Article Published: Sunday, November 23, 2003
Troops' horrific injuries are conflict's hidden cost
By Erin Emery and John Aloysius Farrell
Denver Post Staff Writers
COLORADO SPRINGS - Sgt. David Pettigrew remembers the night.
He remembers the bang as the rocket-propelled grenade exploded, remembers the blood and the acrid stench, remembers himself "screaming nonsensical bloody murder" over the platoon com system.
He remembers his buddies in the 4th Infantry Division, their shouts and cries as they struggled to get a tourniquet on his leg, and he remembers the stare of his sergeant, who looked at him, "and you could see in his eyes that he thinks that something is massively and horribly wrong."
And Pettigrew, then a corporal, remembers the orthopedic ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and seeing all the amputees back from Iraq.
"It's a crazy place," he says. "It's filled with young guys like me who are all blown up.
"There was a guy there who was missing both legs and an arm," the 26-year-old soldier says. "My last roommate had no hands left at all."
Pettigrew is home in Colorado Springs, learning how to walk on a prosthetic leg and dealing with the memories of that midnight patrol near Tikrit on July 8, when the grenade came shrieking out of the darkness and struck his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
Others have taken his place at Walter Reed; the Iraq war yields no shortage of patients.
"I would like to tell you business is bad at Walter Reed, but business is good," says the commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley.
As the first stop for many of those injured in Iraq, Walter Reed, in the nation's capital, admits about 10 new patients from Iraq a day, Kiley said. The National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md., also is busy with casualties. As is Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. As are base hospitals and VA facilities near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Carson in Colorado Springs and other sites around the country.
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Critics say the Bush administration has tried to downplay the human toll of the conflict in Iraq.
"They want the good-news stories; they don't want the stories of sacrifice," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans' group.
There are no public ceremonies for the dead coming back through the military receiving center in Dover, Del. The flights of wounded personnel heading for Walter Reed often arrive at night at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
"The wounded are brought back after midnight, making sure the press does not see the planes coming in," U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said recently on the Senate floor. "These are not a broken wrist or scratched leg. These are terrible wounds: lost limbs, lost eyesight, lifetime disabilities."
It is "something the administration prefers not to talk about," Leahy said.
The Department of Defense would not comment on the criticisms.
Some of those wounded share the feeling that the price they're paying is not fully recognized by the public, the government or the media.
"They seem to underplay it a lot," said Pfc. Tristan Wyatt, of Franktown, who is being treated at Walter Reed after losing his right leg in an August ambush. "They think the war is over, and it's not. It's getting worse and worse with everybody coming here wounded.
"They say 'wounded' like they have a cast, or a splinter. There are people who lost both legs, in wheelchairs, here. That's not wounded: that's (expletive) up. They're giving everything they have for this cause," Wyatt said.
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"Most of the casualties coming back are all orthopedics because of the body armor and the ballistic helmets that they're wearing," said Air Force Col. Elisha Powell, an orthopedic surgeon with the 10th Medical Group at the Air Force Academy. "Basically ... you either have an orthopedic injury or you're dead. If it penetrates the body armor, there's not much we can do for you."
"We don't have the sucking chest wounds" seen so often in Vietnam, said Marianne Coates, director of communications for the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Indeed, the demand for body armor is so high that the military is rushing to fill shortages in Iraq.
Another improvement involves time. There is an initial "golden hour" when a man or woman wounded in combat needs to be treated for loss of blood, shock and other urgent needs, said the U.S. Navy surgeon general, Vice Adm. Michael Cowan. "You have to stop the dying process, before you get to the point to start the healing process."
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Staff writer Erin Emery reported on this story from Colorado Springs, Denver Post Washington bureau chief John Aloysius Farrell from the Washington area. The story was written by Farrell.