For Robert Ellis, a former Army nurse who works at Barnes-Jewish, the conflict was just beginning when he was stationed at Camp Crawford, a medical center for high-value detainees in Baghdad, in 2004. While there, he oversaw a particularly notable patient: Saddam Hussein.
In his new book, Caring for Victor (Hussein’s code name), Ellis grapples to understand what followed. “I was really just supposed to go in there and administer his medicine and leave,” he says. “But it didn’t happen like that…" —Jarrett Medlin
Did you have any idea at first that you’d be caring for Saddam Hussein? We were joking about what would happen if I did come in contact with him, but nobody thought we would. We were supposed to be monitoring other people, and then things changed. Another unit was leaving, and the job of caring for detainees fell on us.
Tell me about the first time you met him. I’d heard about all his atrocities and had those in the back of my mind. We greeted each other and shook hands. I wasn’t told his name in the beginning…When I finally met him, nothing would’ve surprised me more.
You stayed there for eight months—longer than most. Eventually, he asked specifically for you. The doctors rotated out every 90 days, and in terms of medical care I was the most constant thing there… One night some guards came to me and said he was asking for this “nurse named Alice.” Some of the higher-ups were scratching their heads, asking, “Who’s this woman Saddam keeps asking for?” Finally it dawned on them [he meant Ellis].
Of the 100-plus patients you cared for—many depicted on the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards—you seemed impressed by how he carried himself. In spite of what happened, he never complained. He took it like a man. The rest of those guys were used to being pampered and spoiled, and now they were totally helpless, and I guess it was just a real shock to them. But Saddam had less than any of them; he didn’t have any of the comforts the others had. He had some very good coping skills.
You described Hussein as a clean freak, a germaphobe. He always washed his hands. He’d wipe off everything before he touched it. Even when he drank water, he’d drink it from a 3-liter bottle without ever letting the bottle touch his lips. And although he was in a little 8-by-10 cell, he’d keep the floors clean. He was tidy, just like it was his house.
It seems like you saw a different side of him than most. He would save bread from his meals, and one day we were out in the courtyard, in the rec area, and he threw his breadcrumbs on the ground, and all the birds that were sitting on the fence wire swooped down. And he said, “Look. They come.” And he kind of smiled. That seemed to make him happy.
It was a difficult time for you, especially considering that your mother and brother died while you were serving in Iraq. How did you cope? You have to suppress a lot of emotions, put your feelings aside to carry on… At the time, I didn’t have time to sit down and put anything in perspective. After I got back and sat down to write the book, I had time to sit down and kind of reflect.
Was the military concerned about the book when they heard about it? When I first got home, we were told what we could talk about and couldn’t, and I stayed within those guidelines. The information in the book was from my notes and my thoughts; I had no classified military information. There was a lot of stuff I still know that I wouldn’t dare put in that book.
What kind of feedback did you get after Caring for Victor came out? Some people asked why I didn’t kill him when I had the chance. Some people don’t want to hear anything good about him. They just want to hear he was a bad man, he killed all these people, and that’s all there is to it.
