MASH was more than a TV series. Worldwide, the last MASH unit was deactivated on October 16, 2006. The 212th MASH — based in Miesau Ammo Depot, Germany — was the first U.S. Army hospital established in Iraq in 2003, supporting coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was the most decorated combat hospital in the U.S. Army, with 28 Campaign streamers on the organizational colors. The 212th MASH’s last deployment was to Pakistan to support the 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief operations.
While on a nine-month tour in Afghanistan, a small group of Fort Carson soldiers revolutionized how the Army treats wounded troops.
The 29-member 2nd Forward Surgical Team was tied to special forces troops and had to come up with a way to treat casualties as American hospitals and bases closed, putting patients farther away from care. To solve the problem, the team broke into five-soldier detachments to take treatment to the troops.
“They had a 100 percent patient survival rate,” said Col. James Andrews, who command the 10th Combat Support Hospital that includes the surgical unit.
In a drive to leave Afghanistan by Dec. 31, U.S. commanders have closed dozens of bases in Afghanistan and sent thousands of troops home. But with the Taliban still active, combat wounds from bullets and bombs remain common, especially in the remote regions where special forces troops work.
To handle those injuries, the unit used a method now called “Golden Hour Offset Surgical-Transport Teams.”
“It’s mainly for expeditionary use,” said Maj. John Kim, who led the unit in Afghanistan. Kim and his comrades returned to Fort Carson on March 12.
Since 2003, the Army has perfected a medical system that uses helicopters and transport planes to rush troops to care. Soldiers wounded on the battlefield were treated at one of several hospitals in Iraq or Afghanistan and then flown to Europe for a higher level of care, often arriving in Germany within hours of their injury.
But those big field hospitals are leaving Afghanistan and the small teams were invented to fill the gap.
“Its purpose was to be a surgical platform that was highly mobile and capable of moving to an austere location where there was no surgical capabilities, and outside of the “Golden Hour” medical evacuation coverage area,” an Army report on the unit’s work says. “In addition, it would support the emerging and short duration missions of the special operations forces community.”
The “Golden Hour” is a term used my trauma specialists to describe the tight timeline that can determine whether a patient lives or dies. Wounded troops who get to hospital-style treatment within an hour of their injury usually live. Outside the hour, the odds of survival decrease with every tick of the clock.