Iraq - an instant cure for boredom

Dean Crump learned to use a firearm while living in the bush with his famous stepfather Barry. Photo / Supplied

With 20 years' experience treating the injured and dying in Auckland, and a good grasp of guns, Dean Crump was up for the challenge of frontline security work in Iraq.

He learned very quickly just how unprepared he was.

"My very first day we went through the streets of Mosul and we were stopped by a car bomb ... and I was told to get out and watch my perimeter. And I thought 'holy shit, what do I do? What am I supposed to look at?'. I had no idea," Mr Crump, 57, told the Weekend Herald.

"There was an old Iraqi couple in a car right beside us and there were all these Westerners and others with these machine guns ... and [the couple] ... had their hands up and they were smiling at me. I didn't know what they were saying but they were praying to me not to kill them.

"I thought 'what the f*** am I doing?' I'm frightening a little old man and a little old lady. This is insane. I just smiled at them and said 'it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you'."

Mr Crump, who learned from childhood to handle guns living in the bush with his stepfather - the iconic Kiwi bloke Barry Crump - had to quickly get used to the idea of carrying weapons into situations where people's lives were at stake.

Bored after his long service as a paramedic in Auckland, Mr Crump arrived in Iraq in 2004 seeking excitement, and found it as a combat medic with a convoy security team contracted to the United States military.

His roles in Iraq have evolved over the years, to protecting important officials and sharing his knowledge of emergency medicine. But the danger has always been there - he has lost friends in roadside bombings and ambushes, and has had his own share of close calls.

In one incident, while at an airport checkpoint in Baghdad, he made a snap decision not to inspect a vehicle hiding a bomb which later detonated about 50m from him, killing eight people. In another, he was standing with his supervisor "and there was a bang and a bullet went straight between our feet".

The broken-down infrastructure in Iraq also prompted him to become a "defacto general practitioner" for homeless Iraqis.

Among those he treated was a young boy accidentally struck in the head by a falling bullet fired into the air during Iraqi celebrations. These "celebratory" injuries are common in Iraq.

"I did a little local operation on him, and gave him some painkiller and removed the bullet and stitched him up, and [he was] right as rain."

While the debate still rages about countries' decisions to go to war in Iraq, Mr Crump has been heavily influenced by a mass grave he encountered in the northern region of Kurdistan that contained the bodies of 10,000 men, women and children murdered by Saddam Hussein's forces.

"If there was ever a reason for liberating that country from that twisted arse****, that was it."

Security in Iraq has fluctuated, the water supply is polluted and Baghdad only has, at the most, four hours of electricity a day. Diseases like cholera and tuberculosis, unheard of before the American-led invasion, are rampant.

But Mr Crump sees hope for Iraq governing itself when the foreign troops leave.

"Over the last 18 months to two years, I have seen a huge change in the Iraqi military's ability to protect themselves and run their own country. They have been trained well, and I think that they will do very, very well."