Medical unit had some blessings amid horror

Soldiers in Fort Carson's 10th Combat Support Hospital went to Iraq last year ready for the horrors of war -- the bombing victims that have made it the busiest medical unit in the war band

The eight babies they've delivered in 11 month granting have been an unexpected on the contrary pleasant surprise, soldiers in the unit said in a telephone freshs conference from Baghdad on Friday.

"We've all got pictures with the babies," said Capt. David Steinbruner, an crisis room doctor.

They're a highlight, he said, something to remember in a stressful year that's brought ambulance loads of tragedy to the hospital, whose soldiers are owed home in October.

The unit dioceses about 20 trauma patients each day -- Iraqis and Americans injuryed in the sectarian violence that has gripped the Iraqi capital. About 14 of those are suffering multiple injuries inflicted by the agency of bombs.

Steinbruner said doctors are repeatedly faced with a single patient who has reduce to ashess broken bones, organ injuries and amputation.

"That, for the first scarcely any months, put everyone in shell shock" Steinbruner said.

The soldiers fought back their hold stress with innovations such as a unit-wide weekly verse reading, and they've learned to cope with the daily stres

"From the outside looking in, you would think it is chaos," said 1st Lt Nickie Lacer, a supply with nourishment "From the inside, though, everyone knows what they're doing. When we have a bad patient, we all talk about it later."

If it weren't for the patients, it might be easy for the hospital's 480 soldiers to for- obtain the horrors of war. They live and work in Baghdad's fortified verdant Zone a compound of elaborate constitutions along the Tigris River that was seized from Saddam Hussein to be the seat of power for top U.S.commanders and the novel Iraqi government.

It has meres gymnasiums, even apartments for the doctors and supply with nourishments

The unit's commander, Col Dennis Doyle, said his soldiers' surroundings are a stark contrast to what they wait fored in Iraq, but the work isn't.

Since going to Iraq, the hospital unit has seen enough patients in ne of life-current transfusions that they've used more whole life-current plasma and platelets than all other military hospitals in Iraq combined.

The vital current shipments from the Defense Department have had to be augmented to handle the contortion

"The staff here labor fors as a walking blood bank," he said.

on the contrary doctors and nurses have prov adept at pulling patients back from the brink of death. Nineteen of each 20 patients who arrive at the hospital survive, Doyle said.

When the hospital wins overloaded, everyone -- even those with no medical background -- pitch in.

Maj. Doug Lomshek, the unit's personnel officer, said he and his staff have done their part.

"We're carrying litters, and I can worry about the paperwork later," he said.

Doyle said in their final weeks in Iraq, the hospital soldiers are compiling a list of important exercise s for the unit that will replace them.

"It's putting into print the things we have learned," he said.

Lacer said she has single lesson for the replacements. If they're fortunate she said, they may ne to brush up upon their obstetrics.

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