Photo By Cpl. Clayton Vonderahe | Petty Officer 3rd Class Gregory Rochelle, a hospital corpsman with Regimental Combat...... read more read more
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FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHUKVANI, Afghanistan - The sun was falling below the horizon, marking the completion of another day of deployment; ten months down, two to go. Navy corpsman, Petty Officer 3rd Class Gregory Rochelle, 23, was preparing to end his day. He slid his boots off and prepared to watch a sitcom from his laptop before he went to bed for the night.
Rochelle spent his day administering flu shots to the Marines sharing the base with soldiers from The Republic of Georgia’s 33rd Light Infantry Battalion. The small group of Marines is there to help the soldiers as they serve under Regimental Combat Team 8, Rochelle’s home unit. It was his turn to be the only American medic in the area of operation. His daily routine is limited, but his responsibilities are vast; he is responsible for the health, both routine and immediate, of all the supporting forces in the area, in addition to Afghan citizens who come to the base seeking first aid.
Rochelle usually talks to wife, either on the phone or internet, before he gives himself to sleep for the night. He talks to her about the things he wants to do when he gets back, such as going to the Myrtle Beach Bike Week, even though he doesn’t own a motorcycle.
This night, Nov. 2, he had just come back from the gym. As he was changing from his utilities to sweat pants, preparing to crawl in bed, a Marine came into the tent with news for Rochelle.
“We have two local national casualties being brought to the LZ,” the Marine said to him.
This meant his day was not yet over for the Raleigh native. He slid on his boots once more, grabbed a back-pack filled with medical supplies and hurried to the helicopter landing zone where the injured men would be brought to receive his treatment while they waited for a helicopter to take them to a higher level of care.
Outside the base, a pickup truck filled with Afghan men and a ten-year-old child struck an improvised explosive device placed in the ground by insurgent forces. Most escaped the brunt of the explosion, but two were not so fortunate.
The casualties were still in route when Rochelle arrived at the LZ. He set his bag down and began preparing for the two men in route for his care. The radio informed him of what to expect when dealing with the patients: one had an open fracture on his leg and the other was suffering head trauma. Rochelle began collecting the supplies from his bag he would likely need for treating those kinds of injuries.
Georgian soldiers began trickling to the area in a matter of minutes. Roughly a dozen soldiers, mostly medics, were waiting with Rochelle in anticipation for the arrival of the injured Afghan men.
In moments, two large tactical trucks came roaring into the LZ, their engines bursting through the silence and the headlights piercing the darkness. The fine, talcum powder like dust covering the ground rose in plumes as the trucks rumble into the area.
The back doors to the vehicles flew open and in a heartbeat the injured men were on the ground and having their injuries assessed. Both were unresponsive and badly hurt. The man with head trauma seemed unconscious, the other drifted in and out, announcing his waking by weak, drawn out moans.
Rochelle immediately began to triage the man with the open fracture while the Georgian soldiers assessed the man with head trauma.
Rochelle, utilizing more than five years of experience as a corpsmen, rewrapped the dressing around the open fracture, coating his own hands in blood from the wound. The gripping display of the open fracture was attention capturing and caused the first responders to overlook the break in his other leg, which was a closed wound, but was broken completely through. The man’s leg with the closed fracture fell over the side of the stretcher in an unnatural bend. The right leg was splinted.
The casualty with broken legs was treated in moments, but the Georgian soldiers were gathered around the man with head trauma. The severity of the man’s condition was not fully realized until he arrived for the medevac.
“They were good, and they were quick,” said Rochelle in explanation of the performance of the Georgian medics. “Overall it was a fast response, I liked it.”
The man was bleeding from his mouth and nose, the blood coming out in weak bubbles as his body was struggling to breath in an unconscious state. The Georgian soldiers worked on him without hesitation. In moments, the soldiers had pierced the man’s trachea to perform a tracheotomy. The soldiers inserted a tube into the incision, hopefully allowing the man to breathe.
Both men were treated to the fullest extent of the field medic’s capabilities in a few minutes. Rochelle was by the man with broken legs, consoling him as he drifted in and out of consciousness, and keeping him from going into shock.
The man with head trauma was transferred to a less hectic area and was looked after by a soldier. He was unresponsive, and it was impossible to tell if he was breathing by looking at him. His pulse was weak, it was impossible to tell if the man would survive his injuries long enough to make it to a higher echelon of help.
It was another five minutes or more before the helicopters touched down to retrieve the casualties. The man with broken legs was moved by four men running through the dark, braving the violent rotor wash from the helicopter. The man with head trauma succumbed to his injuries before the helicopter arrived. His lifeless body was slid into a black plastic bag and moved behind a wall to protect him, even after death, from the flying debris the helicopter kicked up.
As the helicopter lifted off the ground, creating a greater storm of dust and rocks, Rochelle moved to a bench made from pieces of 2-by-4-inch scrap wood and fell onto it.
“You want a smoke?” asked a Marine who helped him treat the casualties.
“Yea,” Rochelle responded. He had quit smoking, but if he needed an excuse to restart, or at least slip up just once, this was it.
“You all right?” the Marine asked a few moments after the cigarettes were lit and the first puffs of smoke drifted up toward the inky black sky. The area was quiet. The soldiers were gone as fast as they came.
“Yea,” Rochelle said flatly, a couple moments after the question was asked. “I should have done it differently, I should have worked on the guy with head trauma first.”
Rochelle felt guilty for the death of the man, though the magnitude of his injuries was likely to be the death of him, despite any level of medical care.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Yea, I know, but I wish I could have done it differently.”
Rochelle finished his cigarette and got up. He walked back through the darkness toward the command operations center, but not before cleaning himself, ensuring that no traces of blood remained. The action was over, but now it was time for the hours of paperwork that follow minutes of action.
His night went from watching a sitcom on his laptop to frantically working to save lives teetering on the brink of death.
“This is the first medevac that has happened since I have been in country,” Rochelle said. That night he was unsure whether the men he was working on were insurgents or innocent civilians. It made no difference to Rochelle. “Our medicine doesn’t have a face,” he explained.
It is Afghanistan, after all, and the Marines and Georgian soldiers surrounding him are fighting an enemy militant force, but this time innocent civilians fell into a trap placed by the insurgents who hide among the populous.
“I’m glad I already went to the gym,” Rochelle said mostly to himself. He had been strictly adhering to a work out routine throughout his deployment. If he hadn’t already gone, it is likely he wouldn’t have the extra push to go after the medevac.
Rochelle eventually found his way to his bed, pulled his heavy sleeping bag up to his chin, and watched his sitcom as he drifted off to sleep. When he drifted off, it then marked another day down.
| Date Taken: | 11.16.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 11.16.2011 10:43 |
| Story ID: | 80108 |
| Location: | FORWARD OPERATING BASE SHUKVANI, HELMAND PROVINCE, , AF |
| Web Views: | 778 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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