Reading the excellent book, The Gift of Valor, by Michael M. Phillips, it's hard not to be struck by what really is a side point in the book: the writer's depictions of the emotional hardship the medical personnel go through at the various trauma stations the wounded from the Iraq war go through on their way back to the United States. No matter where the medical personnel are located, in aid stations in Iraq, at Landstuhl in Germany, even back in the U.S., or who they are, it seems they're generally unprepared for the sheer level of trauma they're encountering, and what it's going to feel like emotionally to see and treat one after another badly injured veteran. Many of these doctors and nurses who deliver exceptional care under the circumstances, worked in fairly unrelated roles before -- dentistry, psychology, pediatric and ob/gyn specialties -- that while providing them with a medical background really didn't give them exposure to the types of injuries and hardships they're experiencing day after day in the current war. In some of Phillips' descriptions, you see the doctors and nurses clamming up or turning away or crying profusely, because it's hard to control their emotions, under the circumstances. Very understandably, naturally.
An excellent article in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal (coincidentally, the newspaper where Phillips is a staff reporter), by Sue Diaz, a freelance writer who's also the mother of a soldier in Iraq, makes a similar point. The hardships of war -- including its searing trauma -- are borne by and endured and affect, not just by those who go, but also by those who are in their immediate circle of community. As Diaz writes:
"My son has learned much about life the hard way lately. But it seems to me there’s something he doesn’t as yet completely comprehend or perhaps has come to understand far too well. It is this: When he and his men are out on a mission, they are not alone. Whether we agree with this war or not, those of us who love them are out there, too, moms and dads, kids and cousins, sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends.
"Every time an insurgent bomb blows apart a Humvee or a squad on foot patrol, the shock waves from the blast reverberate in small towns like Wheeler, Texas, and big cities like San Diego. A young private takes a bullet; back at home his father’s heart bleeds. A soldier loses a leg; his wife struggles in the days that follow to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other. A sergeant’s eardrum is perforated; his mother hears the explosion in her dreams, time and time again. Truth is, the casualties of war go far beyond the numbers from the Pentagon. Love gives us no choice."
