Midlands medics back in the firing line in Afghanistan

The Army Reserve medics of 202 Field Hospital, who include doctors and nurses from hospitals in Shropshire, Staffordshire and the West Midlands, have a proud history of service on the front line.

They braved threats of Scud missile and chemical warfare attacks in the Iraq War and set up a hospital on a disused runway at the former Shaibah RAF base near Basra to tend the wounded in 2003.

Six years later they saw action in Afghanistan and are now set to return there in the next few weeks on a three-month tour of duty at the Camp Bastion military hospital in trouble torn Helmand Province.

Their Commanding Officer, Colonel Glynn Evans – a 47-year-old consultant anaesthetist and father of three – said today: "It is a fantastic challenge but I have a highly trained and experienced team around me that makes it so much easier. We were the first Territorial Army Field Hospital in to Iraq during the invasion and it is now likely that we will be the last Army Reserve Field Hospital in Afghanistan. It would be a real privilege to top and tail things in that way."

Major Tracey Brown, from Shrewsbury, is part of the 34-strong team returning to Afghanistan to work in the emergency department at the Camp Bastion hospital. The 41-year-old is also a nurse practitioner who spent four years working in the Accident and Emergency Department of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital before joining Shropdoc, the out of hours GP service in the area 12 months ago.

Essex-born Major Brown, who is single, moved to Shropshire in 2006 and joined the TA a dozen years ago. She explained: "I wanted more training and education and the Army has provided it. I deployed to Iraq in 2004 and am really looking forward to Afghanistan."

Corporal Emma Thomas, 25, from Baschurch, Shrewsbury, is a staff nurse in the coronary care unit at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital where she has been employed for four years. She only joined the Army Reserve two years ago and will be deploying to the front line for the first time just weeks after getting engaged to electrician Phil Howells, 29.

Oswestry-born Corporal Thomas, who was educated at Marches School and Walford and North Shropshire College, will be a ward nurse in Afghanistan. She said: "In my civvy street job I deal with medical rather than surgical tasks and so this will be a new challenge and I will be acquiring new skills. It is a great opportunity since combat troops are being withdrawn in 2014. My fiance has been very supportive."

Major Jane Phillips who lives with her partner Dean King in Worfield, near Bridgnorth, will be managing the team running the communications and administration hub of the hospital at Camp Bastion. It is a very different role for the former environmental health officer who is now a lecturer at the University of Birmingham.

The 37-year-old confessed: "I am apprehensive because I have not deployed before. It is a step into the unknown outside my comfort zone but I am really looking forward to it. I have been in the Army Reserve for 13 years and my partner is happy for me to go."

The 202 Field Hospital team will include consultant radiologists, physicians and anaesthetists, paramedics, nurses and theatre assistants drawn from Shropshire, Staffordshire West Midlands, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. The deployment has been planned for three years and the medics have been under intensive training for the past 12 months.

They will treat injured UK and coalition forces and train the Afghan medical services to care for their troops and police at the hospital being developed at the nearby Camp Shorobak. Negotiations continue over the future of the hospital at Camp Bastion when British combat troops leave this year.

Colonel Evans, who is a consultant at Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry and spent three years in the Royal Army Medical Corps before joining the Army Reserve, explained: "I do this instead of private practice." He has deployed to Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan and said: "The extent of trauma we sometime deal with on an injured soldier is something you might possibly never see on an NHS patient in Accident and Emergency. At the peak of the Afghan conflict that was the sort of injury you would see up to a couple of times a day, every day. Now it is significantly less.

"The hospital at Camp Bastion has never had MRSA and has survival rates in the high 90 per cent. As a result of this conflict we have learnt much greater surgical skills and techniques. The survival rate is not matched anywhere else in the world.

"The nurses, doctors and other medical staff serving there with 202 Field Hospital will return with an unrivalled skills set that will then be put to use for the good of all in their day to day NHS jobs."

Captain Steven Hill, a 46-year-old father of two, from Wolverhampton, was among those who served with the field hospital during the invasion of Iraq and is returning to Afghanistan where he completed a tour of duty with the Parachute Regiment three years ago.

The nurse practitioner recalled: "We had daily Scud attack alarms, sometimes a couple of times a day, during the early weeks of the Iraq War."

Casualties

He added: "The Army was something that had always appealed to me but I got waylaid with other things in my life.

"Then I had the chance to join the Territorial Army, now called the Army Reserve, in 1997 and have never looked back.

"It give me an opportunity to do adventure training and learn military skills.

Captain Hill added: "The thing I really enjoy is the positive 'can do' attitude of the Army.

"If they have a challenge to meet, they find a way to solve it.

"You deal with trauma cases in the NHS but they are more frequent and more profound in a combat situation.

"There is always a little bit of trepidation before any deployment but mercifully the casualties are not as numerous as they were.

"We are not seeing so many battlefield injuries because the troops are spending less time in the field."

See also - Shrewsbury TA medic Tracey heading off to Afghanistan

By John Scott