Returning home on leave from active duty in Iraq, Wood River Valley family practice physician Maj. Frank Batcha, 45, took time out to talk about his "overwhelmingly positive ... really touching" experiences as an Army doctor in the war-torn country.
"My job as brigade surgeon is medical oversight of the whole brigade," said Batcha, who is serving with the Army in the Idaho National Guard's 145th Support Battalion of the 116th Cavalry Brigade attached to the 42nd Division. "The surgical suites are run by the Air Force. Obviously, our main objective over there is to make the Iraqis self-sufficient."
Batcha, who joined the National Guard just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said a big part of his job in the year he has been in Iraq has been to help rebuild some of the nation's medical infrastructure. He said he has helped to refurbish hospitals and build medical clinics.
"I have been working directly with the Iraqi medical community. It has been a great opportunity to interact with the Iraqis."
Batcha said Iraqi physicians are trained on the British model and, therefore, he has been able to communicate with them in English.
"The big problem is that they have been isolated from the international medical community," he said, explaining that protocols often are outdated. "I've had the unfortunate interaction (with) multiple traumas. IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) go off. Civilians are taken to a trauma center. Here in the U.S. we have ATLS (Advanced Trauma Life Support) protocols. There, they literally throw people in a van and don't triage them."
Batcha said where emergency first responders in the U.S train to respond to disasters in an organized fashion, in Iraq the response he has seen has been "disorganized chaos."
"You just have to say this is part of what we're here to do, part of what has to get changed," he said.
Batcha said he has seen his share of U.S. casualties and he pitches in if he is in the hospital when trauma victims come in. And, he also makes his rounds on sick call, treating soldiers who may simply have a cold.
Batcha is a family practice doctor with a specialty in sports medicine. He also has worked in the emergency room at St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center and spent time training first responders with search and rescue and EMS before he signed on with the National Guard.
"I actually raised my right hand in February 2001," he said in a telephone interview between archery hunting adventures and a trip to Boise to go bird hunting with a friend. "My main reason back then was I really think that people need to serve their country in some fashion or another. I thought that was a good way to do it. Then everything hit the fan and here I am talking to you ... It's not home. Iraq is not where I would choose to spend a vacation, but the base is not much worse than living in a dorm in college. We're not living in fox holes and eating dirt every day."
Batcha returns to Iraq this week when the rest of his brigade re-deploys.
"We're still in Kirkuk for the next couple of months or so. Hopefully, we'll be back very soon. Hopefully, we'll be heading out of Iraq sometime in November."
When asked to comment on his combat experiences, Batcha said he would either have to spend all day telling his tales or duck the question.
He said he would prefer to focus on the good news stories. The rest he keeps track of in a journal.
"I've met some really fantastic people," he said, thinking about a Dr. Burhan, an assistant director of the Iraqi ministry of health. "He is a fantastic guy who has done incredible work."
One of the things Batcha was happy to report about was a pair of immunization campaigns, one for measles in which about 140,000 people were immunized in a two-week period. Another 140,000 were given polio vaccines as a prophylactic against a big polio outbreak in Southwest Asia that has not yet reached Iraq.
"(The campaign) would be a feat in this country," he said. "Given their limited resources it is nothing short of fantastic. I was able to observe that stuff."
Batcha said that although he grew up in the protective environment of a small town in Ohio, his training has helped him cope with the uglier side of war.
"In medicine you learn a degree of equanimity and detachment from horrors or you wouldn't make it through," he said. "You step back, disassociate and review those things objectively. If a guy comes in with a leg blown off, it's a day in the office for me. I'm accustomed to dealing with that."
But, he said on a day-to-day basis his job is not like that of the foot soldier.
"I'm not out there knocking on doors, that's a whole different level of stress," he said, adding that he has suffered no "bad" close calls.
"Sometimes, when I'm here looking at the mountains, I think, 'What were you thinking?'" Batcha said. "But, it's been overwhelmingly positive ... really touching. My dad was a vet. He was at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He always had a saying: 'I wouldn't pay you a nickel for it but I wouldn't trade it for a million bucks.' The vast majority of the guys say, 'I'm happy to do it.'"
Batcha said that despite the risk to himself, he feels "a great sense of accomplishment that the things we are doing are meaningful. I'll be at the plane when and where I'm supposed to be."
Maj. Frank Batcha was surprised by his girlfriend, Shannon Shields, at the Salt Lake City Airport, where she accompanied him on the last leg of his journey to Hailey for a two-week leave from service in Iraq.
