence in the Green Beret special forces she lived with at Ripley, whom she called the best of the best.

"They're the best trained fighter force in the world," Brockett said. "They truly are the guys who take the war to the enemy."

Brockett wanted to share her story to give readers an inside look at these elite forces the Army calls the most versatile special operations soldiers in the world. The Green Beret Web site calls their 12-man teams "America's Swiss Army knife, called on to do almost anything."

She remembered the words of a tough sergeant major addressing her combat support medical team about their mission.

"My boys understand that when they go outside the wire, they may be killed. They accept that. What they must know is that if they get hurt with a salvageable injury, you'll do everything possible to keep them alive."

Brockett felt she was exactly where she needed to be. Since watching the plane fly into the second trade tower, she believed she had spent the first years of her life preparing for this.

She would tap all of her training to cope over the next months.

"It was the highest highs and the lowest lows," Brockett said.

The highs were successfully patching up patients, like the seven Welsh soldiers who were ambushed but all survived their injuries. Lows included the two Americans who arrived with non-survivable injuries.

One was a medic member of the 12-man team.

"I remember his commander sitting on a stool with his head in his hands," Brockett said.

She said such sacrifices helped take out a significant number of Taliban leaders last summer. Brockett called it a difficult war with no battle lines and no soldiers in enemy uniforms who stand up and fight.

"They hide behind women and children," she said.

A large part of their measure of success comes in winning over the locals, none of whom they can trust. Green Berets risk their lives interacting with the Afghans in villages to gain intelligence and hopefully change some minds.

"What most people don't know about is the humanitarian things they do," she said. "They go out and provide healthcare to the local people. We were part of that - part of the hearts and minds thing."

One sign of progress arrived at the medical unit in the form of a 12-year-old girl, considered a woman in Afghanistan. Brockett said her family allowed their daughter to come when custom dictated only her father and brothers ever see her.

According to Brockett, locals made up between 80 percent and 90 percent of the combat support hospital's patients. They held clinics two times a week to treat all manner of sickness and injuries.

"We saw open trauma, lots and lots of open trauma - people with holes in them," she said.

Brockett recalled treating a local war lord's No. 2 man who came in with a gunshot wound to the stomach. The war lord, who hated the Taliban, showered the staff with presents when his soldier pulled through.

He brought goat's yogurt, two live turkeys, jewelry and traditional clothing for the women. Bill Brockett was even included.

"He sent a [jeweled] skull cap to me, thanking me for letting her [Brenda] come over there," he said with a laugh. "I don't wear it a lot."

Brenda Brockett said she often faced hostility from Afghan males who didn't like women caring for them. Because these men understood command structure, Brockett had the doctors explain she was in command when they were absent.

"In a few days, we had them broke to lead," she said with a laugh. "Most were pretty nice - they would even shake hands with us even though they don't like to touch American women."

Bullets, shrapnel and land mines kept Brockett busy as the only ER nurse in the 24/7 hospital. She would work 12 hours then go to bed with a radio by her pillow.

All too often, she had to treat children injured by land mines or unexploded ordinance or as bystanders of exploding improvised explosive devices or gun fights. She remembered seeing four children in two days.

In another incident, the Taliban set off an IED as children were running out to wave at a Dutch convoy going through a town. Five children died at the site and four others died later.

Afghanistan represents an unforgiving and tough landscape for youngsters who perform much of the work, like climbing trees to pick almonds.

"Kids fall off roofs, donkeys, trunks and mountainsides," Brockett said. "We provide them world-class healthcare."

Sometimes the medical staff must rectify, as best they can, the well-intentioned but unskilled doctoring of tribal shamans.

She recalled a little boy who fell down and broke his arm. The family took him to their tribal shaman who wrapped the arm too tightly in sheep hair.

"Thirty hours later, they took him to a special forces medic," Brockett said. "We had to amputate his hand. We were just sick about it. It was fixable."

One little boy, injured by a land mine, won over Brockett's heart and mind. The seven-year-old lost part of his leg.

"I was the recovery room nurse for that kid," she said. "He woke up with a smile."

Brockett's eyes well up as she remembered his father carrying him out. The little boy reached over, took both her hands in his and kissed them.

"I went inside and bawled," she said.

Her assignment at Firebase Ripley ended in August when she moved to Craig Joint Theatre Hospital at Bagram Air Base until her tour ends in January. Brockett called it a fabulous, state-of-the-art hospital, the showplace of Afghanistan.

In her short time, she met five generals, three congressmen and a cabinet-level secretary to the VA. But Brockett would trade Bagram for Firebase Ripley any day.

"It's too close to the flagpole for me," she said. "I considered it a real unique privilege to get as close to the war fight as we got."

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com