Bravery, particularly in wartime, can be measured in many ways. Sometimes, it is manifest in an act of self-sacrifice when an individual willingly gives up his or her life to protect comrades. At other times, it is measured by one’s willingness to undertake potentially deadly tasks beyond the normal call of duty. There are less conspicuous ways to demonstrate courage, and tens of thousands of members of the U.S. military do so every day. Maj. John Bini and Maj. Jeffrey Rengel, both Air Force physicians, are prime examples of the latter.
The doctors, the former a trauma surgeon, the latter an anesthesiologist, are stationed a the Bagram Air Base hospital in Afghanistan. They are intimately familiar with the wounds of war. Even so, they were unprepared for what took place recently. A young soldier, in his 20s, arrived at the hospital with a head injury, the result, it seemed, of a piece of shrapnel from an explosive device. Not so. The wound was far more complicated.
A hospital radiologist examining a CT scan thought the object lodged in the soldier was not a piece of shrapnel, but an explosive round primed to explode. He was right. The patient had a small bomb lodged in his head. Even in a hospital where traumatic wounds are routine, it was a unique and extremely dangerous case.
The first call after determining the round was explosive went to a bomb disposal team. Then, personnel were evacuated, the area secured and electrical monitoring devices in the operating room turned off. Personnel feared that a stray signal would set off the round. The only person left in the room was Dr. Rengel, who put on helmet and body armor to count drips per minute to estimate anesthesia dosage and who used manual heart and blood pressure devices to monitor vital signs. Nothing could deter him from his task.
“There was a moment,” he told reporters, “where I contemplated what was happening … thought of my wife and kids, said a quick prayer, and then thought about how our brave men and women put themselves in harm’s way every day far and above the position I found my self in …” Dr. Bini was equally calm.