Landstuhl Hospital at forefront at saving soldiers

'Not heartbreak hotel': Hospital at forefront at saving soldiers
Staff has unique experience in battlefield medicine for treating US trauma victims
By DAVID RISING
9/2/2011

Michael Probst / AP
A US soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan is lifted from a bus at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, on Monday.

LANDSTUHL, Germany — Volunteer staff from the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center huddle outside the emergency room doors, waiting under heat lamps on a crisp morning for what has become a daily routine in a decade of war — the arrival on a blue bus of the latest casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some are in surgical scrubs, others in uniform or white hospital gowns. They crowd around the back of the modified school bus as the door opens, forming lines on either side, yelling "got it!" as they pass along the stretcher loaded with both patient and portable life support system and lower it to a wheeled gurney.

A chaplain leans over and tells the Marine who has lost both his legs to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan that he's now safe and in good hands. "When they come over here we want to make sure that it's not heartbreak hotel," said Navy chaplain Commander Manuel Mak after talking with the incoming wounded.

There's a saying in the U.S. military that once you've made it to Landstuhl, you've made it. After 10 years of war in Afghanistan and eight in Iraq, that's never been more true. The medical center boasts a unique combination of cutting-edge advances in battlefield medicine and hard-won experience in treating serious trauma.
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