Michael Yon sends a dispatch from Iraq about our wounded soldiers and how they are treated. This is a very moving piece and worth taking some time to read. Its nice to see a writer who is focusing on the soldiers themselves and not what will grab the flashiest headlines or score the highest ratings.
Command Sergeant Major James Pippin realized they were in a “nearside ambush,” and ordered his driver to assault directly into the RPG and machine gun fire. Riding the offensive momentum, the American soldiers dismounted their Humvees, moving into the attack, disorganizing the ambushers. Pippin shot one in the face. Then a bullet found him.......
Pippin’s attack into the ambush had broken the enemy effort, but he was bleeding all over the Humvee.... Pippin was driven to one of the nearby “Combat Support Hospitals” (CSH)....
Soon after my embed with the 2-7 CAV ended, I made one other visit to a CSH. Among the many wounded was one soldier who had been terribly maimed by an IED during an ambush. It is hard to describe the extent of his injuries. These CSHs host a daily array of gunshot wounds of every description, traumatic amputations, and severe burns, but his wounds were horrible even by those standards. As blood soaked through his bandages, a pretty young nurse walked out into the hall and burst into tears. A doctor called the soldier’s father, and gravely related the truth: the staff would try to keep him alive until Germany, so his family could be there at the end....
The system for treating wounded soldiers and civilians is an example of the military at its best: the CSHs around Iraq, the “Mercy Flight” to Landstuhl, and then the Landstuhl staff itself, was among the best. It always amazes me that a soldier who is wounded in some strange Iraqi village in the morning, through a system of fast ground transport and aircraft, is in a top medical facility possibly before midnight on the same day. The first-class treatment and service for the patients, at every step of the way, has long been a source of both pride and controversy....
Read the rest of the dispatch at: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/under-distant-stars.htm
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