Stripes: Trauma surgeon deals with horrors of IEDs injuries

Before he returned to active duty last year, Army Reserve Maj. Donald W. Robinson was a civilian trauma surgeon at Cooper Hospital in Camden, N.J., a city known as the “murder capital” of America.

Nothing Robinson saw in Camden, however, came close to the horrors he and his surgical teams with the 86th Combat Support Hospital faced in Baghdad, from last December through July this year.

“I expected to see a lot of penetrating trauma because those were the reports coming out of Iraq,” Robinson said in a phone interview from his current assignment at Fort Benning, Ga. “When I got there I was taken aback. This was penetrating trauma to the nth degree. It was massive. The tissue destruction was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

more....

http://stripes.com/article.asp?article=33452

working with the impact of Vietnam on the mental health, not only of vets, but also their families, I shudder to think what we have coming from this war. In my own estimation the more urban nature the warfare in Iraq will have a worse impact than the guerilla warfare of the jungles and villages in S.E. Asia. The other thing all of us have to remember is that the mental health impacts go on for decades after the physical scars are "healed."

freak at any unexpected movement in the woods. And I mean "freak" like start firing immediately at anything that moved (or didn't, sometimes).
So I stayed out of the woods for a few years.
Being a PBR pilot, I also could not stand to be on a boat on a river. I still have a hard time with this. And to this day jump practically out of my skin at loud sharp reports.

But these troops are coming home to buildings, streets, cars, and strangers.

God help them.

Every week there in a section called "Sound off!" they ask a question and show answers and pictures of four soldiers &/or family members.

This week's question: What's on your holiday wish list this year?

One answered to see his daughter who lives with her mother.
One answered to be with family before she deployed.
One answered to get a good care package while he is also deployed.
The other answer was heartbreaking...

Sgt. F. Garren said: "A new leg." In parentheses it says his leg was injured by an IED in Iraq.

Very sad.

If you have it, please post. I need to keep tabs on that paper.

Thanks for the info.

On edit: "cannot find server"

If you can bring it up, please do post the URL. Danke.

and the only URL they give is for Fort Carson's website: www.carson.army.mil
Nothing for the actual paper. I can't find it online. :shrug:

That's too bad.

The past few weeks they don't seem to deliver to housing anymore, at least not my neighborhood. I happened to see it at the Px and picked it up.