Former El Dorado resident Maj. Randall Mitchell has dedicated his life to helping those who are injured or sick at home and away.
Mitchell, an Army Reserve emergency room nurse, recently returned from a 20-month tour in Iraq, being deployed from May 2008 to February 2010.
“This was my first deployment in combat,” he said, adding that he had been deployed to Germany in 2002 for eight months to fill in for the combat support hospital there that was sent to Kosovo.
Mitchell has been an emergency room nurse for 23 years.
He is the head nurse for the emergency department of the 345th Combat Support Hospital out of Jacksonville, Fla.
During his deployment he worked in three emergency departments.
His first year he spent at Al Asad Air Base, located in western Iraq.
There he served as head nurse for the emergency room. After that, he was reassigned to a unit in Mosul, in the northern part of the country, where he again served as the head emergency room nurse.
“Then in my second tour they extended me with the 47th Combat Support Hospital out of Ft. Lewis, Wash,” he said. “I was the night supervisor for the whole hospital during that period from May 2009 to the end of January.”
He has seen a variety of activity during his deployment.
“We hit kind of at the end of the surge,” he explained, “so when we first got there we were a little busy. As far as combat injuries they dropped off dramatically at Al Asad.”
A lot of the patients he saw there were the soldiers for regular injuries, such as sports injuries or injuries from practice combatives.
They also treated a lot of local Iraqi soldiers and contractors.
“During that period at Al Asad the challenge was to keep everybody motivated a little bit because, not that we wanted to see them, but we weren’t seeing the battle injuries we thought we would see with our soldiers,” he continued.
Another part of his deployment was helping fill in a six week gap for the 86th Combat Support Hospital at Mozul from when one group left and the next group came in.
“During that time Mozul was the last of the really hot spots,” he said, “so there were more battle injuries. It was a little more rewarding in that we were taking care of critically injured soldiers that were in need. We were able to make some really big differences in soldiers’ lives.”
He continued to be the head of the emergency department there as well.
In addition, Mitchell served as a flight nurse.
Flight nurses would fly with the critically injured soldier who had to return to the hospital in Balad then to Germany before returning to the United States.
Mitchell said he made several flights transferring critically injured soldiers.
His third hospital was in Tikrit, a town northwest of Baghdad, where he was a night supervisor.
They saw a few battle injuries there.
“We did get hit with the flu there,” he said.
Soldiers who went home for RR would unknowingly bring it back and Mitchell said with the close living conditions and patrols they would pass it on to each other.
Despite being in a hospital setting his whole time, Mitchell did experience the war first hand.
“One of our really down times was in Mozul Christmas day of 2008,” he recalled. “We were at the hospital and the base we were on was rocketed. We had a forward surgical support unit that had come in to support us up there. The rocket landed right at the hospital and killed one of the surgeons who had just arrived a week before that. We lost 10 that day.
“There haven’t been many doctors killed or injured overseas, so it was a difficult time for the whole hospital and unit. It was hard to keep morale up after that.”
But the overall experience was a positive one for Mitchell.
“I’ve gotten to go places and do things I never would have done if I had stayed a civilian nurse,” he said.
Mitchell has been to Germany, Panama on summer trainings, Iraq, Suriname in South America and Honduras.
“It is very interesting getting to see the different countries,” he said.
He also has been to several states around the United States for summer trainings.
“I have met a lot of good people,” he commented. “I have a lot of close friends in the Army now.
“It was a real honor and privilege to get to go over there and support our soldiers in their needs and be able to be a part of that,” he said.
“My family sacrificed along with me being gone. My family needs to
have a lot of credit to.”
Mitchell has been in the Army Reserves 23 years, joining when he was in nursing school.
Part of the reason he joined was that his father was in the Navy during World War II.
“I actually joined the Navy Reserves in Wichita for a couple of years and finished school,” he said. “Because I had an associate’s degree I couldn’t join the Navy Reserves as a nurse so I crossed over to the Army and I have been there ever since.”
Returning from Iraq in May, Mitchell will be resuming his civilian job as the director of the emergency department at Florida Memorial Hospital Medical Center near his home in Palm Coast, Fla.
“In many ways, stateside hospitals and in-theater hospitals aren’t that different,” he said. “However, there is a great level of variance of injuries in American hospitals. In theater, the fighting force is generally healthy – they don’t have cancer or chronic heart disease – and you typically see battle injuries, with the occasional case of gastrointestinal illness from local food or injuries from sports and physical training.”
Mitchell was born and raised in El Dorado. His family used to own Mitchell’s Truck Stop.
Mitchell also helped organize Butler County Rescue Squad in 1975 and was an active member of that organization for 13 years.
His sister and nephew, Susan Ballard and Rob, still live in El Dorado.
Mitchell and his wife, Robyn, have three daughters, and his impact on them is clear: Randi (24) now works as a paramedic but has future plans to be a nurse, RaDonna (22) graduated from college while her father was deployed and now works as an emergency room nurse, and Rachel (20) will be certified as an emergency medical technician this fall.
“All my daughters have talked about serving in the Army, but none of them are serious about it yet,” he said. “However, my service in the Army has taught me a lot about commitment and responsibility, and I’ve tried to teach my daughters that, whether or not they serve in the military.”
Although he is eligible to retire from the military, Mitchell plans to continue serving in the Army Reserve for several years to come.
“I’ve been doing this for 23 years,” he said. “It’s a big part of my life, and I enjoy the people that I serve alongside.”
