31st CSH (Stars N' Stripes Report from Baghdad Military ER)

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=22091

He remembers fire exploding in his face, being pulled from his burning Humvee and put aboard the chopper that brought him to this hospital room. He remembers pain: he never lost consciousness, until doctors anesthetized him to amputate his left leg below the knee.

No, said Wessam Fadhel, 21, who joined the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps four months ago, he never imagined things would turn out this way. Three U.S. soldiers died in the roadside bomb attack that maimed him, he says. Tears seep from the corners of his eyes.

A few rooms over, Pfc. Christopher Bebo, 20, is recovering from a collision with a truck full of bricks that sheared his Humvee in half. He has a broken collarbone, a fractured kneecap and a torn bicep, and no memory at all of the crash — or even the past two months he’s spent in Iraq.

“They said it might come back,” he says. “If it doesn’t, I’m not going to be too sorry.”

An Iraqi woman in a black hajib one floor down has brought her son to visit the ophthalmologist. Mohammed, 6, was playing last year in south Baghdad when he stepped on a cluster bomb. It exploded, destroying his right eye and peppering his small face with scars. Now doctors here have agreed to surgically repair what damage they can, and his mother is grateful. “I love America,” Nooriga Salih says in English. “I love you.”



To get a read of what's happening, "take a look at people's boots," says the hospital's executive officer, Lt. Col. Steve Smith. These are the boots of Maj. John Hammock, chief of the emergency room.

I imagine she fears the consequences of saying what she really thinks about an American bomb shredding her son's face.