<\body> Stories in America: Wounds of War

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Wounds of War

"The verbiage just has to change. Wounded sounds like someone fell down and got a band-aid. These are catastrophic injuries. Someone needs to propel and explode a mortar every night on TV so people can see what it does to a human body."
-Sue Erwin, Spc. Jay Erwin's mother
When Spc. Jay Erwin used to hear reporters speak of "wounded" Soldiers on the evening news, he envisioned troops with minor scrapes and bruises who medics could quickly patch up and send back into the fight after a day or two.

Today, as Erwin sits in a wheelchair on the second floor lobby of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he sees things much differently.

"Hearing about our guys who were wounded didn't really affect me," he said. "I was just glad that guys I was fighting with were still alive. It didn't occur to me that there's a lot more mental and physical pain involved with being wounded, and I'm learning that now."

2 Comments:

At 10/19/2006 12:07 AM, Blogger JACK BOO said...

Indeed, it is terrible that our soldiers have been wounded in this war.

Which is why, if we pull out early, I'll be so impressed when I see posts here detailing the horrors of wounded (and killed) Iraqis that will inevitably escalate without the help of the American military to keep the terrorists in check.

You know, like what happened to the Kurds when we abandoned them...(which, incidentally, was a move that has been criticized on this blog...and rightly so.)

 
At 4/24/2008 4:49 PM, Blogger Frank Vet said...

It's an illegal war born on lies, we have armed both religious sects and if we stay the civil war will not conclude until after we leave. We are only postponing the inevitable. We have not rebuilt Iraq, we have bombed 80% of it into the stone age just to keep control of the oil. Stop the Robberbaron, war crimes and war profitiers and bring our soldiers home now!

 

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