Shane Baugh doesn’t brag about the commendation he received in front of 3,500 medical professionals at a Military Health System Conference in Washington, D.C. He says the experience was “interesting.” He tells about it as an afterthought.
That’s probably because the honor, the Captain Maria Ortiz Company Grade Combat Care Award, reminds him of the worst day he spent serving in the Baghdad ER during Iraqi Freedom.
Baugh arrived in Iraq in September 2006 as a first lieutenant assigned to the 28th Combat Support Hospital as the emergency room charge nurse. Located in the Green Zone, Baghdad ER was given the name for an HBO documentary about the work that took place there. That documentary, which won a Peabody, was so true-to-life that the Army officially warned military personnel watching could experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Baugh remembers his experience in Iraq from day one. When he and his unit first stepped off the helicopter, they were told to get some sleep. That was just a brief escape from what they were about to experience.
Baugh’s first patient was a triple amputee, a soldier who had lost both arms and a leg. He said, “Until you’re there you can’t really grasp what you’re going to see over there. You don’t understand how bad the blast injuries are.”
The doctors, nurses and medics in the Baghdad ER saw 50 to 70 casualties every day, more than all the other Combat Support Hospitals combined, Baugh said. “We broke records almost every month.”
Baugh picked up extra duty one day when it was decided a nurse should go along on the helicopter flights to transport patients to an Air Force hospital. The flights carried the crews and injured over hostile territory. He was “voluntold,” which he said he didn’t mind.
Baugh would fly with 74 patients on separate flights and was on almost all the head injury flights because “they needed the most care,” he said.
Life was usually 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week for Baugh. Though assigned a 12-hour day shift from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m., his flight duties and other work often saw him working 16 hour days.
He was scheduled to work six days a week. On his days off, Baugh said he’d hang out with the flight crews because it was likely he’d be flying out with a patient anyway. Trying to find a moment to relax brought its own challenges.
He remembers smoking cigars on the roof top of the hospital. “It was the only bad habit I ever picked up,” he said. “I’d never smoked before.”
There was the night a group was on the rooftop, watching firefights in the distance. One seemed a little close, which drew their attention. It wasn’t long before a tracer round flew over their heads. Still, no worries among the group. Then a couple of bullets hit the wall behind them. It was time to leave.
Sitting in his room upstairs above the hospital, Baugh was talking with his wife via a computer hookup, the Face Time of those days. A rocket whizzed behind him outside his window and struck a tree. He and his computer went to the floor. Luckily, the screen had frozen. He set the computer back up and screamed “I gotta go.” He went downstairs where he was asked, “why are you talking so loud?” It turned out the blast had been so close it had burst one of his ear drums.
The war continued every day.
Baugh said there are still “patients I can remember just as plain as day...patients and bodies that were destroyed. (I) saw enough 18 to 25 year olds die, I could do without that again.”
But none of those memories bring back the worst day. That day came July 10, 2007. Captain Ortiz and another nurse, Major Stephen Williams, were headed back to the hospital from the gym when the Green Zone was struck with a vicious mortar attack.
Baugh said they were usually hit with four or five mortars and the attack would stop. This day he counted 54.
A mortar struck near the two nurses injuring them both. Shrapnel badly injured Ortiz.
Baugh rushed out of the hospital with other medics and loaded Ortiz onto a Gator, sending her back first because she was the more seriously injured. He then helped get Williams onto another Gator and into the hospital.
Baugh rushed to the hospital to help with Ortiz. “We did everything we could for her...she passed away,” Baugh said. “She was a good friend. She was a good person.”
Angel Flights were a tradition at the hospital. When a soldier who had been killed was sent home, hospital staff would line up along the street as the fallen comrade was carried toward a helicopter.
Baugh said about 20 members of the hospital staff would usually show up.
When Ortiz was sent home, there were about 150, all but four or five who had to stay in the hospital to watch the patients.
It was “a very sad moment. It was the worst Angel Flight for us,” Baugh said. It was his worst day in Baghdad.
The 40-year-old Ortiz was the first nurse killed in combat since the Vietnam War. She had volunteered to go to Iraq.
Ortiz is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. The United States Army named the Forward Operating Base Prosperity clinic after her.
Baugh spent 18 months in Iraq, his 12-month tour having been extended. But that is only a portion of a 31-year career that began while he was still in high school and ended with the rank of major.
The youngest of four children, Baugh enlisted in the Army Reserves in West Virginia as a combat medic. He picked the job after sitting in on an Emergency Medical Technician class with his father who was part of a mine rescue team.
Baugh did his basic training the summer after his junior year in high school.
After finishing high school, he went directly to Advanced Individual Training and then to active duty in September 1990.
His first deployment was to Germany for two years.
While there he was picked for duty in Operation Dessert Storm.
“I don’t count that as a deployment,” he said. When he arrived the war was almost over and medics had very little to do.
“We sat on ammo boxes for two weeks,” and then went back to Germany, he said.
His next stop was Fort Benning where he was assigned to the Second Mobile Army Surgical Hospital/14th Combat Support Hospital. He worked alongside the Ranger battalion when they needed medics.
Baugh had planned on going to Ranger school, but a knee injury blocked his chance.
When his four years of active duty ended, he joined the West Virginia National Guard.
He said he got out and went to school to become a nurse.
Then the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York City in 2001. Baugh decided, “I’ve got to go back on active duty,” and made the decision he wanted to go back as an officer.
That transition took time. He was commissioned in September 2004 and graduated from Officer Basic School in January 2005.
His first stop was Martin Army Hospital near Fort Benning, back to where he was stationed when he came back from Germany.
“(I) wanted to do my job,” he said. He was transferred to the 28th Combat Support Hospital at Fort Bragg before being sent to Baghdad as a first lieutenant, his nursing experience having advanced his rank.
He was promoted to captain before he left Iraq.
Baugh grins, “All my promotions, except one, came when I was deployed.”
Baugh’s years in the military were filled with training other nurses and doctors. He taught basic, advanced and pediatric life support courses. In Iraq, he taught doctors and nurses.
He taught Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) school at Fort Sam Houston.
Assigned to the 14th Combat Support Hospital, he was asked if he would go to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. It was a British hospital where he was told casualties would be heavy in the emergency room. He saw about two a day, nothing compared to the Baghdad ER.
While there he was promoted to major.
He returned to the United States in April 2013.
Baugh was assigned as the ER head nurse at Fort Hood.
It was there a family decision was made. Baugh’s “perfect Army wife,” Sherri, said enough was enough. They had met in nursing school. When he decided he wanted to return to active duty, they made a deal. He would stay in until she said it was time to leave.
Married 25 years, Baugh calls Sherri “my best friend. She’s been perfectly wonderful.”
So Baugh left active duty and joined the reserves. His goal had always been to serve 30 years.
He remembered riding his motorcycle through Blue Ridge and brought Sherri and their twin boys here.
They were drawn to the area, partly because the school system was one of the highest rated in the state.
The twins were 14 when the Baughs moved to their cabin in the mountains.
Baugh would serve one last deployment, this one to New York City when units were called to help battle COVID-19. He volunteered.
Baugh was assigned as chief nurse for a unit at a makeshift hospital at the Javits Center in the Hells Kitchen area of Mahattan.
That lasted about a month because “we didn’t see a lot of patients,” Baugh said.
The unit was moved to Elmhurst Hospital. A lack of patients – four on a 15-bed floor – ended the deployment.
But Baugh “ended up missing the boys’ graduation” from Fannin County High School.
Now, he is home in Fannin County taking a little time while he determines his next step.
Baugh has joined the local chapters of the Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was already a member of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, a group he first joined at Fort Hood.
Baugh is looking to continue his life of service through these groups. All carry on a tradition of “vets helping vets,” he said.
Baugh says of his time in the Army, “I loved it...taking care of the guys, helping them out...being part of them.”
Baugh’s service is perhaps best summed up in the award citation accompanying the Captain Maria Ortiz Company Grade Combat Care Award. It reads, in part, “His intense concern for others, well-honed trauma skills and competence under fire were characteristic of the qualities Captain Baugh epitomized throughout his deployment.”