Death is the enemy in ‘Baghdad ER’

Late in the extraordinary documentary “Baghdad ER,” an Army chaplain leans close to a dying Marine and offers words of comfort and absolution.

“We don’t want you to go,” he says softly. “We want you to fight. We want you to fight if you can. If you can’t, it’s OK to go. It’s OK to go. We’ll be right with you, if you get better or if you go.”

Minutes later, the lance corporal’s fight is over. As a fellow Marine stands nearby, his eyes wide and appearing to fill with tears, an Army doctor makes the pronouncement of death.

“[He was] a big, strong kid,” the chaplain explains. “He fought for a long time. He wasn’t going to give up; he just didn’t have a choice.”

“Baghdad ER,” set for broadcast Sunday on HBO, is about the Army medical personnel in Iraq who are dedicated to giving wounded soldiers, Marines and sailors a choice to survive even with the most horrendous of wounds -- often blast injuries that would have been instantly fatal in previous wars, before advances in combat medicine and protective armor.

Filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill spent two months in Baghdad in mid-2005 with medical troops from the 86th Combat Support Hospital from Fort Campbell, Ky.

The 86th was deployed to the hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone, one of the busiest combat medical centers in Iraq. The filmmakers’ access appears to have been total, and the result is detailed and intimate, sympathetic but unflinching, possibly destined to be a classic documentary of the U.S. war in Iraq.

The Army has clearly taken a chance by allowing such access. Medical facilities are normally off-limits even to embedded reporters.

Some second thoughts may have gripped the service. Army brass who had planned to attend an advance screening at the National Museum of American History in Washington bowed out this week. Still, screenings are planned for the rank and file at several military installations.

In preparation, the Army surgeon general has issued a warning that the film could cause flashbacks for veterans and nightmares for family members. “The film may be difficult for some to view due to some graphic scenes,” Army spokesman Paul Boyce said. “The Army would just like to caution families and encourage them to watch it with loved ones or a support group.”

It’s all here: blood, amputations, death, body bags, the daily carnage from improvised explosive devices and suicide car bombings, insurgent snipers and mortar attacks. It’s trauma medicine on a conveyor belt, with no end in sight.

A doctor says early on, “Let’s call this gentleman” -- declare him officially dead -- “and try to save his buddies.”

Even a nurse who thought his experience in other emergency rooms had hardened him to the sight of mangled bodies is taken aback.

“I got here and it was like, ‘What in the [expletive] am I looking at, day after day,’ ” he says.

Says another nurse, “This is hard-core, raw, uncut trauma.”

Done cinema-verite style, with quick cuts and no narration, “Baghdad ER” has no political point of view. There is no flag-waving but neither is there Bush-bashing.

Alpert has won a dozen Emmys for three decades of documentaries in foreign locales and the mean streets of urban America. O’Neill, a recent Yale graduate, has done documentaries involving Bolivia, China and Venezuela.

Except for noting the numbers of U.S. military personnel killed and wounded, “ER” avoids anything that could seem political. “ER” has no reference to weapons of mass destruction, President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or declining support in the U.S. for the war. The theme of “ER” is the daily bravery and commitment of U.S. troops.

Which is not to say the doctors and nurse are automatons. Just that their doubts about the wisdom of the U.S. remaining in Iraq are understated and tentative. They curse the blast injuries that are their daily enemy.

One surgeon says he clings to the belief that the death and the injuries are for a noble purpose -- to give the Iraqis a better way of life. “I have to believe that, because otherwise this is just sheer madness to me,” he says.

Many of the medical personnel are young. They offload the unceasing stress by playing basketball and cracking tasteless jokes. “There’s a lot of stuff we laugh at that we shouldn’t, but it helps keep us sane,” a nurse says.

The wounded ask for neither pity nor congratulation. One soldier seems angry at himself for getting hurt because it will separate him from buddies who need him. Another is still dazed at a buddy’s death. “I looked over and he was gone,” he says in a flat, ghastly voice.

Another, being wheeled into surgery, asks plaintively if his genitals were destroyed in the blast that destroyed his Humvee. A wounded National Guard member muses about why he joined the guard and found himself in Iraq: “All of this so I could get my family a house.”

Most of “ER” is shot inside the heavily guarded hospital complex, but occasionally it ventures outside, where life is chaotic and deadly. The filmmakers travel with soldiers patrolling “IED Alley,” where every Iraqi is seen as a possible terrorist; they fly with helicopter crews from the 54th Medical Company, Air Ambulance, from Ft. Lewis, Wash.

One helicopter crewman looks directly at the camera and says buoyantly, “We do everything possible to see that your loved ones come back to you.”

After seeing “ER,” you can believe it.

*

‘Baghdad ER’

Where: HBO

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)