NewsDay September 6, 2004
August takes a heavy toll: 1,100 wounded in Iraq
U.S. medical commanders say battlefield wounds suffered by U.S. soldiers and Marines reflect intensity of fights in urban areas
By Karl Vick
THE WASHINGTON POST
BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq last month, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.
U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shia Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority.
"They were doing battlefield urban operations in four places at one time," said Lt. Col. Albert Maas, operations officer for the 2nd Medical Brigade, which oversees U.S. combat hospitals in Iraq. "It's like working in downtown Detroit. You're going literally building to building."
Last month's toll of 1,112 compared with 533 troops injured in July, 589 in June and 818 in May, according to Globalsecurity.org, based in Alexandria, Va.
Change in toll
The sharp rise in wounded was, for the first time, accompanied by a far less steep climb in battlefield fatalities. As of Friday, 976 U.S. service members had died since the start of the war in March of last year, according to the Defense Department. Almost 7,000 have been wounded. Until last month, however, the monthly tallies of fatalities and wounded rose and fell roughly proportionally.
In August, 66 U.S. service personnel were killed in Iraq, according to the Defense Department. The toll was the highest since May, when 80 fatalities were recorded. But it was about half the 135 U.S. combat deaths in April, when a sporadic guerrilla war that had largely been confined to the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad spread to cities across the Shia Muslim belt in southern Iraq.
Commanders said they had no immediate explanation for why the number of wounded increased so sharply without a comparable rise in combat deaths. "All I know is I've got more patients here," said Col. Ryck Beitz, commander of the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, which admitted 425 patients last month, a new high.
One possible explanation lay in the brawn some units brought to the fight in crowded city centers. In Najaf, for example, two of the three U.S. battalions squaring off in close quarters against a Shia militia were categorized as "heavy armored." Army officers said their Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles not only offer substantial protection but also answered attacks with immediate and overwhelming large-caliber salvos.
"We've been given the best tools in the world for waging war," said Maj. Tim Karcher of the 2nd battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division's 7th Regiment.
Lives surely also were saved by the proximity of the fighting to a combat hospital in Babylon, a short helicopter hop away.
There were also indications troops suffered more severe wounds last month than in previous months. At the Baghdad hospital, staff members are accustomed to seeing the most severely injured troops. The hospital, the only one in Iraq where the military's brain and eye surgeons work, handles the worst head wounds. Normally, about half the patients who come to the emergency room qualify as "acute" cases, a term that indicates severity and urgency.
Last month, however, the rate of acute cases jumped to three of four ER patients.
"It was intense," said Lt. Col. Greg Kidwell, who oversees the emergency room there.
Capt. Neil Taufen, an emergency room doctor, said the pace was all the more striking because it came after a quiet stretch. "July was just dull, and it was like: Everything's going to be all right. And then Najaf fired up, and it was just like nothing had ever changed," said Taufen, of Fort Sill, Okla.
'A smoldering fight'
Najaf and the neighboring town of Kufa, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, have been quiet since a peace deal was brokered late last month by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Last week, an informal cease-fire also took hold in Sadr City, the Shia slum that is the main stronghold of junior cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, which fought in Najaf.
But U.S. forces continued to clash with Sunni Muslim insurgents and foreign-born fighters west and north of Baghdad. Twenty-six Marines were killed last month in Anbar province, which takes in Fallujah and Ramadi and extends across the desert to Syria.
Insurgents hold sway in both cities and routinely attack U.S. patrols. "It's always kind of a smoldering fight out there," Kidwell said.
Parts of Baghdad also remain combat zones.
Propped on pillows in a ward of the Baghdad combat hospital Saturday, Spec. Christopher Riang, 19, wore a zipper of surgical staples up his abdomen after being ambushed off the capital's hostile Haifa Street.
"I yelled 'Grenade!' and made sure the Iraqi translator took off," he said, describing the attack that left him with a belly full of steel shards. "Then I took off. I guess I couldn't outrun the grenade."
"Almost everybody took shrapnel," said Capt. Chris Ford, the company commander. Three soldiers were injured lightly enough to return to duty after treatment, as do about 45 percent of U.S. forces wounded in Iraq. Two others needed medical evacuation. The Iraqi interpreter went home.
"Basically, we had to fight our way out of that alley," Ford said. "It's a labyrinth. And it's conducive to their kind of fighting."
More and more often, children are lobbing the grenades, Ford said. Insurgents offer boys of 10 or 12 years old $150 to toss a grenade at a U.S. patrol, he said.
"For the longest time we've had a good relationship with the children," Ford said. "Now this. Who enjoys putting a bead on a kid? Nobody. That's why they paid them."
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