ABC: Casualty Ward (Landstuhl Hospital)

[RamboLiberal]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/landstuhl_040808-1.html

It looks like that opening scene from the TV comedy M*A*S*H. But Hawkeye and Pierce, Radar, and Clinger don't exist here.

These are real doctors and nurses at the Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, facing horrors seldom seen by the American public — already over 12,000 battlefield casualties from Iraq.

Their patients speak with tension in their faces. Not even the pain killers can stop all of the throbbing of their injuries. I am amazed that they want to talk about what happened.

"Some shrapnel went through my eye," says Staff Sgt. Daniel Beaty.

<snip>

"You walk in and your see young kids blown apart," says Col. Bernie Roth, who works in the intensive care unit. "Sometimes half their brain is gone, arms gone, legs gone. It's hard, it's really hard."

[Dogmudgeon]

1. 12,000 Battlefield casualties

That's a casualty rate of, what, over 10% (Based on 105,000 troops on active infantry duty in Iraq.)

That figure may have to be adjusted, but I'd wager it's still in the same ballpark.

And they'll all come home to find that all they get is a "T.S. card".

--bkl

[Eloriel]

2. It's horrendous --

This is the cost of saving more of their lives with those kevlar vests. In other wars, there would have been more dead. In this one we have legions more horribly wounded. (And that's not even counting the psychological wounds which are usually even harder to treat.)