The Battalion Aid Station

This is a view of our BAS from the outside. As you can see from our flags, the wind around here is a constant, driving nuisance! That haze in the background has nothing to do with the quality of the picture; it is an atmosphere of dust that we put up with on a daily basis. Off in the distance is a line of vehicles, our motor pool. That dark structure to the right is a bunker. Click here to see the view from INSIDE the bunker. We have MANY of these around the camp, or kabal. They are made of reinforced concrete and piled with tons of sandbags. If I ever have to use these bunkers, Saddam is too close!

Here is the front desk of our BAS. As you can see, my medics are usually working hard or hardly working! SGT David Anderson has his feet on the table; PFC Gikalo Major is doing something on our laptop (not seen). The keen observer will see some very valuable items in this picture: a deck of cards to pass the time, a bottle of water (hey, we're in a desert!), an alarm clock to get us out of bed, a coffee maker to help wake us up AFTER we get out of bed, and two calendars to count the days until we get the heck out of here!

This is a look at the back room of our BAS. In the center of the room is a litter on two litter stands. This is where we place patients needing care. We have 3 of these stations set up in this back room. Along the back wall, behind the two clowns, we have some homemade wooden shelves (made by previous units) to store our common medications. The good drugs are locked away in a super secret hiding place! By the way, the taller clown is SGT Joshua Baker and the shorter clown on the right is Dr. Anthony Schultz. They're always hanging around the pharmacy area... I wonder why.