Long road ahead for many wounded troops

[bpilgrim]

American hospital in Germany often just the first stop

By Aliza Marcus, Globe Correspondent, 11/30/2003

LANDSTUHL, Germany -- The dark gray military buses and ambulances arrive every day at the US medical center here, carrying soldiers wounded in Iraq.

One with bad shrapnel wounds; another unconscious, with burns over 60 percent of his body; still others with gunshot wounds, maimed limbs, open fractures, and spinal injuries. Some of the soldiers will be patched up well enough that they can return within a few weeks to their home bases, if not to their units in Iraq. But many face months of painful treatment at this facility in southwestern Germany and elsewhere before they can even go home.

"A lot of them will recover physically, but I have to say it will take them a long time to recover mentally," said Captain Paulette Smith-Kimble, an Army Reserve nurse assigned to the intensive care unit. "They are carrying a lot of baggage because of fallen soldiers who couldn't be saved or the fact that they can't go back . . . I have seen too many soldiers who lost limbs who can't go back," added the 34-year-old Boston native.

Seven months after President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, the casualties keep on coming. The wounded often go unmentioned and unreported, their injuries overshadowed by news of soldiers killed as they went about jobs ranging from rooting out insurgents to patrolling neighborhoods and rebuilding schools and power grids.

As of Friday, the Pentagon reported 434 soldiers had died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 298 of those in hostile attacks. But for every soldier killed in hostile action, nearly 10 have been wounded, according to official figures. Hundreds of the 2,094 wounded since the start of the conflict end up at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest American hospital outside the United States.

more...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/30/long_road_ahead_for_many_wounded_troops/

peace

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. The only news report I've seen on CNN

was about a soldier who was injured in an accident and was a quadrapalegic. He was attempting to knock down a wall with his tank and hit the wall wrong. Debris entered the open hatch and broke his neck. No messy bloody wounds, no scary scenarios. Wish the news people would show the real horrors of war, and the real scars that these military people will carry for years to come.