WOUNDS OF WAR
This LAT story on soldiers injured in Iraq deserves a reading, and the soldiers deserve the country's thanks and support. The death toll in Iraq has been relatively low not because the war isn't exacting casualties, but because improved body armor and medical care are saving lives that once would have been lost.
WASHINGTON — The physical therapists on the fifth floor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center have a bulletin board they call their Wall of Heroes. It is crammed with photos of young soldiers in their care — soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq.
The images of the amputees and burn victims stand out, a tragic irony of an important advance in military protective gear.
The new armored vests that soldiers are wearing in this war protect the human torso and have saved countless lives, but often at a terrible price. One day last week, all but 20 of the 250 beds at the center were taken up with casualties of the war. Fifty of them have lost limbs, often more than one. Dozens more suffer burns and shrapnel wounds that begin where their armored vests ended.
On average, they are 23 years old.
Many would have died except for their Kevlar vests, which stopped rounds from a Kalashnikov rifle, a 9-millimeter handgun or fragments from a grenade. There have been more wounded — and over a longer period — than the hospital expected....
A half hour away, at Andrews Air Force Base, the tennis court and gymnasium of the fitness center have become a medical staging facility for those evacuated from the war zone. More than 7,500 have come through since April.
In addition to the nearly 1,900 who have gone on to Walter Reed, another 1,500 have been sent to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., which treats the injured from the Navy and Marines. Several thousand less seriously wounded soldiers have been sent directly to some of the military's dozens of smaller hospitals and clinics around the country.
After reports surfaced last month that the level of care being given at one of those smaller facilities was substandard, the Army took steps to improve services there and began an evaluation of the care at other regional hospitals.....
"We've seen a number of patients that, in our minds, in 'Nam they would not have lived," Mayer, the veteran who volunteers at Walter Reed, said. "One comes to my mind. You see how his wounds stop like a sunburn line right where the body armor started. As soon as you see him, you know that it was the body armor that saved his life."