November 16, 2003
The cost of freedom climbs
The cost of freedom is being felt widely by wounded soldiers and their loved ones. The New York Times has a sympathetic profile on several of these heroes, damaged on our behalf, whose lives will go on but are now changed forever. We at home owe them, big time.
More than 6,800 have been evacuated from Iraq for medical reasons, including disease and "nonbattle injuries," the Army said.Posted by Alan at November 16, 2003 07:56 AM[By Friday, the Defense Department said, 1,994 had been wounded in action, with 342 more injured. The dead totaled 399, with 272 from hostile action. At least 18 more soldiers were killed and five wounded in Iraq yesterday.]
Some of the most seriously wounded come through Walter Reed.
Thanks to advances in everything from flak jackets to battlefield medical attention, many soldiers survive attacks that would have killed them a generation ago. But as more survive, more inevitably return from Iraq with grievous injuries, including amputations. Already, 58 amputees have been treated at Walter Reed, 47 with major single-limb removals and 11 with multiple-limb amputations.
For all the numbing similarity of the ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs that wounded the soldiers now at Walter Reed, each has begun to piece his life back together in a different way, into a shape he never expected.