NYT: Healing, With New Limbs and Fragile Dreams

[leftchick]

Flight medics prepare Lance Cpl. Matthew Schilling for a flight from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/national/12WOUNDED.html?ex=1297400400&en=476fb31d9ac9e01e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

It was a victory for Lance Cpl. Matthew Schilling to walk into the upper gallery of the House of Representatives on Jan. 31 for the State of the Union address. He wore his dress blues and a prosthetic leg. Five months earlier, he had been carried on a stretcher, wounded and bleeding, into a hospital in Iraq after a roadside bomb exploded 10 feet from him.

The blast tore through his right foot and calf and blew a hole through his left hand. But hearing President Bush speak confidently of victory in Iraq, Corporal Schilling, a smooth-faced Marine reservist and college student from Portersville, Pa., who grew up on a cattle farm, felt again that his sacrifice had been worth it.

"I felt really proud when all those people I met that night thanked me for my service," said Corporal Schilling, 21, who attended with his wife, Leigh Ann, as guests of their congresswoman, Representative Melissa A. Hart, a Republican.

Yet when the Schillings returned to the Mologne House, a hotel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for wounded soldiers and their families, Corporal Schilling found that wearing his prosthesis that night had taken a toll. Blood blisters had formed on his stump, and he was soon back in a wheelchair facing more surgery.

<snip>

Explosions have killed 1,123 American service members in Iraq and have wounded at least 10 times more, often with a devastating combination of injuries — ruptured organs and severed spines, obliterated limbs and burst eyeballs.



.... Much more, it is horrible what the US Government has done to these people. :cry:

[FlemingsGhost]

1. Pawn. Cannon fodder. And now ...

a fresh face for the propaganda machine.

Poor, dumb bastard just can't get it right, can he?

[Olney Blue]

2. I want our troops home NOW.

:cry:

[Skittles]

3. I wish he would not allow himself to be used for sickening propaganda

he will realize one day what republicans truly mean - it will be a very rude awakening for him

[bluestateguy]

4. If I was supreme dictator of America

These veterans would be taken care of for the rest of their life by Good Old Uncle Sam: health care, a nice house to live, a college education, and the job of their choice (if they wanted to work).

[unhappycamper]

5. This article is a most worthy (and sad) read.

The kid's lives have been forever changed. It's so sad. . . .

K&R