Publicity

Many who grew up in the 70s and had a television also grew up with M.A.S.H. – the black comedy about a bunch of US medical staff at a mobile surgical hospital in the Korean War. The series premiered in 1972, and the 1983 finale still ranks as one of the most-watched television of all time.

When Foreign Correspondent’s Mark Corcoran stepped out of a helicopter in a remote outpost of Afghanistan in January, he walked into a modern-day, real-life version of M.A.S.H. Here though the world weary cast of cynical and conniving characters has been replaced with what looks like youthful exuberance and sophisticated clinical precision.

Many of the men and women in Mark’s story were not even born when M.A.S.H. was on air. Two thirds of those fighting in Afghanistan were still in school when George W. Bush declared war on the Taliban more than 8 years ago.

Corcoran observes: “It’s seven years since my last extended embed here with US troops and today I’m struck by their youth. This conflict has become America’s Generation Y war.”

It’s not long though before first impressions give way to reality. Sure they’re young but they’re under enormous emotional and physical stress and pressure and with that comes a growing bewilderment about the purpose of this war.

‘The Golden Hour’ is confronting and revealing, chronicling the daily life of medical personnel from all walks of life brought together in a field hospital not far from the fighting, Daily, they strive and struggle to keep their colleagues – and sometimes the locals who are trying to blow them up – alive.

The program’s title refers to the crucial time-frame they have to save their patients – many of them will die unless they are treated within an hour of being injured. The field hospitals operate in remote areas because in Afghanistan’s rugged terrain it’s not possible to get the injured to a proper hospital soon enough.

The medical teams say they’re bracing for the bloody consequences of ‘the surge’ and they tell Corcoran that they’re wearying of the long deployments.

They wonder aloud about the point of it all.

And in between time they distract themselves from brutal reality in whatever way they can.

Helicopter aerials over snow capped mountains

Music

00:00

CORCORAN: Hitch a helicopter ride 70 kilometres south east of Kabul – and you enter a forbidding terrain once dubbed “The Gates of Jihad”.

00:10

Logar Province, on the border with Pakistan.

This is Taliban territory.

00:26

Landing at base

We land at a Forward Operating Base – delivered into the very personal, confronting war of America’s “Generation Y’.

00:39

Base montage

Music

00:49

CORCORAN: Most of those now fighting and dying here were still in school when George Bush declared war on terror nearly nine long years ago.

The Obama Administration has ordered a huge troop surge to finally defeat the Taliban.

But more boots on the ground, means more casualties.

00:55

Rescue of soldier

Music

01:17

CAPTAIN NISSA BRODMAN: I don’t take my life for granted, because death surrounds me.

01:24

Casualties to triage

CORCORAN: It’s trauma in a tent – as they fight to save lives in this deadly combat zone.

01:28

Surgeons in triage

MAJOR BRYAN HELSEL: It’s a personal conflict, it’s emotional conflict, it’s, you know,

01:37

Bryan

trying to keep people alive.

01:40

MEDEVAC chopper lands

Music

01:42

CORCORAN: We join the US Army MEDEVAC crews, doctors and nurses engaged in what can be a dangerous and harrowing task…

Welcome to M*A*S*H… 2010.

01:46

Bryan and Matt operate

Music

01:56

CORCORAN: This is the canvas and plywood world of the 8th Forward Surgical Team. Leading this small group of doctors, nurses and medics are surgeons Matt Hueman and Bryan Helsel.

BRYAN HELSEL: This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve done this before. I’ve, you know, worked at major trauma centres.

02:06

Bryan. Super:

Major Bryan Helsel – Surgeon

I trained in Los Angeles County Hospital which is a major place of trauma.

02:25

Bryan operates

And it’s not that it doesn’t affect you, it’s just you learn to cope and you learn to distance yourself. You have to be

02:33

Bryan

passionate to make these people get better, but you also have to have a bad memory.

02:39

Matt operates

CORCORAN: For Matt Hueman – the army is his life. He joined at 17 and has spent 16 years training as an officer and surgeon to be here.

And business is brisk.

02:46

Matt. Super:
Major Matt Hueman – Surgeon

MATT HUEMAN: We’ve been the busiest Forward Surgical Team, not just in Afghanistan – but Iraq and Afghanistan.

03:02

Surgical team operate

CORCORAN: In just 10 months, their small tented hospital has received a staggering 600 trauma cases.

BRYAN HELSEL: It’s designed to do damage control surgery which means save someone’s life

03:16

Bryan

so that they can get further in the evacuation system to get definitive surgery.

03:21

Preparations for patrol departure

CORCORAN:

It’s about to get much busier. The Surge will soon push US and Coalition troop numbers beyond 150 thousand. Their orders: to take the fight to the Taliban.

But first they’ve got to secure the deadly roads – riddled with improvised explosive devices or IED’s.

03:26

Well, barely a stone’s throw away from the operating theatre over here, more patrols and convoys are preparing to head out in their huge MRAPs – mine resistant patrol vehicles. It’s now mid winter in Afghanistan, and this is usually a time when there is a traditional lull in the fighting, brought about by the bitterly cold weather.

03:51

This time last year, there was a metre of snow here. But not this year. It’s unseasonably warm – and that means the Taliban are still out there, laying IED’s, setting ambushes, and for these guys, that means, more casualties.

04:12

Convoy departs

Music

04:27

PILOT: Dust off 43...Dust off 45…

43, 45

PILOT: Are you guys 19 kilometres to the North?

Ready for departure urgent MEDEVAC…

Roger 43.

NISSA BRODMAN: When you get that call, you hear MEDEVAC,

04:30

Nissa. Super:
Captain Nissa Brodman – MEDEVAC Pilot

you’re not thinking about the dangers so much as you are thinking about that patient, you know, you don’t know who it is. It could be you know US, Afghan, a child…

04:42

Inside chopper. Pilot cam of mission

CORCORAN: As the Blackhawk MEDEVAC choppers scramble – the news is all bad.

04:55

PILOT: We’re gonna need a body bag on the ground there.”

CORCORAN: A massive explosion has just destroyed an MRAP.

05:00

Two soldiers are dead – three wounded.

SOLDIER: Are they Americans?

PILOT: Yes they are Americans.
SOLDIER: I want one guy staring at his dead buddy the whole time. You got a body bag underneath your seat, sir?

CORCORAN: As they land, the crew expects an attack. On the ground the helicopters are highly vulnerable – and the Taliban know it.

05:07

PILOT: I’m really nervous now...

There’s one dude walking back and forward in that house right there – with an RPG?

SOLDIER: Yeah, I see him.

I don’t see the RPG – but yeah I see him there.

05:27

Stills of mission

CORCORAN: High overhead a pilotless surveillance drone captures in real time these images of the medivac . Vigilant for any sign of ambush.

05:41

Pilot cam

SOLDIER: I really wish they’d hurry up.

CORCORAN: The Americans have spent $32 billion dollars replacing their vulnerable Humvee vehicles with thousands of MRAPS.

05:51

SOLDIER: That MRAP’s in bad shape.

CORCORAN: The Taliban simply build bigger bombs.

IED’s now account for 60% of all Coalition casualties. The living and the dead are loaded onto separate helicopters for the flight home.

06:02

SOLDIER: Must have been a big one to mess that MRAP up like that.

06:20

Still. Soldiers carry injured on stretchers

CORCORAN: How tough is it to deal with what’s going on in the back of the aircraft that you’re flying? I mean you’re picking up some terribly damaged people?

NISSA BRODMAN – PILOT: Honestly, I don’t look back very often. I’m pretty tender hearted, not that

06:23

Nissa

I can’t, I mean if I need to I do, but I focus on flying.

06:36

Chopper takes off for FST

CORCORAN: For the wounded, it’s now a race against the clock to beat the so-called Golden Hour.

06:44

MAJOR MATT HUEMAN: The Golden Hour is when the person has an injury, within the first two to five minutes there’s a certain number of people who will die that are not saveable. The next hour is where a lot of people, if they don’t get to a place that has surgical capability and the full gamut of taking care of them, will die as well.

06:52

Matt

So the Golden Hour really reflects those people that are saveable if you’re able to get them to a place like a forward surgical team within that hour.

07:12

Loaded stretchers

CORCORAN: Just seven minutes later, the wounded are delivered into the hands of the surgical team.

07:23

Body bags on trolleys

At a discrete distance – the body bags are also unloaded.

520 US and Coalition troops were killed in the past year – the deadliest in the conflict so far.

07:31

Casualties into FST

But all attention is now focussed on saving the living – doing all they can in the golden hour.

BRYAN HELSEL: We provide 21st century intensive care, critical care for patients that would otherwise die. I mean

07:48

Bryan

there’s no way around, some of these people would have died.

08:02

Medics assess triage patients

CORCORAN: Too many soldiers wounded on Afghanistan’s remote battlefields were bleeding to death before reaching surgery at the big military hospitals.

So last year Army surgical teams were moved much closer to the fight – to beat the Golden Hour.

MAJOR BRYAN HELSEL: You watch the TV show M*A*S*H

08:06

Bryan

and you think about them trying to make do with what they have. And I think that’s really what we’re doing here.

08:26

Medics assess triage patients

CORCORAN: For those who make it here alive – often with horrific injuries - there’s now a 98% chance of survival.

08:33

A young female soldier pulled from the wreckage of the MRAP has multiple fractures.

For her comrade, Sgt. Adam Sandifer – hit by the massive concussive blast - the injuries are less clear.

MAJOR MATT HUEMAN: We try and get the chest and pelvis within the first ten minutes

08:46

Matt

with all the other things that we do, like checking the airway, making sure that they are breathing, making sure they have a pulse, getting an IV in – doing an ultrasound making sure they don’t have blood in their abdomen.

09:06

Matt assesses patients

CORCORAN: Matt Hueman and Bryan Helsel both served in Iraq – they’re well- practised in treating IED victims.

But this is a different war with different injuries.

09:20

X-rays

CORCORAN: So even though they’re travelling in the new armoured MRAP’s, they still can suffer severe injuries?

MATT HUEMAN: They can, and it’s

09:34

Matt

deceptive, because it tends to be internal injuries so, you know, in my last deployment we would see amputations, significant above the knee amputations, with the Humvees. In this deployment the leg still appears to be functionally intact, but it’s still a significant injury inside and we have to figure that out” and sometimes it’s more harder to figure out.

09:40

Bryan assessing patient

BRYAN HELSEL: When you guys landed, you went up in the air like this and came straight back down?

PATIENT. Yes.

BRYAN: And then did it stay on its wheels the whole time or did it roll over?

PATIENT: I no, just felt like the inside of the compartment coming apart.

BRYAN: I’m just trying to figure out so I know what to look for with people’s injuries. Everyone in here looks like they’re doing OK, alright – so you just hang tight.

10:00

CORCORAN: Without the MRAP’s, the toll would be much higher.

10:19

MATT HUEMAN: Most of these soldiers that come in now after extremely violent, huge IED’s that leave huge craters that would normally would have killed them, or maimed them. I would say most of them walk away now.

10:25

Adam Sandifer outside FST

CORCORAN: Adam Sandifer is released – to contemplate the random nature of war – why he lived and two friends in the same vehicle died.

10:37

Soldiers gather round body bags

The dead are laid out in the foyer. Those gathered are stilled by anger and shock. The grieving and a dignified, flag-draped send off will follow.

10:52

Nissa’s MEDEVAC crew

Out on the flight line – the MEDEVAC crews are back on standby.

11:08

Nissa in cockpit

Acting commander is 27 year old Captain Nissa Brodman, a graduate of the elite West Point Military Academy.

NISSA BRODMAN: I do prefer the humanitarian aspect. For me it’s what I really feel drawn to. I did

11:15

Nissa

go to West Point. I actually wanted to be a doctor, [laughs] my class rank wasn’t high enough to become a doctor which actually ended up being a blessing because then I branched to aviation and in flight full re-branched to medical service to fly MEDEVAC because I, that’s what I really wanted to fly and here we are.

11:31

MEDEVAC crew

I’m pretty spiritual and every Saturday night I go to Mass. It’s my way of dealing with that,

11:54

Nissa

so you definitely contemplate it, it’s in your face all the time

12:01

Nissa with crew

NISSA BRODMAN: I would say I’m the mom. I get teased a little bit about being the mom, but I think that’s a good thing. I mean I do my best to care for the people I work for, you know.

12:07

Nissa with letters from children

We all get letters once a week or so. We usually pick out every now and then a good one and hang it up.

CORCORAN: What does it say?

NISSA BRODMAN: Thank you for fighting for our country – even though it may mean death (bursts out laughing) He’s in 5th grade. (laughter)

12:08

Devon/ Devon with Nissa

DEVON BUNDY: I got really lucky getting put here.

CORCORAN: Devon Bundy was barely out of the 5th grade himself when it all started back on 9/11. Now he’s part of the Gen Y army that’s inherited the “War on Terror”.

12:37

NISSA BRODMAN: He’s our youngest soldier in the platoon. He’s a commo guy, so he makes sure that we receive every mission.

CORCORAN: How old are you?

DEVON BUNDY: 19.

CORCORAN: And how long you been in the army for?

DEVON BUNDY: A little under two years now.

CORCORAN: And you’re here already?

DEVON BUNDY: Uh-huh.

CORCORAN: What do your parents make of that?

DEVON BUNDY: They weren’t thrilled – but they got over it now.

12:50

MEDEVAC chopper carrying Mohammed lands

CORCORAN: There’s little time for reflection - the MEDEVAC crews are soon back in action.

A US patrol has found 16 year old Mohammed lying in a ditch critically injured with a gunshot wound to the hip.

13:16

FLIGHT SURGEON: He’s bleeding a little bit more, but as far as pain wise he didn’t seem to be too bad.

13:33

Mohammed into tent for searching

CORCORAN:

The medics are wary, and with good reason.

In Kabul recently the Taliban rigged an ambulance as a car bomb. Another suicide attacker posed as a doctor.

CORCORAN: Why is he brought to this tent?

BRYAN: He’s brought here because he is not a US citizen – so we strip him all down and make sure there is no unexploded ordinance.

13:42

Bryan

The people are important – but also the equipment – because we can’t replace the equipment so we try and make sure that they’re all good to go before we take them inside.

CORCORAN: That’s a potential threat is it?

BRYAN: It is. You just never know.

14:01

Mohammed into triage

CORCORAN: News that Mohammed was shot by Afghan police worries the Surgical Team commander, Captain Ben Wilhelm.

CAPT. WILHELM: Wait a minute, he’s from Ghazni but also he’s says he’s from Logar?

14:13

Ben with interpreter

INTERPRETER: But now he say I’m from Ghazni Province… I think he was shocked – he said that I’m from Logar Province.

14:24

Super:
Captain Ben Wilhelm – Commander – 8^th FST

INTERPRETER: His father’s name is Khalil.

CAPT. WILHELM: And my alarm bells start going off.

CORCORAN: What concerns you about this case?

CAPT. WILHELM: Well… when they’re iffy on the information it could mean any number of things. Could be completely innocent, could be just the pain talking. But on the other hand it could be he was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing – and that’s how he got shot, so.

CORCORAN: Potentially Taliban?

CAPT. WILHELM: Potentially… I mean there’s plenty of illegal activities that go on in Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the Taliban too, I mean he could have been running drugs or whatever else, so.

14:38

Mohammed being searched

He’s clear – he doesn’t pose any immediate danger to us so we are going to take care of him just like we would a US soldier, but it sets off alarm bells when they don’t seem to either

15:21

Ben

know where they are coming from or don’t seem to have a consistent story.

15:29

Mohammed in surgery

We’ve had a number of enemy prisoners of war come through – confirmed Taliban. We’ve had some that were shot by our guys and we’ve had a few who’ve blown themselves up planting IED’s.

15:35

Ben

This is what happens when you’ve got a third grade education and you are dealing with highly technical explosives.

15:44

Mohammed in surgery

It is difficult, but you have to, again, find a positive way to deal with that and you have to set any kind of emotional animosity you have aside and see them not as the enemy but as a patient.

15:48

Ben

And that person needs your help right now.

16:02

Matt and Bryan operate

MATT: So we had multiple small bowel injuries and we tried to figure out where we could combine those together.

16:06

Matt

What we’ve learned in the last decade – as a community – is that just removing the contamination and not actually trying to fix it definitively at the first operation actually allows patients to do even better.

16:16

Mohammed in surgery

CORCORAN:

It turns out Mohammed is no insurgent – just a boy caught in the cross fire.

His only lucky break - that he was brought here.

In much of Afghanistan advanced medical care is non-existent – with hospital infection rates so high – that to be admitted can be a death sentence.

16:23

CAPT. WILHELM: For our local nationals we have less capability of moving them to another facility for definitive care, and we recognise that we probably provide the best definitive care here

16:44

Sunset

Music

16:5

CORCORAN: This is a war fought 24 hours a day.

17:05

MEDEVAC Night vision

Poor night visibility has grounded the combat helicopters – but MEDEVAC flies regardless, and we tag along.

Saving lives sometimes means flying blind.

We return to where the MRAP was destroyed earlier in the day.

The Taliban have since fired rockets at a crew sent to recover the wrecked vehicle.

17:12

Injured combat engineer

A combat engineer has been accidentally sprayed in the face with battery acid – in the dark it’s impossible to assess his injuries.

He’s delivered to the surgical team

17:47

Surgical team examine combat engineer’s eyes

…where, at the end of what’s been a very long, hellish day there’s finally some good news. He’ll make a full recovery.

18:04

PATIENT: It feels like I’m drowning…This does not go on Facebook!” (laughter)

18:16

Music

18:23

Activity at camp. Choppers land. Building activity

CORCORAN: Well, just out here just beyond the helipad and the hospital lies the future.

A year ago – this was an outpost of fewer than 300 troops – already there are 2000 in this camp – and in not long from now there’ll be anything up to 20 thousand – all part of the surge.

Already the Americans are building a runway that will soon be able to land long distance jets and there are very permanent structures now being constructed all around the compound.

You really do get the impression that the Americans will be here in Afghanistan for a long time to come.

18:34

And one of the toughest battles ahead lies in winning the hearts and minds. Last year was the deadliest for civilians, with more than 2,400 killed.

19:11

US medical support for Afghans is intended as a morale booster. Forty per cent of the casualties treated by the surgical team are Afghan troops or local civilians.

19:30

Arif in triage

But this American goodwill takes a battering every time a boy such as 14 year old Arif becomes a statistic – and be warned this is confronting.

19:44

INTERPRETER: He said that an American patrol, and Afghan national patrol, came into the valley –

19:58

Corcoran with Arif’s brother and Interpreter

and the children playing with stone together - and they threw out the stone on them. Suddenly national army attacked on him – and they shoot him.

CORCORAN: So the patrol shot him for throwing stones?

INTERPRETER: Yeah - not American people. Afghan people.

CORCORAN: With the Americans?

INTERPRETER: Yeah.

20:06

Bryan treats Arif

CORCORAN: Arif was shot six months ago. Every week since then his brother has brought him in for treatment.

20:30

BRYAN: The initial entry of his wound was through his arm here – he has a broken arm here… and that’s really the only thing that hurts him right now.

20:36

Bryan

So if you touch his arm at all that’s what bothers him. The wound went in through his chest –and then in his spine – so he’s paralysed from about here down.

20:41

I’m afraid that it’s probably a terminal thing. We try and make it as comfortable for him as we can. I mean his wounds are pretty devastating wounds.

20:51

Medical staff’s tents

CORCORAN: For the doctors – sanctuary lies behind a plywood door. This is their escape from the relentless stress of surgery. Afghanistan is left behind outside the tent.

21:14

Into tents

CORCORAN: This is home?

BRYAN: It’s Mardi Gras on drugs. I think it’s holidays gone bad in here. Sometimes you just need to decompress.

21:27

Bryan in tent

Like the other night, we were in there operating for 12 hours and we came back and watched a couple episodes of a TV show just to kinda unwind so you can go to sleep.

21:35

Matt in tent with child’s fire hat

MAJOR MATT HUEMAN:

I have this fire hat that was from his second birthday, and I have some other nick-knacks that my wife sent and some of the pictures that she sent me underneath. So that’s what keeps me going.

CORCORAN:

Their tent is packed

41:43

Xmas cards

with reminders of life at home and - not surprisingly - it’s here, away from the hard focus of saving lives, that raw emotion can surface.

21:56

Medics watch TV

MAJOR MATT HUEMAN: You know that there’s US trauma coming in and when the MEDEVAC helicopter lands

22:07

Matt

and you see the soldiers sort of turn, you know, congregate and sort of be worried about, worried about them, because you know they’re worried about them as their brother, is it one of their friends, I think that makes it really difficult.

22:13

Injured on stretcher

It also makes it really rewarding, because I feel confident that we’ve taken care of people as best we can, and have gotten them to a point where if they were able to be saved, we were able to save them.

22:29

CORCORAN: Ahead, lies a hot, even deadlier summer. As the surge begins, one former American commander estimates U.S. casualties will be as high as 500 a month.

NISSA BRODMAN: I’m dreading it

22:43

Nissa

because I hope that we can keep up. Hope that we have enough crews for every wounded soldier out there. Our biggest worry is that we’re needed more than we are able to perform or we don’t have enough guys or enough crew members or enough aircraft to perform our mission.

22:57

Nissa and crew on mission

CORCORAN: Another day, another MEDEVAC – we join Nissa Brodman on a mission to evacuate an American soldier with spinal injuries. Combat stress, and the pressure of constant deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are taking their toll. Most of these young soldiers joined up after 9/11, expecting to fight. They believe this is a just war. But you do sense a deep war-weariness now permeating through the ranks of America’s “Gen – Y” army.

CAPT. NISSA BRODMAN:

I hope that there’s an end in sight,

23:15

Nissa

because why else are we doing this? I mean if it’s just going to go on and on.

23:59

Bryan around campfire

CORCORAN: What’s with the fire?

BRYAN: We just sit around and enjoy it, and kind of talk -- it helps decompress a little bit .

24:02

Matt around fire smoking cigar

CORCORAN: Matt Hueman is a career officer – passionate about surgery and the Army – but he now openly questions the direction of the war.

24:15

MATT HUEMAN: I’m enormously proud to be here. Having said that, I think that in terms of the objectives of the war, I always felt that I supported whatever the President would say, and I would go here. I know that I have a clear mission as a physician, as a surgeon, to put soldiers back together again. I’m not sure that it’s always been communicated in a way that all of us can understand what we’re doing here. In both Afghanistan and Iraq.

24:26

I think it’s clear that the overall picture makes sense of, OK, we were attacked and this is the place where the attack emanated from. But in terms of what we’re doing here now, it’s not clear to me that we have an overall end point that makes sense to me. And if it doesn’t make sense to me, then does it make sense to the average solider that’s going out there and risking their life.

24:56

Medics relax around fire

CORCORAN: But while ever soldiers continue to risk their lives – the medics will be there to save them.

The radio alert – a reminder – that the war drags on relentlessly.

BRYAN SEATED BY FIRE

: It’s a MEDEVAC request –

25:17

Brian

so we just started having fun.

25:36

Matt watches MEDEVAC chopper depart

MATT: So I guess we are going to be back to work here pretty soon. Just have to figure how to put this thing out – somebody have a fire extinguisher?

25:41

Credits:

Must be included

Reporter/Producer – Mark Corcoran

Camera – Craig Berkman

Editor – Simon Brynjolffssen

Helmetcam –    CW2 Jerry Dickerson

                               LT. Ray Hanson

25:49

26:14