"Ere, Lofty, is this your lung?"
Dr Rick Jolly was a surgeon Commander (Royal Navy) leading the RM Medical Squadron in the Falklands. He was decorated by both sides:
"The most obvious difference between what happened in the Falklands and what Rob had to deal with in Afghanistan was that our campaign was short and sharp with a beginning, a middle and an end, and we were facing a clear enemy.
"We landed observing complete radio silence, so the only way I could find out what casualties had been sustained was to physically go round and see for myself.
"We had planned to keep the medical support afloat in the liner, Canberra. But we hadn't encountered the Argentine air force at that stage, so at literally three hours' notice we had to establish the field hospital in the abandoned meat freezing plant at Ajax Bay.
"We were 50 miles away from Stanley, so I sent surgical personnel to reinforce the front line units and to be close for emergency surgery.
"One of our major problems was the lack of surface transport; every casualty was moved by helicopter, and very few pilots had night vision goggles. H-hour for any battle was always around midnight, and injured men had to lie out on the cold battlefield until helicopters could come and get them at first light.
"Being able to cope with the sights and sounds of battle are critical. When I was a young guy in Northern Ireland I was deeply affected by scenes of bombing and carnage, so I used to take pictures of the injuries to help my students rehearse their feelings of nausea, and the 'what the f*** do I do now' stage, before the training clicks in. But dealing with that emotional overload is very significant. And when someone dies despite your best efforts, it is deeply, deeply distressing. 'I've done f***ing everything and he's still dead.' How many times have I heard that?
"In a battle you have to establish a pecking order of injury, assess everyone, award points, be aware of what you've got available and try and calculate what might yet be about to happen.
"Unlike Rob, I had no nursing staff whatsoever, and certainly no females. We were used to having surgeons who were accustomed to working without diagnostic aids like x-ray and ultra sound. We simply didn't have them in 1982. We were just happy to work with the limited range of instruments that we had. And we were using some anaesthetics that are now banned.
"I'm a simple straightforward guy. I think I would have gone under with all the technical stuff that Rob has to have a handle on. I just wanted to get involved hands-on; physically. The Falklands suited me entirely."
"I`m a right fanny magnet, me! Specially with a full set
"Bomb happy: Rick Jolly explaining to a TV reporter in 1982 that his field hospital has two unexploded bombs in it
Surgeon Commander Rob Ross RN was Commander Medical of the UK Joint Force Medical Group in Afghanistan earlier this year:
"I think if Rick had come out to Camp Bastion and seen the hospital, it would have been very familiar to him. except that we are a very integrated tri-Service effort these days. We were responsible, as Rick was, for the provision of medical care right up to repatriation from theatre to conventional hospitals at home.
"We had a constant threat of asymmetric attack from suicide bombers and Ieds. It isn't conventional war. We had troops in contact, I would say, every single day, and often many times a day. everything we did was to minimise casualties. We developed a plan to provide forward surgery to allow commanders freedom to exploit an entire area of operations.
"There's a debate going on about the utility of forward surgery, but there is recognition that it is not the be all and end all. Forward damage control and patient resuscitation followed by surgery is a better model these days than zipping in and doing battlefield surgery.
"Troops have much-improved individual protection equipment, like ballistic helmets and body armour, which Rick's guys wouldn't have had. So the sorts of wounds that people are going to die from immediately are less common. Having said that, if you have the sort of wound that requires invasive surgery, that is all that is going to save you.
"Something we have learned, partly from the Falklands, is that psychological preparation is very important. When a soldier has just come out of the field, he tends not to give a toss that he's taken a round in the leg. All he wants to know is, are his mates all right and whether we've won the battle. If you send them home before they have had a chance to stand on the sidelines and have a chat about how it's gone, they never really feel they have finished the business. So if people have minor injuries, and we have the capacity to hold on to them, we do, so they have a chance to psychologically decompress.
"Rick dealt with Argentine casualties, and we have to deal with local Afghan civilians. We have no option but to finish their treatment, as there is nowhere else to send them.
"What added massively to the pressure of my job was the level of justification and accountability required for every single decision and every course of action. It wasn't enough just to say that we had done our best in the circumstances. We had to be able to demonstrate that we had done the best in comparison to Uk medical standards. We were under intense scrutiny both medically and politically. In the old days people used to have lower expectations. It was enough just to go out and do your best.
"Ours is a much more sophisticated organisation now. We understand our role in geopolitics much better. When we are deployed, we know what to expect. Rick's sense of isolation must have been enormous. We have internet access to home, 30 minutes of free phone calls a week, and we can watch telly.
"Rick was saying that they didn't really know what public opinion was until they got home and found 20,000 people waiting at Southampton to greet them. I think he had a much harder job to do."
Unquote
Doc Jolly did the best he could, in 82 and that`s all you can ask of anyone.
It was good enough, in his case.
The measure of success for Med Squad is determined by the ratio or percentage of blokes leaving his care alive as opposed to those who died. This is known as the Saviour Rate.
In Viet Nam, Elmer had casevac choppers on call and MASH units never more than thirty minutes flying time away with the best med services available.
With all of that going for him, the average Saviour Rate they achieved was 66%.
Down South, choppers were at an absolute premium once the Conveyor was lost . Casevac was second to bombs and bullets and casualtys often waited hours to be lifted out to Ajax Bay. Hours of lying around in the cold actually helped save many as the early onset of hyporthermia slows down metabolic rates and extends the "golden hour" effect. This wasn`t fully understood at the time but is widespread in general surgery now with heart operation patients being deliberately chilled post op. Once they made it to Ajax their troubles weren`t over, as supplies would run out again due to the harsh priority of feeding the guns above all else. The conditions inside the old freezer plant were far from ideal operating theatre standards and twice Doc J`s firm worked with UXBs inside the building.
Despite all this, Rick Jolley achieved the highest Saviour Rate for any front-line med unit to that date. Over 95% who went into Ajax Bay alive, made it onto the Uganda alive.
Why hasn`t he been knighted?
Why has a fat bald homosexual egomaniac? Or Elton John, ffs
