Sandra Jontz / S&S
Dr. (Maj.) Dave Brown, with 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), 25th Infantry Division, listens to heart and lung sounds of 5-year-old Rhma Taha Ahmed in June'05 in Mosul.
Days 11-16
(June 2005) Heading into the middle of the month, B Company conducts joint US-Iraqi operations targeting a dangerous section of town called Isla Zeral. An objective of the operation is to show that the insurgents don't own that real estate; the Iraqi government, and by extension, its people, control what happens on those streets. The increased contact with residents allows informants to emerge and share actionable intelligence about the leadership and structure of the insurgency.
During one late-night sweep in Isla Zeral, Lt. Dan Kearney entered a house where a man asked for help with his five-year-old daughter. She is five years old and her name is Rhma Taha Ahmed and she is afraid of the soldiers, but the father asks the Americans to slow down and look at his daughter. Rhma hid her face while her dad showed her fingers and toes to Lt. Kearney. Her nails were receded and there was blood-blistering, her fingers and toes were tones of red and purple. SFC Joel Lundak called a medic who checked Rhma's vital signs and said she seemed to have a heart condition.
SFC Joel Lundak during raid in Mosul
Her father produced papers from a doctor, medical records of a sort, and the interpreter said the documents reported that Rhma has an inoperable congenital heart defect. She will die slowly and painfully. Lt. Kearney calls for Captain Paul Carron, the B company commander, who looks at Rhma and decides to do something. As it happens, a journalist named Sandra Jontz was riding along with Deuce-Four on this mission, and Sandra decides to do something, too. She snaps pictures and takes notes.
Read Sandra Jontz's Stars and Stripes article here:
Ailing Iraqi girl one step closer to operation