News Search Search this site or the web powered by FreeFind Site search Web search Story archive		January 21, 2004, Wednesday, Scotsman MEDIC: WHY SERGEANT LOST HIS LEG Gethin Chamberlain Defence Correspondent In Fallingbostel, Germany THE doctor who treated Sergeant Albert Thomson after he was shot in Iraq insisted last night that he did everything he could to save his leg - and blamed a shortage of military helicopters for a delay in evacuating the injured soldier to a field hospital where doctors could have carried out emergency surgery. Captain Hugo Guthrie said Sgt Thomson's injuries were so severe that there was virtually nothing that could have been done to save the leg that was amputated. Doctors initially feared he would die and only immediate treatment in a field dressing station prevented him from bleeding to death. Sgt Thomson, from Whitburn, West Lothian, who was attached to the Black Watch battle group at the time, was hit by bullets fired accidentally by a British Warrior vehicle as he walked in front of it to lead it back into camp outside the town of al-Zubayr, near Basra, during the early days of the Iraq campaign. The bullets tore through both his legs and he suffered massive blood loss. He was treated at the nearby field dressing station, where two doctors - one a lieutenant-colonel - stabilised his condition. They requested a helicopter to take him to a field hospital but no British helicopters were available on the night of the accident and United States' forces, which did have helicopters dedicated to casualty evacuation, had pushed north and were unable to help. Recent reports have suggested that Sgt Thomson lost his leg because medics were not supplied with vascular repair kits - priced at GBP 50. Yesterday, both Capt Guthrie and his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel James Cowan, said that if anything had prevented doctors from being able to save Sgt Thomson's leg, it was the shortage of military helicopters available for evacuating injured troops back to field hospitals, rather than the lack of a vascular repair kit. Lt-Col Cowan said: "The key issue is whether he could have got to the field hospital in time, and that is to do with the helicopter, and the vascular repair kit is, in the view of the doctor, a bit of a red herring. "Here we have a situation where a soldier is shot down, he had a very, very seriously damaged leg and he was lucky that he was beside the regimental aid post when it happened, and the doctor and his team moved to stabilise the situation as quickly as they could. "They requested a helicopter and it was pretty clear from an early point that there wasn't going to be a helicopter available to get him to the field hospital. It is the doctor's view that the leg was so badly damaged that neither the dressing station nor the field hospital could have saved his leg but he would certainly have had a better chance of it being saved at the field hospital. Therefore, it is the shortage of the helicopter and not the kit that was mentioned in the news that is the root cause." He said he had huge sympathy for Sgt Thomson, and he understood why he might have accepted the suggestion that his leg could have been saved if doctors had been issued with the equipment suggested. "You would be inhuman not to worry or think about whether your leg could have been saved. It would be beyond any human to do, so I'm not surprised that when someone put it to him that there could have been a means of saving his leg that he feels the way that he does. "I think it is enough to test anyone's confidence but I am hugely impressed by the dignity with which he has picked himself up and carried on." Capt Guthrie said Sgt Thomson was walking ahead of the vehicle that had been involved in the recovery of the body of the Scottish lance-corporal, Barry Stephen. It was dark, and the vehicle hit a bump in the ground, and the 7.62mm chain gun activated. The machine gun fire hit Sgt Thomson in the back of his legs. "At the time all we heard was a burst of fire close to the regimental aid post," he said. "We originally thought that the cordon had been breached and it was an enemy contact. We heard a shout for medic and then myself and one of my medics ran across to where we thought it was coming from. "We found Sgt Thomson. There was an enormous amount of blood on the ground and he was still conscious and had these near-catastrophic wounds to his legs and we were so close to the regimental aid post. We put him on a stretcher and someone put pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding. "He nearly died there and then from the blood loss and his heart was slowing down. That is an end-stage event from blood loss. He had life-threatening shock. He had massive wounds in both his legs." Capt Guthrie said he applied tourniquets and medical staff were eventually able to feel a pulse, and Sgt Thomson's heart rate increased. He said Lt-Col Kevin Beaton - who now commands one of the medical regiments - took control of the treatment of Sgt Thomson's legs while he took control of life support. "It became obvious that he was responding to life-saving resuscitation and it was our job to provide. We are not, as a regimental aid post, doing operations, we are not anaesthetists, we are not surgeons. It is early resuscitation and that more than any other demonstrates the worth of having doctors that far forward because we were able to save his life. If he had been lying in that field for any longer he would have been dead." But he said when a helicopter was requested to take Sgt Thomson to a field hospital in Kuwait, none was available. Instead, the instruction was to send him to a dressing station a few kilometres behind the lines. Capt Guthrie said requests to cas-evac (casualty evacuate) a number of Iraqi casualties had also been refused. "Helicopter casualty evacuation was a problem," he said. "The plan had been that we would share the US assets. They have dedicated helicopters for casualty evacuation, Black Hawk helicopters with red crosses painted on the side. The only job they do is casualty transfer." Capt Guthrie said no such facilities were available to the UK forces and the deal struck before the start of the war was that the US would share its helicopters with UK forces. In the event, US forces had pushed north and were unavailable. Instead, UK forces were obliged to make do with a smaller number of helicopters, a number reduced by the crash in the early days of the war of two British helicopters. He said surgeons at the dressing station attempted to repair the artery unsuccessfully, and Sgt Thomson was the next day evacuated to a field hospital, where his left leg was amputated. "I'd like to say that the attempt to save his leg was clearly worthwhile and should have been undertaken but my assessment of his injuries was that the damage to his left leg was so severe that I didn't feel there was any chance that that limb could be salvaged." He said it was highly speculative that any piece of equipment would have saved the limb and the real issue was whether there was anyone present who could have carried out the surgery.
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