MOSUL, Iraq – A Maine Army National Guard medic’s “mass casualty plan” is credited with saving lives after an explosion in a mess tent in Iraq that killed 22 people including two soldiers from the 133rd Engineer Battalion.

Maj. John “Doc” Nelson drew up the plan for dealing with an attack on the dining hall that called for a worst-case scenario of 24 killed. His projection was off by only two.

Nelson led by example after the blast. Despite suffering shrapnel wounds, he picked himself up and began treating his fallen comrades.

“At first I was just trying to get people started, get them focused,” he told a Portland (Maine) Press Herald columnist who is embedded with the unit in Mosul. “It’s what we do – bring order out of chaos.”

Moving from casualty to casualty, Nelson assessed injuries and instructed soldiers on how to stop the bleeding. At one point, confronted with a gravely wounded soldier, Nelson tore a sheet of clear plastic and wrapped it tightly around the young man’s chest.

“You use whatever you have,” he said.

Nelson and Chaplain David Sivret had just loaded their trays and sat down for one of their frequent lunches together when the blast caused by a suicide bomber sent tables, chairs and bodies flying. They were seated just 15 feet away from the explosion.

Nelson said he looked over at Sivret, who was unconscious, and confirmed that he was still breathing and not bleeding. He looked to the other side at a soldier from the Virginia-based 276th Engineer Battalion who had been sitting next to them. He was dead.

A mass casualty plan for the dining facility, developed last spring by Nelson, called for a temporary morgue in a corner of the building. When he regained his senses, Sivret instinctively headed there, praying over one body and then another as they arrived on litters.

Nelson continued to work despite his injuries until he grew too weary to go on. “I just got weak all of a sudden,” Nelson said. “I think the adrenaline started to wear off.”

The commander of the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion joined his soldiers and plans to remain at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul through Christmas as soldiers deal with the deaths of Spc. Thomas Dostie, 20, of Somerville and Sgt. Lynn R. Poulin Sr., 47, of Freedom. Ten others from the Maine unit were injured.

Lt. Col. John Jansen normally works five miles away at Camp Freedom, a former palace built by Saddam Hussein that now serves as headquarters for Operation Iraqi Freedom’s Task Force Olympia. But he wanted to be closer to his soldiers.

“It’s hard for everyone right now,” Jansen said. “I think this is going to stick with people for a long time.”

He added quietly, “The hardest part right now is to think about the families of these two soldiers. That tears me apart.”

Back in Maine, Adjutant Gen. William Libby, commander of the National Guard in Maine, said a casualty assistance officer was being assigned to each family, to help family members make funeral arrangements and line up benefits.

When the bodies return to the United States, Libby said the National Guard would send an escort officer to Dover, Del., to accompany each body on its flight back to Maine.

Once the bodies arrive here, Libby said, an honor guard will watch the transfer of each body from the plane to hearse. Under Gov. John Baldacci’s orders, state police will provide an escort from the airport to the funeral homes.

Maj. Peter Rogers, spokesman for the Maine National Guard, said he did not know when the bodies of the fallen guardsmen would be flown back to the United States.