Thursday, July 31, 2008

Month in Mosul

Well, my time here in northern Iraq is coming to a close as I head back down to Baghdad in the next few days. I am not really looking forward to the nausea creating flight between here and there, but it will be good to get back to what has unfortunately become 'normal' for me. Mosul was very different from Baghdad in a lot of ways - a lot slower pace at the hospital, not many plaes to tour around during down time, and a lot less down time. There is only one ER physician up here, so that one is always on-call. It gets a little painful. That being said, there is a lot less of the command group portion of the hospital up here, so things are a little less intrusive and you have a bit more freedom, which is very nice.

So I got to spend some time while I was here playing with some of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regimental tanks. It was like playing video games back in high school - only much cooler. Spent some time crawling through it, using the various sights to track on targets (no we didn't shoot anything, no matter how many times I begged) Got to know their regimental surgeon - who helped plan our field trip out with their armor. We then got a tour of the local FOBs and actually got to see what the city of Mosul looks like - looks like every other large Arabian city... Hot, sandy...

Their is one historical site on the FOB over here - a monastery that was built in the 400s AD - St. Elijah's Monastery - intermittently used by the local christian population over the centuries. Then taken over as an Iraqi Republican Guard headquarters - then taken over as a 101st Airborne Battalion Headquarters - now being returned to the local archeologic community. It is fenced off and guarded so random people can't get into it, but the chaplain takes guided tours through the area and talks about some of the history associated with it. Neat to see something that has actually survived that long in this place, though not surprised that it has been touched by modernity - including one of the main walls punched in by an exploding Iraqi tank.


Across the street sits a "graveyard" for Iraqi armor with dozens of destroyed/nonfunctional Iraqi tanks, artillery and various other vehicles that were damaged during the war and are just sitting and rusting now.




The were very few busy moments up here - one involved the local civilian population of a surroudning town. They had a massive IED go off - wounding over 90 people. The Turkish government (which is not too far from here) offered to care for about half of their most seriously injured. So ambulances drove about 20 Iraqi patients up the hospital here were we staged them and took care of them waiting for the Turkish Air Force medical teams to fly in and get them a few hours later. It was the usual circus show you would expect from three governments working together to accomplish a relatively simple task.


Other than that - not alot to do. I am looking forward to heading back down to Baghdad - to enjoy the rest of my sentence with the crew that I have spent the last 10+ months with. And it also means that much closer to my leave...


I hope you all take care.


Until next time...





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