Baghdad ER - The Movie
The Independent reports: "This Sunday, subscribers to the American cable channel Home Box Office will be treated to a film about the Iraq war unlike any other. Almost at the start, you see a medical orderly carrying a human arm, amputated above the elbow, which he puts into a red plastic bag."
I am reminded of my time as a combat medic working as a psychiatric technician at Brooke Army Medical Center during the Viet Nam war. I had occasion to head over to the burn unit where debrising tubs (vats of antiseptic water in which burn patients were placed in order to cut from their bodies the dead and dying flesh) were mostly empty. Only one patient as I recall was in a tub. There were no screams, as there often were there. I was spared that bone chilling experience. But, I can never, ever, get the smell of the burn unit out of my memory.
