Kids

" Election day was made for a very kinetic day. All our OPs got hit at once, every US element got hit, shot at etc... 15,000 people turned out to vote (or so we were told) and none of the polling sites were attacked. WE were attacked, but none of the polling sites. I guess democracy was defended that day, albeit Afghanistan democracy.

Today was quite eventful, starting around 1500 this afternoon. We got a report of a small child playing up by our range who evidently picked up an unexploded grenade that detonated. We watched as he was carried down by the Afghan security guards, and they brought him to our aid station.

I was the first to receive him and at first, I thought he was dead. There was a huge crowd of local workers and security guards when the kid was offloaded, and I think everyone was in too much shock to do anything, because it took a good 3 seconds for anyone to move him from the back of the truck to a stretcher. So he was pretty badly injured. He'll lose a foot, an arm and perhaps the other hand. He made it alive out of here and last I checked he was still alive at the forward surgical team and Bagram accepted him.

It's sad that this is such a horrible place for kids to live in....to be accurrate, the kid was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. Kids will chase after convoys for spent brass - they can sell it. Kids get hurt all the time doing that, but this was likely the worst. From a medical perspective, this was probably the ultimate casualty for medics. We saw and treated everything you could possibly imagine. The medics did well though...but i was also too busy running around dealing with the medevac and the father, who looked pretty hopeless. He wanted to see his son while he was being treated, but it was a bit too bad for us to bring him in. Later on when we had him packaged up we let him in and explained everything that was going on.
 
On a more positive note, the ANA battalion commander came to the aid station and invited all the medics specifically to have dinner with him because "he was grateful that we've been helping his soldiers so much".....but the food was very well done. It was high dining Afghan National Army style."