Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 12, 1992 TAG: 9203120174
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
A year ago today, the Blacksburg resident was living in a tent, running a hospital built hurriedly on sand and treating wounded soldiers - most of them Iraqis.
A year ago yesterday, too.
And tomorrow.
For more than three months in 1991, in fact - from weeks before the ground war started to long after it was over - Elkins ran medical operations for an Army field hospital in Operation Desert Storm.
Elkins, a 50-year-old North Carolina native, is a physician with Urology Associates of New River Valley.
A colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, he was yanked to active duty with the Greensboro-based 312th Evacuation Hospital in late November 1990.
Two months later he was in Saudi Arabia.
Elkins and the soldiers of the 312th quickly assembled a 400-bed hospital of interconnected tents, located some 20 miles from the Iraqi border.
There they would treat more than 12,000 patients for a host of illnesses, major and minor.
They would also perform some 200 surgeries - including the two operations needed to repair the legs of a South Carolina soldier who had stepped on a land mine.
Pfc. Natasha Green.
"We had several injuries among the female Allied soldiers," Elkins said.
To some, even that was not the most unsettling part. A number of Iraqi children also were brought to the hospital, after tampering with unexploded mines or cluster bombs.
"We treated a number of children and civilians who were victims of the unexploded ordnances. We had a number of children with pretty serious injuries - eyes, amputations," Elkins said.
An EVAC hospital is larger and located farther away from the fighting front than the M.A.S.H. units popularized by the TV show.
Elkins detailed the building of the 312th EVAC Hospital on videotape.
He also taped graphic footage of the shrapnel torn and severed limbs - nearly all Iraqi - that resulted from Operation Desert Storm.
The 312th EVAC, its tent walls sometimes whipping loudly in the desert wind, included an emergency room, intensive care units, respiratory therapy ward, dental clinic, PX, operating room - even a motor pool.
At one point in the videotape, Elkins' camera paused on a box with lettering on its side:
"Human Blood - Perishable."
Included on the videotape is an interview with Green, the cherubic-faced South Carolina soldier who stepped on a land mine, which broke and tore both legs.
"My name is PFC Green," she told the camera from her hospital bed in the desert. "And I stepped on a land mine."
She laughed, as if at her own clumsiness.
"I didn't know if I had legs or anything [she did, and still does]. It was a lot of excruciating pain until after the second surgery."
The videotape - which Elkins has since used in talks to groups and clubs about the war - records the ceremony in which Green received her Purple Heart. Army officers pinned it to her hospital gown.
Despite light casualties among the Americans, Elkins saw many wounded - nearly all of them Iraqis.
Since many of the combat injuries involved shrapnel damage to the extremities, the orthopedic surgeons in the 312th were among the busiest.
"A lot of taking off legs and fixing feet, stuff like that," Elkins said with a sigh.
There were other kinds of injuries as well, not directly related to the fighting.
"Automobile accidents were incredible," said Elkins, noting there were more than 100 accidents during the Allied troop buildup.
Meanwhile, the 380-plus members of the 312th - 120 of them women - made a tiny town in the desert, complete with picnic tables, latrines, hiking trails, showers.
Makeshift signs sprouted outside the tent dormitories - "Saudi Shack," "Homeboy Hotel," "Saudi Fun House" - and in the walkways between the tents, given names like "Scud Street," "Land Mine Lane."
For relaxation the soldiers sun-bathed, played volleyball or drank the non-alcoholic "Moussy Beer." Alcohol was forbidden in Saudi Arabia.
On Good Friday, the camera followed a procession of 312th soldiers up a sandy hill where they defiantly planted a towering cross.
Open displays of Christianity also were forbidden.
"We've already received orders to remove it from the hill," said Elkins' voice on the videotape, against a camera shot of the cross against an evening sky.
There were other hints of an alien world around them.
"We went in there to set up our hospital and were totally surrounded by Bedouins and tents and sheep," Elkins said in a recent interview. "We were basically 30 miles from anything resembling a home. I think an experience like this teaches you to truly appreciate the things you have."
Elkins - whose one-year-after anniversary was marked by his photograph appearing in the Radford Community Hospital calendar for February - described his Saudi stay as "a unique experience."
Meanwhile, since returning to his local practice, another anniversary has come and gone for Elkins. He celebrated his 21st anniversary with the Army Reserve last month.
There may not be another one. The doctor said he is considering retiring from the reserves.
by CNB