Text 27716, 79 rader
Skriven 2007-03-11 08:22:00 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
     Kommentar till en text av VERN HUMPHREY (1:123/140)
Ärende: Marines
===============
Replying to a message of VERN HUMPHREY to STAN HARDEGREE:

 SH>> Because Josh's hand was so badly damaged, the medic applied a
 SH>> tourniquet to the wrist, and they whisked the wounded soldier off to
 SH>> the unit aid station, which has doctors standing by.  The doctors
 SH>> amputated Josh's hand, cleaned it up, iced it, and sent it along
 SH>> with him to the rear, and eventually to North Carolina.  At last
 SH>> report, docs have re-attached the hand, and Josh is recuperating at
 SH>> Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, home of their unit. 
 SH>> Josh's wife and children can be with him there, and, I'm sure,
 SH>> accelerate healing.

 VH> Our prayers are with him.  I can't help  but thinking, isn't this a
 VH> miracle?  We've seen a lot lately about how poorly the wounded are
 VH> treated, but this is cutting edge surgery!!

 SH>> But a cautionary note: Mike said the IED that hit his convoy was the
 SH>> conventional frag-type device.  He said that if it had been one of
 SH>> the new devices they are seeing - likely provided by Iran - Josh and
 SH>> several others would have died.  The new ones discharge some sort of
 SH>> copper material which cuts through people and HUMVEEs "like butter,"
 SH>> he said.

 VH> Precision shaped charges -- very deadly.

 SH>> Around lunch today, I stopped by to see Becky Lauritzen at her shop
 SH>> to update her on Mike's status.  Her son Micah has just returned
 SH>> from Iraq after a tour there with his Marine unit.  Like my son,
 SH>> Micah is Infantry - they both enlisted at the same time, with Mike
 SH>> choosing the Army.  Becky said that she asked Micah if he would tell
 SH>> her about his time in Iraq.  He answered, "I will tell some but not
 SH>> all.  Some of it stays with me,"  she said.

 VH> I understand.

 SH>> When I left Becky's shop in my truck, I drove past Ada Large locking
 SH>> up her shop for lunch.  Her son Sam was killed about a year ago
 SH>> along with several other Marines in a helicopter crash off the coast
 SH>> of Africa.  Sam was the fourth young man to die from this area
 SH>> during the war.

 SH>> Mike is tentatively scheduled to deploy home in June, and Micah is
 SH>> scheduled to re-deploy to Iraq at the end of the year.

 SH>> Today is a beautiful day in small-town Georgia, sunny and about 75
 SH>> degrees, but I'll be damned if the day doesn't feel like something
 SH>> out of a David Lynch movie.

 VH> Recall what we did for the WWII vets?  We gave them everything.  And
 VH> we had 8,000,000 of them.  Now the country has twice the population,
 VH> and only 10% of the number of veterans -- and this was is as
 VH> dangerous to our existance as WWII.  Why can we not give these vets
 VH> what they deserve?

One factoid that hasn't come up in the brouhaha over WRAMC is that the
Pentagon has been quietly downsizing or closing military hospitals on active
bases since at least 2004.  The former 200 bed regional medical center at
Offutt
AFB is now a walk-in clinic (open 1000-2000, where the emergency room used
to be).  No specialists, no surgery, no inpatient capacity; anything beyond
bandaids
is referred to a civilian hospital 7 miles west.  I've also noted that the
number of
uniformed staff in the building has been decreasing and the number of civilians
working there is increasing.  AFAIK the nearest military hospital to Offutt is
at
Fort Riley, KS (assuming it's still there), after that is probably Fitzsimmons
in
Denver (assuming that's still there).  It doesn't seem to be a money problem - 
the Offutt facility has been completely worked over inside over the past couple
of
years, and the waiting areas ('Urgent Care Center', pharmacy, physicians'
offices)
now have brand new 50+ inch flat screen televisions mounted on the wall (and
all
are connected to commercial cable TV rather than having ordinary antennas).

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)