British doctors saved the lives of six Afghan police officers who, between them, had lost eight limbs in an incident involving a rocket-propelled grenade. Two of their colleagues died. The six wounded were taken to a £10 million hospital opened in February at Camp Bastion, the British military base in central Helmand, southern Afghanistan.

The six policemen would have died from trauma and haemorrhaging had they not been sent by Chinook helicopter with a medical emergency reaction team. Camp Bastion’s hospital, once a tented MASH facility, houses some of the world’s most advanced medical equipment. The men, all in their twenties, will survive. The Times was given access to the surgical theatre as a team of doctors, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Hinsley, grafted skin over the left leg of one of the Afghans. He will wake up in intensive care.

Had he been a Taleban fighter, he would have received the same treatment, except on regaining consciousness, he would have been aware of armed guards at the end of his bed.

“We don’t turn away injured Taleban, but once they have recovered we hand them over to the Afghan authorities,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Jose, commanding officer of 16 Close Support Medical Regiment and in charge of the hospital. His regiment is part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, the paratroop formation that is now back in Afghanistan and is in the process of taking over from 52 Infantry Brigade.

The last time the paras were in Helmand, in the summer of 2006, they suffered many casualties because of the controversial decision to deploy individual platoons of about 30 soldiers to isolated towns, including Sangin and Musa Qala in northern Helmand. This provoked an aggressive response from the Taleban.

Now the hospital is focusing most of its efforts on saving Afghan lives. Seriously wounded children are being treated nearly every week. But the 80 staff are only too aware that with the paratroops now spreading out to some of their old haunts, it may not be long before the Taleban take note and confront them. The 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment is now in Sangin and Kajaki, a hotspot where attempts are being made to upgrade a hydro-electric power station for Helmand.

The images of war come in many forms, not least in the emergency theatre of a field hospital where surgeons and nurses use all their experience and expertise to save the lives of appallingly injured victims of conflict, often women and children mown down unwittingly in brutal crossfire.

Many of the British doctors are Territorial Army surgeons and consultants. Brigadier Barry Smith, 55, a consultant anaesthetist in the TA, is from the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent. He said that the Camp Bastion hospital now had the finest trauma team in the world, and had already saved the lives of British, Afghan and Nato troops.

“In the last ten weeks we have treated 111 casualties suffering from trauma injuries, not many of them British,” he said.

One of the newest pieces of equipment to arrive is a £480,000 CT scanner, which produces images of wounded areas within 20 seconds. “It has helped us instantly to trace where bullets have exited, for example, or where fragments may be lodged, so the surgeons know exactly where to operate,” said Major Susie Beeching, 43, who is second-in-command of the hospital squadron.

The six Afghans will remain in the hospital for several weeks but as soon as they can be moved they will be airlifted to an Afghan hospital. “We need the beds,” Major Beeching said.

Toll of conflict

91 British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001
1,202 British troops admitted to field hospitals
122 seriously or very seriously injured

Sources: icasualties, MOD

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