The 319th Night of Memory-2

The Sacrifice of War Physicians; a Doctor Donated Blood to an Iraqi Captive

Zahra Sadat Gerami
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2020-12-29

Note: The second narrator of the Memorial Night is Brigadier General Gholam Hossein Darbandi, born in 1955 in Tehran. In 1972, he was employed by the army in the field of health and served in the medical center of the army of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He continued his postgraduate studies in public relations, theology, and nursing. In 1978, along with a group of soldiers and a group of revolutionary people, he joined the demonstrations. In 1980, when Saddam attacked Iranian airports, he went to the Chezabeh area with the 3rd Brigade; He remained there and served as a medical officer in this area of operations, in Khuzestan, until the end of the war. In 1986, when the war was not over, he started another activity along with his military services, and so far, as a narrator of the front and the war, he narrates a collection of memories of himself and his friends in the holy defense.

Brigadier General Amir Gholam Hossein Darbandi began his memoirs as follows:

"In the name of God. As the subject of the program is medicine in war, I try to share medical, nursing, and medical memories of war.

The Navy had two commando battalions in Bushehr, commanded by the famous "Captain Samadi". The Revolutionary Guards and the revolutionary forces came into the city with the people's forces, as well as the commanders of the time; Major General Hassani Saadi and the great martyr Major General Namjoo, who was the then Commander of the Officer College; About nine hundred final year students picked up the officer and took him to Khorramshahr with ten C-130 planes. These were groups that stood against the enemy.

When the enemy invasion began, there was a military unit called the Khorramshahr Fort Battalion, they chose a 106 jeep and set off in front of the Iraqis.

The fort battalion had an officer named Captain Zareian who was from Jahrom. He was brave and fearless, zealous and patriotic and revolutionary. He was very active; He was constantly shifting his jeep to think that there was too much power. While the force was very low. If we had a few forces like him, Khorramshahr would not have been captured so easily. He took part in subsequent operations, such as

Operation Beit-ol-Moqaddas. He also took part in the Fatah al-Mubin operation. During the Ramadan operation, he broke his arm and his arm was cut off and he fell; He bent down and took her hand. We had taught self-relief, he closed the wound above the wound and healed himself. He put his severed wrist in his pocket so that no one would see and the comrades' morality would not go down, and he started fighting with this situation.

The loved ones know that during the Ramadan operation, the triangular embankments inside it were the most difficult place for the operation, and in fact, we could not succeed. He was injured by another shrapnel during the operation and his right hand was amputated and he fell. His right hand was amputated due to bleeding. He lost his last breath and fell. He was martyred during the Ramadan operation.

How many of these fighters do we have who became disabled and retreated? They suffered Surgery, treatment, hospital, doctor, nurse, regional hospitals, city hospitals so much. As soon as they recovered a little, they set off and came to the front and the front line. How many people do you know who do not have legs? The warrior who walks with two canes, and then is martyred. A fighter who has no hands, such as the martyr Haj Hossein Kharazi and the great martyr Alireza Movahed Danesh, warriors who had no eyes such as General Arasteh or warriors who had no legs such Haj Ali Fazli.

In the first days of the war, the enemy bombed the mountains of Allah Akbar in the north of Susangard. We were asleep; we were not injured by shrapnel; Col. Sajjadi, my comrade, was shot in the leg. He was from Shiraz. He went and after a while put on a prosthetic leg and came. By the end of the war, his comrades did not realize he had no legs.

How beautiful and hard it was and how romantic it was at the same time. Our doctors and nurses are right from the front line, that is, from the first evacuation chains, which we call the evacuation of the wounded; from the evacuation chains of the front line, which is the front area of the battle area, to the place of collecting the wounded, which we called the collecting station of the wounded. It was ten, fifteen kilometers behind the front. There, other buses, ambulances, helicopters could come and evacuate the wounded, and from the second chain to the third chain, which was Martyr Baghaei Hospital and inside the war cities, and from there, the last ring was transported by C-130 planes by train and other means. They were treated in hospitals in different cities of the country. In this way, the medical staff was sacrificed. I will give one or two examples.

The evacuation speed in World War I and World War II was between four and six hours. In the Vietnam War, this was reduced to three to four hours. The evacuation speed in our war which was the longest war in the last hundred years after the 4,000-day Vietnam War was very high. Our war was the longest. We fought for 2887 days. When we say eight years, it is not very considerable. In the war, we had reduced the evacuation speed to 30 to 40 minutes, whereas sometimes the distance was too great. The distance from the front line to the city behind the front, like the Khyber operation, from there to the first of Ahvaz, which is Nord, was the closest area to the war zone of about 170 km. However, we had increased the evacuation speed to 30 to 40 minutes. What did we do? Did we reduce the time? Did we cut the distance? Our physicians and nurses had sacrificed themselves, moving forward and backward of the warriors with a sudden retreat; they ran clinics, they ran field hospitals. They were Field, silo, and concrete hospitals in the area that dis surgery. They performed specialized surgeries. The medical specialist went there. They performed brain and heart operations, what some hospital do today such as Khatam al-Anbia Hospital, Hazrat Fatemeh Zahra Hospital, and Imam Hussein Hospital. It takes a lot of sacrifices, where the cannonballs go straight. In some places where the distance was too close; Like Hazrat Khatam al-Anbiya Hospital on Fatah Road, which was established for the Khyber operation.

When Saddam found these hospitals, he decided to shot them although it was against all protocols, against all international laws and standards (the 1864 Treaty was completed in 1906 in Geneva and then in 1929 in Geneva) that medical centers should not be closed. Despite all this, our enemies dictated to Saddam that if you want to destroy the morale of the fighters, go and shot the hospitals, the medical centers, and the field hospitals. When Hazrat Khatam al-Anbiya hospital was shot, as I mentioned, after the morning prayer we offered many martyrs. The great martyr Mohammad Ali Rahnemoun, the martyr of Dr. Khodaparast; The executive director of the hospital, was also martyred. In Somar, Chelzari, located in the west of the country, the worst brutal attack of the enemy, which was a chemical attack, was carried out on the field hospital in Chelzari. You know, we built the field hospital where there were mountains and these, above the heights, to make it a little more secure. Four enemy planes that each one was equipped with four 250-pound chemical bombs; they threw these bombs on this small field hospital. The hospital forces reached themselves heights. There was no sufficient mask; so they covered their lips, mouth, and nose with a wet towel. In the operating room, Dr. Colonel Ahmad Hijrati was performing surgery with Colonel Dr. Mostafa Rostampour. Dr. Ahmad Hijrati was a member of the Army; Dr. Mostafa Rostampour was a physician at Besat Air Force Hospital.

Like other selfless doctors, Dr. Hijrati had volunteered to go to the front. He had a chemical mask on his nose; He put it off and put it on the injured person's face. After the operation, Dr. Hijrati fell there and was martyred.

 Dr. Ahmad Hijrati was from Ardabil. Dr. Mostafa Rostampour was very ill and fell. The enemy had used chemical bombs. He was brought to Tehran and sent to France for treatment. Fifteen days later, he was martyred in Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris. His body was brought to Iran. He is now buried in Bijar. He was from there and his wife is also a doctor.

The hospital was also bombed with the most brutal chemical bombing. With this sacrifice, our medical staff served under fire under and bombardment. That is, both his fighters and the medical staff served under fire.

Dr. Nasser Tabesh was in charge of the hospital at Dezful Air Base. In Dezful Air Base Hospital, most fighters were treated because it was under missiles and bullets; therefore, many people were injured. He worked hard and was tireless. Sometimes he would lay his head on the operating room bed and fall asleep. He did not wake up, whenever we shook him. Some say that the way is to go and tell him that they brought an injured soldier so that he would wake up.

Mr. Nasser Tabesh is now an old man and lives in Ahvaz. During the war, he performed 18,000 surgeries. Breaks the Guinness World Record for World War II surgery. One of his operations, which left shrapnel in the heart of a wounded man, lasted eleven hours. He says in his memoirs; the operating room staff changed three times, I was still operating on an injured person. One of his operations, his hard and sensitive operations, is the one that a film was made for it called "Explosion in the Operating Room."

Mr. Faramarz Gharibian is in the role of Dr. Tabesh. What has happened? a cluster bomb was shot in the thigh of a fighter but did not work. You know we have three similar cases. Two of them were mortars, one mortar hit by Mr. Salehi, who is one of the loved ones in Tonekabon. A mortar shell hit a fighter in the leg but did not work. Cluster bombs are more dangerous than these because they work electronically. It is ready to explode at any moment. No one was willing to come forward; because it could explode on contact with the smallest metal device. He came and said I would act. No nurse was willing to wash his hands and come to the operating room. Called Tehran, Mr. Ahmad got up, came to Ahvaz, got a ticket, came quickly. They said that if they took him to the operating room, the operating room might explode. They sacked somewhere in the hospital yard; the doctor got dressed and went with him into the operating room. he said, "When we cut the arteries during the operation, we did not use the surgical electrocutter because the electricity could have exploded the bomb." I used a pair of pliers to cover the vein; the film is available. The film that removes that cluster bomb from the patient's body. The third person entered here. inside the operating room, he was responsible for the destruction unit of the army's Air Force, which also opened and defused a cluster bomb on the patient's abdomen. That is, it could destroy his face. He was operating near a wounded man who was injured by a ready-made cluster bomb. It takes a lot of courage; In addition to courage, it requires a lot of commitment and self-sacrifice. We have something nowhere in the world. The wounded man is now alive. Mr. Safari, his doctor, is still alive, and when the enemy saw that even our medical staff was are courage, they tried to hit the hospital more. A number of our dedicated doctors and nurses were captured. They also opened a front inside the heart of the enemy. These remained unsaid. Let us remember that we had 72,113 Iraqi prisoners inside Iran and 42,000 Iranian prisoners in Iraq, some of whom were doctors and nurses, and they also had doctors. How did we treat the Iraqi prisoners and how did they treat Iranian prisoners? One of our doctors, who was also the director of the Khorramshahr Naval Base Hospital, was captured by three doctors; Dr. Kagouti, Dr. Aziminia, Dr. Jalalvand. They were shot in an ambulance on the road from Abadan to Ahvaz; the ambulance turned over and they were captured. Dr. Aziminia's eyes were injured by shrapnel. His intestines spilled out and his fingers were amputated. The others were injured. He said they emptied my eyes without taking me to the hospital or anywhere. Thirty centimeters of my intestine was cut. He still has a clinic in Tehransar. He was released after ten years. He has been captive for ten years old. That is, he was captured on the 29th of September 1980. He was released ten years after the war. I gave the wounded interview as an example to document. The captive Morteza Rostami told the story of a finger that was cut in a Ba'athist prison. His finger hurt. He said that my finger turned black and hurt. Maybe it would be fine with an ampule and a pill, but they cut my finger with a pair of pliers with no pain killer. These are the honors of our sacred defense, and I congratulate those who hold the Night of Memory so that the voices of the warriors can be heard by the young generation, and they will not want to ignore our honors. We must not let our honors be distorted. The same sentence of the Supreme Leader who said that our enemies today are hostile even by keeping alive the memory of the warriors. If one of our wounded got sick, we would have many enemy wounds. In our country, we treated them and the Imam said, "These are your guests."

Another example of a case of an Iraqi wounded in Iran (about 800 samples examined) is a wounded man named Jassem Tameh Shati, who had a sore finger and was in the Parandak barracks in Tehran. He was brought to 501st Army Hospital. The doctor did not amputate the finger of this Iraqi wounded man. He ordered ten sessions of physiotherapy. An ambulance took him every other day to physiotherapy. Dates are recorded here. he should not be harmed. This is a human being. We believe that he a human being like all human beings on earth, even if he is our enemy.

The wounded captive Ghais al-Muttahuri, an Iraqi prisoner, wrote: I was injured. I needed surgery. They took me to the operating room to operate. Because keeping prisoners with the army guards, and according to the law, and they kept me in army camps. In a hospital designated by the Army Hospital. Only to the enemy prisoners of Darabad 505th hospital, it had a lot of green space in a very pleasant area of Tehran. The head of the Hospital was General Dr. Homayoun Eftekhari.  "I was taken to the operating room," he said, "I needed blood; No blood found similar to my blood type. The surgical colonel who was operating on me was old. He was an old man. He laid down in the operating room and said that he could give blood to the Iraqi captive, his blood type is similar to this captive. Where can you find this sacrifice found in the world? The world accuses us of not respecting human rights. Does he really understand the meaning of these words?! Can the enemies understand the meaning of the sacrifice of our medical staff to this extent? What crimes are they committing in the prisons they have in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and dozens of other prisons in Baghdad! Do they take the wounded to the hospital and their doctor gives blood to him?!

Imam said the captives are your guests. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who came to visit Iran or their representatives or the prisons of Iranian prisoners in Iraq, writes that in Iran we see a lot of wounded Iraqis in hospitals. We rarely see wounded Iranians in Iraqis hospital. He concluded that the Iraqis evacuated the wounded Iranians less and martyred and killed them, but the Iranians brought back even the wounded who were in critical condition. I am one of the front line health officers; In addition to the Iranian wounded who were being transported in the truck, there were also the Iraqi wounded. I hugged these wounded and took them to the next Iranian wounded. As I was doing this, I was taking care of the wounded of the enemy without any difference. Our doctors did not distinguish between the wounded of the enemy at all.

I wanted to have surgery; I asked and I was introduced to a good hospital, a good and clean hospital, the 505 hospital, and they said it belonged to the Iraqis. I went there and operated. When Dr. Eftekhari, the head of the hospital, came to visit me in the middle of the night. He also visited the wounded of the enemy who were lying next to my bed, and it did not matter to him. "I operated on three patients today," he said. After the operation, I was told that one of them was a pilot and the other was a Basij (volunteer soldier) and a prisoner. But I did not notice the difference between the patients in the operating room. This means the peak of humanity in war. Many medical staffs are currently on dialysis due to contact with chemical casualties.

Peace and greetings are upon the honest souls of the martyrs, especially the martyrs of the medical staff and those who were martyred in the front line.

Peace be upon Imam Hussein, his descendants, and his companions."