HAUNTED airborne medics spoke of the trauma they witnessed while delivering life-saving treatment to patients during the evacuation of war-torn Kabul.
Some 30 medics who deployed to Afghanistan to run a medical treatment facility at Kabul airport have received medals for their work.
Corporal Hannah Beaumont, 26, spoke of her time as a resus nurse and the trauma she witnessed.
She said: “The people you’ve treated stay in your mind and I’ll never forget their faces.
“When the bomb went off I was on a break and eating dinner - we all just grabbed our kit and ran towards the scene.
“It was chaos, with a huge number of people with trauma and fragmentation injuries.
“I think our training prepares us to deal with sort of thing, because you just roll with it while it’s happening and when we got back to barracks there was a lot of support to help us deal with what we’d seen and done.”
16 Medical Regiment held a medal parade on Thursday to mark the medics’ service during Operation Pitting, the mission to evacuate British people, entitled Afghans and civilians from partner nations as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.
With the whole Regiment on parade at Merville Barracks, in Colchester, the proud troops received their medals.
Private Chloe Sanderson, 23, deployed as a combat medical technician with 2 Para.
She said her two-week deployment was “short, but long enough”.
“I spent a lot of time working out on the shield wall, helping to search women and children as well as treating casualties,” she said.
“There were a lot of crush injuries in the crowd and people fainting in the heat.
“For me the most uncomfortable moment was when the civilians got on to the runway and were hanging on to the undercarriage of planes taking off - I saw people falling from the sky.
“I’m proud that I was able to get out to do the job I joined up for and to help so many people who were in a state of absolute desperation.
“It’s nice to receive the medal as recognition of our hard work.”
16 Medical Regiment held a medal parade on Thursday to mark the medics’ service during Operation Pitting, the mission to evacuate British people, entitled Afghans and civilians from partner nations as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.
With the whole Regiment on parade at Merville Barracks, in Colchester, the proud troops received their medals.
In the two-week mission some 750 troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade provided security and logistic support to the evacuation, with most of the soldiers coming back from their summer leave at short notice to deploy.
More than 15,000 people were flown out of the country.
While in Kabul, the troops distributed 250,000 litres of bottled water, 25,000 bottles of baby formula and 9,000 nappies to the crowds of people waiting to be evacuated.
Presenting the medals, commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Seb Burn said the soldiers should be “immensely proud” of their hard work and dedication “in hugely challenging circumstances”.
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