America's North Shore Journal

Lt. Amy Zaycek, the severe trauma pla­toon nurse with the Female Corps­man Team, poses for a photo with Afghan chil­dren dur­ing a recent patrol in the area of Now Zad, Afghanistan. The FCT recently returned to Now Zad, Jan. 3, to assist mem­bers of the Female Engage­ment Team, Marine Expe­di­tionary Brigade-Afghanistan, with their effort to fur­ther the process of treat­ing, edu­cat­ing and engag­ing the women of Now Zad. Zaycek is a native of Wall, N.J. Photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola

Recently dur­ing Oper­a­tion Cobra's Anger, a multi-day oper­a­tion led by Lima Com­pany, 3^rd Bat­tal­ion, 4^th Marine Reg­i­ment, to rid the Now Zad area of Tal­iban con­trol, mem­bers of the company's severe trauma pla­toon extended an invi­ta­tion to mem­bers of the battalion's civil affairs group to take cover from the rain in their mobile severe trauma bay.

Within the secu­rity and warmth of the STB the mem­bers of the two par­ties began talk­ing about the day's events.

"We started talk­ing about stuff on the bat­tle front," said Cmdr. Tom Craig, the officer-in-charge of the emer­gency med­ical facil­ity, Severe Trauma Pla­toon 3. "What CAG said was that there were a lot of females that needed to voice com­plaints and that if we could get a female in the bat­tle zone to talk to these peo­ple, we could prob­a­bly help a lot of folks."

CAG's obser­va­tion about the female pop­u­la­tion was cor­rect. In the Now Zad area med­ical treat­ment is scarce, often out of reach and varies in level from town to town.

Mem­o­ries of Tal­iban repres­sion still cause women to sec­ond guess leav­ing their home in search of help. For any type of sur­gi­cal treat­ment, women must travel many miles to Lashkar Gah, where they receive no post-operational care and due to cul­tural prac­tices women in the area are often uncom­fort­able seek­ing treat­ment from men.

"There is no doc­tor in the vil­lages of [Khwaja Jamal], Chang­walak, and Dehanna that the women feel com­fort­able going to," said Lt. Amy Zaycek, the severe trauma pla­toon nurse with the FCT.

The end result of this scarcity, fear, long dis­tance and poten­tial embar­rass­ment is the women of the Now Zad suf­fer­ing unnecessarily.

It is because of this rea­son, upon return­ing to his for­ward oper­at­ing base, Craig relayed this mes­sage to his com­mand at Com­bat Logis­tics Reg­i­ment 2 and requested female sup­port at his position.

The response to this request was the Female Corps­man Team an all female med­ical team con­sist­ing of a nurse and three corpsmen.

Lt. Amy Zaycek, the severe trauma pla­toon nurse with the Female Corps­man Team inspects the hand of an Afghan girl dur­ing a recent patrol in the area of Now Zad, Afghanistan. Photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola

"I was on a twelve-hour notice," said Zaycek. "Cobra's Anger had ended, peo­ple were com­ing to the vil­lages, and from what Dr. Craig had gauged, female med­ical care was needed."

In the wake of Cobra's Anger the team vis­ited sur­round­ing areas, includ­ing the vil­lage of Chang­walak, which reflected how valu­able it was to have female med­ical per­son­nel on hand.

"We saw approx­i­mately 40 patients there; 27 women and 13 chil­dren," said Zaycek a native of Wall, N.J. "Some­thing to gain from that, was that I was told we were see­ing women, but the women brought their chil­dren. So, that was an unusual cir­cum­stance. In addi­tion, it's some­thing that's never gone on before."

The FCT even­tu­ally had to move on to dif­fer­ent oper­a­tions but recently returned to Now Zad on Jan.3 to assist mem­bers of the Female Engage­ment Team, Marine Expe­di­tionary Brigade-Afghanistan to fur­ther the process of treat­ing, edu­cat­ing and engag­ing the women of Now Zad.

"The FET is really rid­ing shot­gun on this but they only have one female corps­man with them so that is why we requested more help," said Craig from Chesa­peake, Va. "Of course see­ing how Zaycek and her team were tried and true in the past, the com­mand ele­ment picked them."

Based on the teams last visit to the area the FCT will be con­fronted with numer­ous med­ical con­di­tions rang­ing from dehy­dra­tion, to joint and dysen­tery problems.

Another area the FCT is tack­ling is cre­at­ing instruc­tions for FET mem­bers on how to edu­cate Afghan women about basic hygiene principles.

Ideas include cre­at­ing a flip book for FET mem­bers which will include instruc­tions on how to teach den­tal hygiene, hand wash­ing, the impor­tance of three meals a day and prac­tices that will pre­vent clean water from becom­ing contaminated.

FCT mem­bers are also help­ing with the effort to re-establish those med­ical teach­ing aids which were once in place in Now Zad.

"Right out­side the wire there is a pub­lic health area and we were able to find scrolls that had been used four or five years ago as teach­ing aids," said Zaycek. "The [med­ical] edu­ca­tion was here in this coun­try. It needs to just come back."

An infor­ma­tional scroll edu­cat­ing Afghan women about child care hangs in a build­ing in the area of Now Zad, Afghanistan. The Female Corps­man Team recently arrived in Now Zad, to work with Female Engage­ment Team mem­bers, to reestab­lish those med­ical teach­ing aids which once existed in the area in addi­tion to treat­ing, edu­cat­ing and engag­ing the women of Now Zad. Photo by Cpl. Zachary Nola

Basic med­ical assis­tance is not the only the ser­vice the FCT pro­vides. While Now Zad's male pop­u­la­tion is forth­com­ing about their phys­i­cal med­ical con­cerns, the area's female pop­u­la­tion has shown an anx­i­ety about emo­tional con­cerns. FET and FCT mem­bers have shown the abil­ity to pro­vide the female pop­u­la­tion an emo­tional out­let where they can voice men­tal issues and concerns.

"What [the FCT] has been able to pro­vide is really, truly an open door. When we've gone out into the vil­lages to see peo­ple, [the female pop­u­la­tion] tend to open up to the female providers," said Craig. "When I looked at the list of com­plaints that the females were pro­vid­ing to the [FCT] it was fear of Tal­iban, fear that my son is going to be brought into the Tal­iban, fear for my fam­ily, fear for my home. A lot of fear com­po­nents which the guys don't say at all."

Another sec­ondary effect of the FCT is giv­ing female med­ical per­son­nel valu­able field expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge, through work­ing with the FET, which can be passed to others.

"It's a good oppor­tu­nity. A lot of corps­man will never get to come here and will never get to expe­ri­ence this," said Petty Offi­cer 2^nd Class Latese Smith, a hos­pi­tal corps­man with FCT from Chicago, Ill. "I'm look­ing for­ward to teach­ing [the women] to bet­ter take care of them­selves and their families."

"We'll take all our lessons learned, our knowl­edge gained, and give it to [other corps­man]." said Zaycek. "The plan is to train up other corps­man and nurses so they feel com­fort­able doing these mis­sions in dif­fer­ent locations"

While smaller than most units oper­at­ing in the Now Zad area, the FCT is show­ing size doesn't mat­ter. It's not just the impact they are hav­ing on the insur­gency but the means they are using to make that impact. They are fight­ing the insur­gency with knowl­edge and band-aids. Not bullets.

In recent weeks the mood in Now Zad has changed from one of con­stant ten­sion to one of recon­struc­tion. The area still presents chal­lenges and dan­gers to both civil­ians and mil­i­tary forces but the pos­i­tive results that Afghan national secu­rity forces, Lima Co., the FET and FCT have made are undeniable.

"It touched my heart while we were out in Dehanna see­ing the kids come up us." said the 51-year-old Craig. "Know­ing that they're actu­ally com­ing to us, trust­ing us with­out fear of ret­ri­bu­tion from the Tal­iban, lets me know that's a blow for freedom,"

DVIDS
Story by Cpl. Zachary Nola