It’s extremely hard to bear witness to the atrocities of war. I can still remember what that looked like. There was also a Norwegian soldier who was disarming a landmine and had his face shield up, and the landmine blew up in front of his face. I remember there was a Canadian reporter who was riding downtown in Kabul, and a terrorist dropped a hand grenade in her lap through the car window, and the grenade blew up. I can remember seeing my first landmine casualty, what that injury looks like. The one thing that’s very different than in the U.S. These innocent people had been gathered in the town center going about their business, and then someone walked into the village with a bomb strapped to his chest.ĭuring my deployments, I’ve treated everything from blasts to penetrating wounds to blunt traumas, and also more typical orthopedic injuries: We saw a lot of broken bones and dislocations from falls or from hard landings while troops were parachuting in. One infant died with shrapnel wounds to his head, and multiple children were injured. Just as we were having coffee and talking through the scenarios, there was a suicide bombing in the local village, and we had 15 to 20 casualties right away. The morning of our first day, we were supposed to begin training with the Norwegians who were running the local hospital we were going to run through trauma scenarios. In 2011, I was stationed at Forward Operating Base Meymaneh with a small surgical team. You never forget seeing children and women blown apart.

They have no problem feeding their own families to the fire. Nobody is a noncombatant to Al Qaeda or ISIS. can truly appreciate that kind of utter disregard for human life and sanctity of family. So the majority of the casualties from that mission were women and children - and, of course, our soldiers were injured trying to protect the families of the men who threw the grenades. As soon as all of the women and children had come out into the courtyard and our soldiers had gone out to secure them to safety, the enemy threw grenades at the entire group. After our soldiers surrounded the compound, they asked the enemy to send out all of the noncombatants. In 2011, our special mission unit went in to get a high value target in northern Afghanistan. What’s happening in Syria with ISIS, where they’re using human shields, was very common for Al Qaeda, too. That was true for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq back when I served, and it’s true today in countries like Syria. In armed conflict, the vast majority of casualties and injuries are the locals - the civilian population.

And I returned to Afghanistan in 2011 with the 936th Forward Surgical Team and served with the Norwegian Provincial Reconstruction Team. Two years later, I was part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in the initial actions of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Three weeks after 9/11, I was deployed from Fort Bragg with the 274th Forward Surgical Team (Airborne) - the first FST sent into Afghanistan - for Operation Enduring Freedom. My first deployment was to Kosovo with Task Force Falcon, Operation Joint Guardian, in 2001.

Tad gerlinger