UK surgeon in Iraq tells story

Dec 13 2005

A consultant surgeon and visiting lecturer at the University of Southampton has described one of the many untold stories of the 2003 Iraq war in a compelling book Blood, Heat and Dust. It is an account of the campaign seen through the eyes of the military doctors and nurses who worked in the war zone.

David Rew, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army Medical Reserve, spent three months in Kuwait and Iraq in 2003. He was part of a team that took a field hospital of 650 regular and reserve health professionals into the desert at five days’ notice and made it operational within a week. Throughout the conflict, doctors and nurses from the UK treated soldiers from both sides alongside local people, including many Iraqi civilians with complex fractures and burns cases.

David has spent the last 18 months writing the book. He gathered the experiences of colleagues, and secured photographs from Ministry of Defence and other sources, most of which have not previously been seen. A highlight of the book is a collection of water-colour paintings from RAF consultant orthopaedic surgeon Wing Commander Gora Pathak, who was based at the time at Royal Naval Hospital Haslar in Gosport. To accommodate all the material, the book has been produced on CD-ROM.

‘If you challenge ordinary people at a time of extraordinary circumstances, you can produce remarkable results,’ said David Rew. ‘Much was learned during the conflict about how to organise medical services in conflict and how to treat combatants and civilians in extreme conditions, and we did not want this knowledge to be wasted. Those reservists who served learned much about themselves and how to work under pressure, and these experiences have been brought back to benefit the National Health Service.

‘We hope that this book will be of interest to all health service professionals and managers, to military personnel who have served and have yet to serve overseas, and to those members of the general public interested in military history and the workings of modern military operations.’

The CD-ROM combines information on the logistics and mobilisation of the Gulf War operation, the working of the medical units and the casualty evacuation chain all the way from the front line back home, and the treatment of casualties by Army, Royal Navy and RAF medical units. There is extensive background material on the role of medics in conflict, a history of Iraq and an account of the development of military medicine. Issues of law and morality are also covered. Individual reservists tell their stories through photo essays and personal accounts and a MoD photo gallery provides more than a hundred striking images of the conflict and its aftermath. For light relief, there are also highlights from the M*A*S*H*-style newsletters produced at the military hospitals.

David Rew was among 20 staff of Southampton University Hospitals Trust joining colleagues from hospitals throughout the UK who were mobilised for Operation Telic 1, the British Military Operation in the Gulf in 2003.