BETHESDA, Md. - Cameron Begbie's memories of Fallujah are indelibly etched, sharp as shrapnel
and unmarred by morphine.
With one hand, his good one, the Fresno native can keep pumping about 30
grams of morphine a day. Begbie, 23, is a Navy hospital corpsman, a combat
paramedic attached until recently to the Marines. He knows about medicine.
His left arm, broken and flayed open in urban combat earlier this month,
rests immobilized, awaiting a fourth surgery.
Begbie looks up from his hospital bed, eyes clear and alert, and describes
the moment an Iraqi explosive tore his old life apart.
"It felt like the world stopped for a second," Begbie says. "I mean, for a
second, I was wondering if I was even alive still."
Later, Begbie figured it was a homemade explosive device; nothing so
sophisticated as a rocket propelled grenade, but brutally efficient nonetheless.
He could feel sharp pains up and down his left leg, and he couldn't feel his
left arm at all.
As a medic, he was all but out of commission.
"All I could do is lean against the wall, sir," the petty officer third class
said earnestly, talking to a civilian. "I couldn't finish working on the Marine
behind me."
He recalled hauling himself, with three wounded Marines from the 1st
Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, into the back of an armored vehicle for a quick
trip back to a triage collection point.
"It only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like a lot more," Begbie said.
"We got out, they put us all on gurneys, and the whole (vehicle) was just
smeared with blood, up and down."
And with that, Begbie's six-week tour in Iraq was over, as he entered the
casualty pipeline that took him to a small, crowded surgical facility at the
Marine base outside Fallujah, and then on for a particularly rough spell in
Germany.
On Nov. 16, he arrived at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
Riding in on the patients' bus, he couldn't help but notice all those cars on
the highway; none of them driven by enemies, none of them packing explosives.
A five-year Navy veteran, Begbie was one of about 425 Americans wounded when
U.S. forces stormed Fallujah.
The insurgents have been suppressed and the city, once home to 280,000
residents, is a smoldering ruin, according to reports from the region. The most
seriously wounded of the Americans have been flooding U.S. military hospitals in
Germany and the United States. Begbie is one of about 70 combat-wounded Marines
and sailors being treated this week at the hospital just outside of Washington.
Until the Fallujah combat started, spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler said,
the medical center had been handling 20 to 30 casualties from Iraq.
"Our numbers have tripled since Fallujah," Peppler said. "We have a good
number of amputees."
Begbie's father, Bruce, put it another way, having spent the past four days
visiting his son and scouting the hospital's grimly inspiring hallways.
"There's lots of carnage," he said.
Begbie still lacks feeling in at least part of his left hand. The doctors
aren't yet sure whether there is permanent nerve damage, or whether the nerve is
being compressed by swelling that will subside. He has a plate installed in his
left arm, and needs skin grafts. Some shrapnel remains inside him.
Begbie is scheduled to leave the Navy next October. Well before then, he's
looking forward to a peaceful homecoming with the friends he hasn't seen since
long before Fallujah.
"I can't wait to see them," he said.
Copyright © 2004 The Modesto Bee.
