G
gilliam
Guest
Walking the Line IV [Michael Yon]
Baghdad, Iraq
I am supposed to meet CSM Mellinger in twenty minutes for a trip to “the cash.” He visits hospitalized soldiers twice per week…
The doctors, nurses and other staff seem pleased to see Mellinger and eager to start guiding us to the patients. Our first stop is by the room of an American soldier. He’s got a bad thigh wound…
We head down the hallway and into a room with two patients; an Iraqi man who is unconscious and breathing erratically, and little Iraqi girl. A nurse says the girl is eleven. She is sedated, her face is very pink, her skin has been burned. She has no shirt and her chest and stomach are smooth and without injury. She breathes slowly and regularly but her hands are horribly burned, charred and cracked, covered in some kind of medicine. She’s been here for three weeks, a nurse explains, but the girl has a long way to go before she can be released.
The girl could have been blown to bits, but the flash of the bomb only burned her, searing her skin as if over a grill. Flash burns are common; soldiers often cut-off the fingers of their gloves for better dexterity, only to end up with charred finger tips, such as this little girl suffered on her hands and face. The mercy of her sedation doesn’t extend to her visitors, visibly upset to see one so little so badly hurt. The Australian slowly shakes his head.
“Where are her parents,” I asked the nurse. Her father is living at the hospital until his child can get skin grafts. The staff provides her father—along with any other parents of wounded children—rooms to live in, and meals while they stay and care for their children. The Australian sailor looks saddened as he puts a stuffed animal at the foot of her bed.
Laying in a bed close to the burned girl is a man who’s been shot three times in the torso. He’s an insurgent.
[There is a lot more … warning: this is a real war, and what he is reporting is really what it is like. The good, bad and ugly ]
Hat Tip
Baghdad, Iraq
I am supposed to meet CSM Mellinger in twenty minutes for a trip to “the cash.” He visits hospitalized soldiers twice per week…
The doctors, nurses and other staff seem pleased to see Mellinger and eager to start guiding us to the patients. Our first stop is by the room of an American soldier. He’s got a bad thigh wound…
We head down the hallway and into a room with two patients; an Iraqi man who is unconscious and breathing erratically, and little Iraqi girl. A nurse says the girl is eleven. She is sedated, her face is very pink, her skin has been burned. She has no shirt and her chest and stomach are smooth and without injury. She breathes slowly and regularly but her hands are horribly burned, charred and cracked, covered in some kind of medicine. She’s been here for three weeks, a nurse explains, but the girl has a long way to go before she can be released.
The girl could have been blown to bits, but the flash of the bomb only burned her, searing her skin as if over a grill. Flash burns are common; soldiers often cut-off the fingers of their gloves for better dexterity, only to end up with charred finger tips, such as this little girl suffered on her hands and face. The mercy of her sedation doesn’t extend to her visitors, visibly upset to see one so little so badly hurt. The Australian slowly shakes his head.
“Where are her parents,” I asked the nurse. Her father is living at the hospital until his child can get skin grafts. The staff provides her father—along with any other parents of wounded children—rooms to live in, and meals while they stay and care for their children. The Australian sailor looks saddened as he puts a stuffed animal at the foot of her bed.
Laying in a bed close to the burned girl is a man who’s been shot three times in the torso. He’s an insurgent.
[There is a lot more … warning: this is a real war, and what he is reporting is really what it is like. The good, bad and ugly ]
Hat Tip