DOCTORS and nurses from the NHS have left Christmas behind to be volunteers in the Afghanistan war, treating British soldiers in a frontline field hospital. Deployed to the bleak Helmand desert, they are on 24-hour stand-by to treat the most devastating wounds in a bloody war.

At least half the staff at the field hospital in the British base at Bastion are volunteer reservists from the NHS who come to Afghanistan on three-month tours. Their greatest pride is that almost every British soldier who reaches their care will return alive to their family or unit.

“It’s very civilised sometimes in the NHS compared with this,” said Mick Carr, a senior nurse at Bastion and, back home, at the James Cooke University Hospital, Middlesbrough. He showed us through a maze of flapping tents, connected by a long dark corridor under canvas, but all with the latest medical equipment.

“Here we are dealing with major wounds such as blast injuries; the patients come in really dirty and contaminated, and some new staff find it shocking. Even a stabbing in a nightclub back home leaves a pretty clean wound compared with what we’re seeing.”

Carr said a third of his staff were ambulance workers. “They’re sick of time-wasters back home. But there are no time-wasters here.” The key to saving a soldier’s life, staff say, is getting them as rapidly and as safely as possible to the operating table. “Time is our big enemy here,” said Carr.

Last week, most beds were empty at the camp. The priority once the wounded are stabilised is to get them home – freeing up the beds here.

Saving a soldier’s life begins with the shout of “Medic” on the battlefield and attempts at first aid. At the scene, comrades radio a “nine-liner” report that flashes details of the casualty to headquarters and triggers the dispatch of a Chinook helicopter, usually escorted by Apache gunships.

Back at Bastion, a Tannoy announces that casualties are inbound. As a patient is wheeled in, at least 20 staff, including nurses, anaesthetists, x-ray staff and consultants, stand behind a line, waiting to be called forward when they are needed. “Doctors and consultants from the NHS don’t come here entirely alone,” said Carr. “Because they come here from big departments back home they are often on the phone getting advice from their colleagues.”

Waiting in a brightly lit operating theatre, with the song Mustang Sally blaring from a radio, Mark Saunders, a 43-year-old surgical assistant at North Tees Hospital, Stockton, said it was very different work from what he did at home. “You wouldn’t see these kinds of injuries unless there was a bomb blast, which most UK hospitals, thankfully, don’t see.”

Among the worst things is trying to help soldiers come to terms with their injuries, which may mean the loss of their arms or legs. “These guys are fit young men before,” Saunders said. “It’s very traumatic for them. When a young man loses a limb, his whole life is turned around. We try to give them psychological support.”

Saunders was deployed to Bastion along with his wife, Vivien, a physiotherapist at the North Tees. They met first in a field hospital near Basra during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Sleeping in separate quarters and working different shifts, the couple hardly got to see each other. And the military’s rules prevent any visible “signs of affection”.

Lieutenant Jenny Simkin, who was 26 that day, is a nurse at the Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham. Back there, she said, she would normally work over Christmas, but Afghanistan was proving very different. “This is going to be the most sober Christmas I’ve ever had,” she said.

Jo Horn, a radiographer from Catterick, Yorkshire, was having a particularly tough time. She was supposed to be home on leave for Christmas with her husband, Matt, but her return had been delayed. “I didn’t have a chance to send any messages,” she said, “because I really thought I’d be back home, silly me.”

Carr said most staff tried to avoid calling home too often from Bastion. “You have to get your head round the fact that you are here for three months. You have to accept this is home; this is our family. If you are calling home all the time then you get too homesick and it gets too depressing.” Operating under the Geneva conventions, staff at the field hospital treat not only British casualties but also civilians and the Taliban. Nobody is armed inside the hospital, and sometimes the Taliban are nursed in the same ward as the British, side by side.

“When the Taliban are in intensive care they are generally sedated; when they are awake they have a guard, although we don’t have guns here at all,” said Clare Dutton, a senior military nurse from Selly Oak who was running the intensive care unit.

“We treat everyone the same – everybody gets the same treatment – except that British soldiers are repatriated as soon as possible.”

Watch a video of the radiographers at Camp Bastion

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