Medic 'wept' over child casualty

Mar 6 2013

A frontline Army medic serving in Afghanistan's Helmand province has told of how she wept when her first casualty died.

Private Natasha Smith had never seen a dead body before being deployed to Afghanistan with 3 Medical Regiment last October.

But, just weeks into her six-month tour of duty, the 20-year-old, from Glasgow, treated an eight-year-old boy who was hit by a truck and, despite desperate rescue efforts, died in her arms.

"The children are the hardest to deal with," she said. "Especially my first one that died - that was horrific. I had never seen any casualties or any dead people and then the very first casualty I had was a child. So it was pretty hard to deal with.

"But the TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) process at PBs (patrol bases) is pretty good. Having the girls around helped - if it had just been full of boys it would have been a lot harder. I did cry, to be honest." Private Smith is one of just five women living among 160 squaddies at a patrol base known as Lash Durai - the most easterly military outpost in Helmand.

She is attached to the Scots Guards and regularly accompanies the infantry soldiers and their Afghan counterparts on operations and foot patrols. As a medic, she is one of the most valued assets on the team. "They won't go anywhere without us," she added.

On occasions Private Smith has put her sense duty before her own safety to help wounded comrades - both British and Afghan.

"When I had (to deal with) the upturned Mastiff (a military patrol vehicle) - obviously it hit an IED. So I had one guy shouting at me to walk up the track that the wagon had taken to get to the back of the Mastiff and then I had IED clearance telling me not to walk up there. It was a horrible position - to go or not. But, I ended up just running up anyway. I suppose I didn't think about it for too long. I just went."

Despite the austere conditions - no toilets and showers made from empty ammunition tins - Private Smith said she was surprised by the situation on the ground.

"It is not what I expected it to be, to be honest," she said. "The way they make out in training is like every step you are going to stand on an IED and you are going to be getting shot at constantly and it is going to be really horrific. It is not at all."