Afghan base is ‘world's busiest trauma hospital’

In one bed lay an Afghan policeman badly wounded in an attack. Doctors had given him morphine for his pain but quickly discovered he was an opium addict and that no matter what dose of the drug they gave him it didn't help.

In the next bed lay what Moles -- an Irish family doctor when he's not on deployment -- described as a ‘$10 Taliban’, a young man willing to carry out militant attacks for a bit of cash but not because he's a big believer.

He had accidentally detonated a roadside bomb as he was planting it, blowing off his right hand and riddling his face with shrapnel.

Two beds down in the pristine ward lay a small Afghan child, barely 18 months old, breathing heavily through a respirator. She'd been hit in the abdomen by a fragment of shrapnel. Nurses said she was not faring well.

Asked how she was wounded the nurse said ‘by a strike’, then explained that she'd been hit by US munitions in a mistaken attack on civilians.