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The One Article You Must Read Today
By Jeff Fecke | April 30, 2012
From Peter Sagal of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” fame. It isn’t particularly funny:
The first soldier was in bed, surrounded by six members of his family, including his fiance, who was slumped over asleep. His left foot was missing, and he was in obvious pain, and also obviously in a fog of painkilling drugs. I chatted with his family, and heard about his injury – an IED in Afghanistan. My memory of this first visit was foggy, because I was slowly realizing something that for the life of me I had not anticipated: the men I would be meeting were not in rehab, or in recovery. These were not the guys I had read about in magazine features, gamely learning to walk on prostheses or deal with TBI,, months after their injury. These were guys who had just been gravely hurt, weeks or in some cases days before. They were sitting with family members who – also just weeks or days before – had gotten a call from the Army or Marines saying, “Your son has been wounded in battle,” and had with hearts pounding and tears streaming thrown things into a bag and gotten on a plane for Germany or Washington. These wounds were fresh and raw, in every sense.
I will not, or can’t give you details of every visit I made that morning, even a day after. I sat by bedsides and, as [Garry] Trudeau advised, asked them what happened, and heard their stories. As I listened, I tried to focus, and control my own feelings of horror and dismay, and my growing urge to walk out of the room and tell the Sergeant, patiently waiting outside, that I could take no more and needed to leave now. (The sergeant told me later that this does happen.)
But these are the things I remember most vividly….
Seriously. You must read this article. The men and women we send to war for us should not be forgotten. Especially as the war is still being fought.
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Topics: Afghanistan | 1 Comment »
May 2nd, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Thank you for making me read this.