Houstonian comes to aid of seven-year-old Iraqi

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From the American Thinker and a reader comes this bit of news on a Houston naval hospital corpsman who, along with some Marines, helped out a seven-year-old Iraqi girl who had suffered a three-story fall:

“America’s Battalion” Marines made a midnight run to rush to the aid of a seven-year -old Iraqi girl after she fell from a three-story building.

Marines from Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, rushed the girl to Camp Fallujah’s surgical center for treatment after local police were unable to get her proper medical attention.

The incident occurred late at night in Gharmah, a small city north of Fallujah. Iraqi police there tried to rush the young girl to the Jordanian hospital in Fallujah, but had difficulty getting to the hospital, according to 1st Lt. Joshua R. Rosales, a 25-year-old platoon commander who responded to the call for help.

“We got the call from the commanding officer to link up with Iraqi Police at the police station,” explained Rosales, from Raleigh, N.C. “We met up with them in Gharmah, and they had the little girl. They wanted us to be careful.”

Rosales said the girl was accompanied by her uncle. She was crying, suffering from waves of pain from her injuries. She was scared, and then Marines were loading her into the back of a humvee. Rosales’ hospital corpsman, Navy Seaman Royce A. Ross, a 23-year-old from Houston, got to work immediately checking his tiny patient.

“I was making sure all her vital signs were good,” Ross explained. “Everything looked good enough to move her. I saw right away she was going to be OK.”

Ross saw that she already had an intravenous tube inserted into her arm, but the tubing wasn’t put in properly. He spoke through his broken Arabic and the girl’s uncle’s broken English to get permission to start another.

“The blood clotted at the IV,” he explained. “I wanted to start another but her uncle didn’t want me to.”

Ross kept on with his preliminary examination. He said he saw a large contusion to the girl’s left wrist and possibly a fracture. The girl’s breathing was labored. Ross said he was concerned there were possible injuries to her chest affecting her breathing.

“It sounded like she was snoring,” he said. “What we had then was a possible broken wrist, possible problems with her torso, but she was crying, so she was breathing. We knew she’d be okay.”

Still, Marines couldn’t be sure until they could get the young child to the trauma center at Camp Fallujah to have a thorough examination. Ross, the girl, her uncle and Cpl. Jared S. Nelson, a 21-year-old from Salisbury, Md., climbed into the back of the humvee for the sprint from Gharmah to Camp Fallujah.

Be sure to read the rest of the account.

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