Saving the life of an enemy who wants you dead

BAGHDAD — Two Army helicopters land after a roadside blast, rescuing wounded U.S. soldiers — and one Iraqi insurgent. Inside the Iraqi's pocket, a medic finds the trip wire used to set off the bomb.

The scene — which occurred in January — is part of a little-known U.S. mission amid Iraq's mayhem: ferrying injured prisoners along with soldiers from the clashes and ambushes.

Such flights have been aspects of battle for decades, but in Iraq they also serve as a bridge between very different eras of warfare.

The emergency care for prisoners falls under the long-standing wartime codes of the Geneva Conventions. But the high-stakes pressures to wring information from them highlight the struggles against shadowy extremists in Iraq who still appear capable of striking at will in many areas.

Now, the potential for conflict between the two demands — saving the enemy's life, but possibly saving U.S. soldiers with fresh intelligence — is receiving top-level attention.

The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, reminded his troops Thursday to "occupy the moral high ground" and not resort to torture or other abuses — even if the motive is for confessions that could help U.S. forces.

Petraeus' memo followed a Pentagon survey that found many U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq would support torture in certain cases and would not report a comrade for killing or wounding civilians.

"My job is to keep EPWs [enemy prisoners of war] alive so they can be interrogated," said Sgt. Maxie Kimbriel, 42, a flight medic from New Boston, Texas. "They may have information that leaves us vulnerable. They can't be questioned if they're dead."

The medevac company — known as the Army's "witch doctors" — flies out of Camp Taji, an Air Force base just north of Baghdad.

Their Black Hawk helicopters — filled with medical equipment and emblazoned with bright-red crosses — are famous for the risks they take skimming rooftops and dodging power lines to pick up anyone injured in battles or attacks involving U.S. forces: soldiers, insurgents and Iraqi civilians.

For some, the toughest part is treating young U.S. soldiers or Iraqi children who have been seriously wounded and may not survive.

"All wounded soldiers get to me, but the young ones — 18 to early 20s — they get to me the most," Kimbriel said of the unit, formally known as Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Calvary, Air Brigade.

But others grappled with very different emotions while caring for EPW insurgents who are blindfolded and bound to their stretchers on the medevac flights.

"The medic especially can't help but wonder: How many Americans has he killed? ... If the situation were reversed, we'd be having our heads cut off as captives on TV. And we're saving his life," said Maj. Guy Gierhart, 36, the company commander from Corpus Christi, Texas.

If they survive, EPWs are transferred from U.S. hospitals to prisons in Iraq where they will be interrogated — seeking information and details fresh from the fight.

Gierhart said his medevac company has evacuated more than 3,000 patients in the past nine months, including many American and Iraq forces and Iraqi EPWs.

"We are required under the Geneva Convention to rescue the enemy, and we give them better care than our soldiers could ever expect from al-Qaida in Iraq," said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the medevac crews can carry only rifles and handguns for their own protection — not the kind of powerful machine guns that normally sit in the two open windows on either side of a Black Hawk. But the "witch doctors" often are accompanied by fully armed military helicopters or meet ones that arrive separately at rescue sites.

Since the war started, seven medevac crew members have died, along with five of their patients, in a series of attacks on medical helicopters.