Sunday, May 27, 2007

Darwinian Award

Sitting in EVAC this afternoon. Jarhead just started 5 minutes ago on the Armed Forces Network, and I haven't seen it yet. Rolling past the opening credits, with a phalanx of trucks crossing the desert in a hazy mirage, Charlie Medical reverberates with a detonation. "Wait, that wasn't the TV." This one rattles the windows for about 4 seconds....big one.
We all look at each other and give out a collective sigh...and wait for the radio to start chattering. Within 30 seconds, we start getting some garbled messages, so we hold tight a little longer. Then the bad news cracks across the air waves loud and clear "VBIED".
I walk across the way to my hut to pick up stethescope, trauma shears, and a portable oxygen saturation reader. Others start hauling down our supply of litters as other medics start opening up the mass casualty supplies.
Within ten minutes, all of Charlie Medical is present and accounted for. Trauma bay gets a once over to make sure all monitors have cables, oxygen tanks are full and ready to go. We aren't waiting to hear if we are getting casualties......it's an assumption. The only question is how many and how bad is it going to be.
Sure enough, a patient rolls in with second degree burns over 60% of his body. But the soldiers that bring him say he was burned friday. Huh? Apparently, the patient was seen and released at Ramadi General, but obviously is in need of more extensive care. We are approached by the family, so we see what we can do for him. In the meantime, we are worried about the casualties that will be streaming in any second. Someone echoes what we are all thinking "what's going on here, we should be seeing casualties already?"
As we assess and start dressing the burn patient's wounds and hanging antibiotics, the first sergeant walks through from Tactical Command and tells the surgeon "No casualties from the VBIED".
We all have this incredulous "what the....?" look on our faces. Turns out the VBIED driver only managed to blow himself up. His incompetence has an end result of one death....his own. This is a first for me, and I'll take it as a sign the insurgents are scraping the bottom of the bad guy gene pool at this point.

The VBIED driver gets my nomination for Darwinian Award for the month of May.

6 comments:

David M said...

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 05/28/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

Bag Blog said...

Praise God for the small things. Have a good Memorial Day - thanks for all you do.

Anonymous said...

Definately the bottom of the gene pool. Stay safe.

Anonymous said...

I'm elated with this wonderful outcome! Makes me wonder if the VBIED driver may have had some help from our guys with his timely departure. Hope the burn patient is doing well, too.

Thank you for your blog and your service. You are greatly appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Yup. Definitely a Darwin Awards winner in my book. Like that one award recipient, though unconfirmed by the powers that be as I recall, about the Iraqi terrorist who mailed out a bomb package but got the address wrong, and when it was returned to him he opened it.

Sorry to hear about that burn patient. I hope he's going to be ok.

Anonymous said...

I've recently discovered your wonderful blog. Thank you for sharing your amazing stories and for serving our country so faithfully. Keep up the good work on both fronts.