Loneliness and chaos

Mary-Ann was in charge of the operating rooms and central processing as a Lieutenant Colonel in the military combat support hospital in Tikrit. There was a steady, endless stream of patients coming in day and night. Mary-Ann would only be told that injuries are coming in, not how they were injured. “We just got a massive amount of people coming in shot up and cut up, all different ages. Only way we knew if they were military was if they had their uniform on.”  

 The team just had to use their intuition in the middle of the bloody chaos, not knowing the details of the patient’s injury. “How to get the patients to survive and know what to do when they have just been attacked so violently? If we don’t guess right, we are not going to save the patient. They come with so many injuries,” she says. When there were no new patients, the team would rush to perform necessary repeat surgeries on patients who were already hospitalized. 

Every patient was a life to be saved, even the insurgents that were brought to the hospital under armed guard. “I didn’t have ill feelings for Iraqis, because some of them didn’t necessarily choose to be in that position of fighting against the U.S. Some of them did it because their families had been tortured. Some of them were told they have to go and set up a bomb. Some people hated us. Some had to be blindfolded. Some would spit on us” she says. “Most of the time, even with detainees, I would say some Arabic phrases and they would respond back just fine, as if I understood the language with being friendly to them.” 

Mary-Ann saw the hatred towards the Iraqis among some of the hospital staff. The constant pressure of indirect fire and not knowing who the enemy was affected emotions. Mary-Ann saw a soldier swearing at an Iraqi patient. When the patient didn’t understand to move over, the American soldier hit him on his amputated stump. “Some wanted to categorize any Iraqi as a bad guy, whether they were locals or detainees. I had to stop soldiers from hurting them,” Mary-Ann says.  

Mary-Ann felt lonely in Tikrit. Her team was mostly male and from a different state from her, on their first assignment to Iraq. She didn’t fit into their close social circle. She could not find a battle buddy to walk with in the base or share a dinner with. Increasingly, she saw many soldiers in her team resenting taking orders from her. She felt she didn’t get support from above or below. “I felt helpless. I felt my hands were tied. I knew things had to be done. I had been in a leadership position before. But I felt my supervisor did not know what needed to be done.”  

Even the uniform created a sense of unease. “Our uniforms are made for men. The body armor consists of flat plates that go over your chest. There is no room for female curves. Everything was designed to fit on males,” she tells. 

Mary-Ann started experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in Iraq due to the pressure. She could not sleep through her time of rest. She would wake up, go to hospital or have a meal even if she was supposed to be sleeping. She didn’t see it as alarming then, since she was working around the clock regardless.