Amid Iraq war's victims, a story of survival

BAGHDAD, Sep 6 (Reuters) Amid the devastation of war in Iraq a journalist can feel helpless, little more than a bystander amid the suffering.

So when an Iraqi friend spotted me in the Green Zone and asked me to get treatment for his eight-year-old son, Mustafa, I did not hesitate to get involved.

''So, go get him,'' I told Firas Al Jouwaily. I turned to the doctors of the 28th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) and asked them to treat the boy. His father said he had been shot in the head by US troops at a checkpoint in Falluja, central Iraq.

As a photo-journalist I want my pictures to convey the reality of war. Inside the CSH, the frontline military hospital for the Baghdad area, the awfulness of combat is all too vivid.

Mustafa is carried in, his head bandaged from initial treatment by Iraqi doctors, and the combat medics go to work, watched by Firas and his American employer, a bankrupt former telecommunications executive working off his debts in Iraq.

Major William White, who runs the emergency room, supervises treatment. I take pictures. The boy has a bullet in his brain.

The medics struggle. The boy ''flat-lines,'' the electronic beep on the heart monitor turning into a single note.

He is revived. The CSH staff manage to stabilise him and he is whisked onto a helicopter that will take him for brain surgery at a better-equipped hospital beyond Baghdad's dangers.

The CSH would likely have treated Mustafa anyway but I feel my presence speeded up the treatment. That might have saved him.

SERIOUS WOUNDS As Mustafa flies out other helicopters land. The feet of the casualties are visible through the windows of the Black Hawks.

This is the normal work of the CSH, treating the US military casualties of the war in Iraq. Over 3,700 US forces have died since they invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003. Thousands more have been injured.

On a bad day the corridors are filled with screaming soldiers burned and maimed by improvised explosive devices. The quiet ones usually have the more serious wounds and are first to receive treatment.

There are strict rules on what I can photograph. No close images of faces allowed. Loud moans mix with the metallic sounds of medical equipment as burned skin falls off tattooed bodies.

I try to find ways to capture the horror. A clenched fist covered in blood as the skin peels off is a strong detail. No shots are allowed of flights taking off with dead bodies.

The CSH treats Iraqi civilians caught up in clashes with US forces and Iraqi military casualties lucky enough to persuade US soldiers to evacuate them. Local Iraqi hospitals offer little hope for the seriously wounded.

Sometimes other Iraqis are squeezed into the military treatment system. Three-year-old Noor, badly burned in a non-combat accident, is brought in by her uncle.

A tear rolls down Noor's cheek. A good sign, the medics say.

But her body temperature soars and she dies. Her uncle and a US army officer stand speechless as her body leaves, passing under a Stars and Stripes hanging from the ceiling.

''The children are the most difficult to deal with,'' says Captain Ann Bigger, a medic carrying an injured Iraqi boy to his crying mother. ''They are not supposed to be here, this is a place for soldiers.'' A few days later I get some good news. Mustafa is out of danger.

There had been another risk. His family were well-connected Sunnis and Mustafa was first treated in a hospital controlled by Shi'ite militias.

The sectarian backdrop reminds me of the complexity of the conflict, something my images struggle to capture.

REUTERS RJ MSJ RAI1126