Editor's note: Reporter Mark Walker returned Sunday after visiting U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, who heads Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine forces throughout the Middle East.

TAQADDUM AIR BASE, IRAQ -- It wasn't a roadside bomb or small-arms fire that put Marine Lance Cpl. Douglas Cox in a hospital bed here last week.

Cox, 22, was felled by a knee infection. He was undergoing treatment in the well-stocked surgical hospital staffed by Navy doctors.

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A native of Jamestown, Pa., Cox is a member of a team that provides security for troops moving in convoys throughout this region, a short distance north of the city of Fallujah in the expansive Anbar province west of Baghdad.

"I really don't know yet what the problem is," Cox said as he lay in bed with his leg wrapped. "All I know is it's swollen and painful."

Based at the Marine Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Cox is one of 11,000 local Marines and sailors serving in Iraq this year.

He got a bedside visit from a Marine general, a greeting he said made him a little nervous. Cox said he planned to call his mother that evening to tell her he was in the hospital, but that he was OK and being treated for a noncombat injury.

Marines and sailors serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are supported by a cadre of Navy physicians, corpsmen and other medical support personnel.

That care is increasing survival and recovery rates far beyond those seen in earlier conflicts. The doctors also are employing a kind of group therapy technique, placing moderately injured troops and those with mild cases of combat stress back with their units so they are surrounded by the men and women they serve with each day.

At Taqaddum Air Base, the 1st Medical Company from Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Logistics Group provides emergency and routine medical care, as well as the counseling services for troops diagnosed with symptoms of combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Greg Jones said specialists who treat psychological disorders work with a base chaplain to treat troops suffering emotional difficulties.

"They do a pretty steady business," Jones said.

Troops not suffering from acute stress disorders are kept at the base rather than being returned to the U.S.

"We're finding we can be more successful treating them right here," Jones said. "We're able to provide the counseling and keep them with their unit, which often provides the kind of support structure back home."

The same is true for troops with moderate injuries.

"We're finding we can put the lightly wounded back with their units also and that their recovery time is often faster," Jones said.

A short distance from the hospital, however, is a unit whose job is more solemn. The Personnel Retrieval and Processing Unit is responsible for collecting the bodies and personal belongings of troops killed in action, including those blown apart by roadside bombs.

Each member of the Georgia-based unit volunteered for the assignment, one it has had to perform 10 times since arriving at Taqaddum earlier this year.

Care in Afghanistan

More than 1,000 miles away in the expansive deserts of Afghanistan where Marines are fighting the Taliban in the country's Helmand province, Navy doctors have established an air-conditioned battalion aid station at Bastion.

The massive base was established by the British and other coalition forces two years ago. That station provides emergency treatment for wounded troops and has limited surgical capabilities.

The station is ensconced in camouflage tent with a matted floor, unlike the brick-and-mortar facility at Taqaddum that resembles a typical hospital.

The Marines arrived in this hot, southern Afghanistan region in April for a seven-month deployment to quell a spring uprising by the Taliban and foreign fighters.

Inside the tented station, Dr. Greg Crabill is a member of a Shock and Trauma Platoon responsible for stabilizing injured Marines until they can be transported to better-equipped facilities.

The station can treat two troops simultaneously. More can be helped in a mass casualty situation, said the slight-framed Crabill, a family physician when he's back home at the Marine Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.

More than 3,000 Marines and sailors from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment are serving in the region until November.

The trauma platoon is responsible for frontline treatment not only at Bastion, but at several other forward operating bases outside the protection provided by the large base.

Improvising, the unit also has converted a delivery truck that can respond to calls outside the base.

Since establishing the aid station in late April, the doctors through last week had not been called on to treat any troops wounded in battle.

Instead, their work has consisted primarily of treating troops stricken by the effects of the punishing temperatures that already reach 120 degrees and higher, and those suffering from insect and snake bites.

Many of the snakes are venomous and the troops are warned of that, but Crabill said that's a tough battle to win.

"What's a Marine do when he sees a snake?" the soft-spoken doctor asked.

When it was suggested the Marine might just shoot the snake, Crabill smiled.

"They're Marines," he said, laughing. "The first thing they do is pick it up to examine and play with it. That's how they get bit."

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.