Word: soldierly
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Forty steps. Each one is a gamble: lift, lunge, tilt, then land with a stab of the foot she can't feel. The soldier who came out of Iraq on a stretcher and back to the States in a wheelchair can now, seven months later, take 40 steps by herself. Each one is a victory...
This is a story of the unseen war--and the grim, quiet battles that take place when wounded soldiers arrive home. What happened to members of the 2nd Squad of the 1st Platoon--who call themselves the War Machine--of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company is a tale that has never been told. Soldiers have been wounded in war since the beginning of time--a fact that armies never like advertising. The Pentagon, which makes terse announcements when U.S. soldiers die in combat in Iraq, doesn't inform the public about those who have been wounded or release month...
...American soldiers in the current Iraq war have a better chance of surviving those wounds and getting back home than any other soldiers in history. Better protection, faster evacuation and improved medical techniques at the edge of combat have dramatically reduced battlefield mortality. At the same time, although body armor and wound-sealing potions have made it less likely that soldiers will be killed in battle, they have also increased the likelihood of certain kinds of injuries, especially amputation, because a soldier's extremities remain vulnerable to the kind of homemade munitions the Iraqis are routinely deploying. The Iraqis lack...
...internal bleeding and collapsed lungs. The ultrasound devices also can be used to locate shrapnel deeply buried in a thigh or torso. The teams also carry football-size electronic equipment for monitoring a patient's vital signs, small anesthetic-delivery devices and portable ventilators that help a wounded soldier breathe...
Early-morning light spills into the physical-therapy room at Walter Reed, as wounded soldiers sweat and grimace aboard stationary bicycles. Each man is steadily grinding out the miles with a single leg, his crutches leaning against a nearby wall. This morning happy-go-lucky PFC Wyatt meets with Joseph Miller, the hospital's chief prosthetist, who makes wounded soldiers close to whole again with man-made arms and legs. The types of wounds coming back from Iraq--blast and shrapnel injuries--make his job tougher. "Those kinds of injuries mean more infections and multiple surgeries," he says. Wyatt nods...