I talked to my stepfather last night. He has been on active duty - stateside - as the lead doctor at a Marine Base (the regular guys were sent overseas). His tour is about up, he is retiring in May, but he will be returning to his position at a VA hospital, so he is really not getting out.
The previous weekend we talked about the Marines that have returned from Iraq and their wounds. My stepfather told me about the incredible wounds that IEDs caused and how these men and women, many of them just kids, will be scared for the rest of their lives. He told me how in all his time in the military (entered during Vietnam as a medic) he had never been more concerned about what was going to happen to veterans as he was now.
This time, I asked him about the Woodruff attack.
"About Fuckin' Time!!" he screamed, "Maybe the Country will wake up!"
Let me state for the record that my stepfather and I pray for the families of Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt, I hope that they make it through this ordeal and get to rejoin their lives. But they are now members of an ever growing population in this country - victims of the horrors of war and its new tool: The IED.
From the reports, Woodruff is recoving from severe brain swelling. He had to have part of his skull cap removed to assist in relieving the pressure. He has a good chance of pulling through, but he will be a changed man. Will he become a war critic? I don't know and I don't care. I just wish he survives so he can live to see his children grow.
However, my hope, like that of my stepfather is that this will wake up Americans who don't know a soldier or marine or sailor or airman that has perished in this war to see what is really going on in Iraq. My stepfather stated that with Vietnam, there was hardly a person in the country that did not know someone that went off to Vietnam and didn't come home or came home, but not 100% whole. That got the message out and Walter Cronkite. When the human connection of loss with no real national gain was made with the majority of Americans, the tide turned.
Now here is someone who came into millions of American homes each night who was almost killed by a device that has killed and maimed thousands of our men and women in uniform. Maybe now some of them will finally get it.
It is sad that it has come to this to get peoples' attentions. But maybe it will save thousands of other people from the same fate.
God Bless you and Heal you, Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt. I look forward to the day you return to what you do best - telling the story of human events.