Army Doctors Saving Lives in Afghanistan

U.S. Capt. Richard M. Slusher of 541st Forward Surgical Team, operates on a wounded Afghan soldier at a U.S. military field hospital in Lagman, southeastern Afghanistan, Wednesday, April 11, 2007. It was a dream job for a sports medicine specialist: repairing the battered knees and shoulders of the Cincinnati Bengals and other athletes. Major trauma was defined as missing a season to injury. Two years later in Afghanistan, Capt. Richard M. Slusher doesn't get to practice his much-loved specialty. The trauma he confronts now carries the gravity of life or death. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) (Rafiq Maqbool - AP)

More recently, 17 Afghan soldiers, caught in a deadly Taliban ambush, swamped the facility. Then the only surgeon, Azarow rapidly operated on three of the critically wounded while outsiders at the base _ helicopter fuelers, Dutch communication specialists, Romanian medics _ reinforced his overtaxed men.

"If you don't work as a team you are truly lost," said Azarow, one of only two pediatric surgeons among the roughly 4,200 physicians on active U.S. Army duty. Twenty-six doctors are serving in Afghanistan.

Almost everyone on the team comes from an airborne unit, carrying some of the esprit and style of elite paratroopers, whom Slusher doctored at Fort Bragg, N.C., on his last assignment. ("An 18,000-man football team, they're crazy," he said.)

Prior to that, the regular U.S. Army officer had his year in the field of dreams _ a break from normal Army duty for a sports medicine fellowship with the NFL football team and others in Cincinnati. Slusher loved it so much that after 17 years in the service he is planning to retire and go into a private sports medicine practice.

"I assisted in many of the surgeries that got some of the players back on the field. That was a very satisfying experience for me to see a person get back to doing what they enjoy doing," he said. "The experience of getting a soldier back on the battlefield is also the same. Seeing a child injured and getting him or her back to their family is more gratifying."

Slusher doesn't regret the year in Afghanistan, although he and Azarow say recruitment and retention of doctors has become harder because of the long deployments to overseas war zones.

"Most folks are fine with their initial deployment, it is the second and third that become extremely difficult for a variety of reasons, some personal and some professional," Azarow said.

To ensure it has enough medical personnel, the Army is offering bonuses and helps pay off student loans in exchange for commitments. For example, the National Guard is offering health care professionals $30,000 in bonuses for three-year commitments.

To ease tensions, "we goof off, we play around. But we do the job," Slusher said, donning a Goofy hat his 5-year-old son gave him on a trip to Disney World while he was on leave two weeks earlier. Wearing the hat, the burly, athletic doctor bounces into the ward to prepare for the incoming wounded policemen.

Slusher unwraps the bandaged legs of the most severely wounded. Both are a mash of shredded flesh, tendons and exposed bones. A foot dangles on the end of the victim's left leg, and Slusher cuts if off with a scalpel, placing it in a blue plastic wash bowl.

"Come Sail with Me," "American Woman" and 1970s rock pulsates from speakers connected to an iPod. Male nurses and assistants mix brisk efficiency and banter.

Then a grinding sound cuts through the room as Slusher and Azarow bend over the patient, neatly amputating both his legs below the knee with a wire saw.

All five that night are saved.

"Unless you come to us totally mangled, destined to die, you are not going to die," Slusher said. "This is our storming the hill, taking the objective. We are proud of that."