If you have ever read any of my work you know I am a harsh critic of television in general. From time to time there is a program that gives me hope that television hasn’t turned into a vast wasteland of inane garbage that we mindlessly use to kill time. Even rarer are the programs that unquestionably inform and move and compel a person to think about something they rarely spend enough time thinking about…but we should. This past weekend CNN aired a remarkable program called “Combat Hospital" which depicted the true life and death events in a military trauma center in Baghdad. These are my thoughts and feelings after I watched the program.
The cries of anger and pain and fear were caught up in the blades of the huge evacuation chopper. The huge oars tilled through the air faster and faster attempting to lift the monstrous machine off the ground. All the while, the sounds of the wounded humanity within were grabbed and ripped and disbursed into the roar of the rotors until the deafening sounds of the machine removed the voices from the battlefield.
The huge machine once airborne changed from an awkward, cumbersome mechanism into a swift, elegant bird of hope as it sped through the sky to the combat hospital. There the doctors and nurses stood at the ready to whisk the young soldiers off the chopper and into the make-shift hospital that was a constant hive of repair and restoration and for too many, death.
The young doctors and nurses were interviewed from time to time. They were all soldiers themselves who through some twist of fate or personal decision now found themselves in a hospital ward they had help build out of medical supplies and field equipment and left over furniture from Hussein’s reign as dictator of Iraq.
One young captain, an army surgeon, repressed a smile as he advised us all that although it didn’t look like much, it got the job done…when the job of saving a life was possible that is.
The visions of the wounded were real and unedited. The traumas were not staged; the blood was not brought in from some prop department’s bag of illusions. The scenes were of real blood and terrible wounds amidst the voices of young soldiers asking if they were going to be alright as personnel worked furiously on their wounds. There were the faces of young nurses bent over the young soldiers telling them that they would be. A doctor told one badly wounded soldier he was going to amputate his left leg. The doctor later told the camera, “These brave men deserve to be told the truth".
In some instances there were life ending failures. Although common in all wars these men were given the individuality of respect that never come from the reports in the news that throw out numbers of dead or wounded with no more humanity behind them than the numbers of a temperature or a pollen count.
Here in this story was the vulgar reality of war without the slogans or catchphrases that have polarized a civilian population back at home. Here there could not be heard “Stay the Course’ or “Cut and Run" or the “War on Terror" In those rooms only the sounds of machines and doctors and nurses shouting directions to stop the bleeding or the firm, yet pleading request for a soldier to “Stay with me" were heard.
The buddies and commanders of the wounded were there in those stories. Many of them had tears in their eyes as a lifelong friend they had known for perhaps only months lay critically wounded. If you were ever a soldier you understand the previous sentence is not a mistake in grammar.
We were allowed to see the sorrow and the anger and the despair in the commander’s words as another one of their own was now damaged and needing to be put back together. In their comments, the pride in being on the same field with their comrades never left the tenor of their voices whether trembling or through sobs. It is a pride of fellowship that none of the high priced, expensively dressed media pundits or politicians on the airwaves can understand nor ever know. One such soldier crashed to the ground in a dead faint in the lobby waiting word of his men. A doctor explained the reality of bringing in his wounded men and “gathering their parts" before being evacuated had been too much for him.
In the entire program there was never a mention of politics. Bullets and bomb fragments don’t carry such catalog. These destructors are orphans to our politics being born instead from millennia of religious and cultural hatred that we have seen fit to place our young soldiers amidst. In that make shift hospital there is no debate over right or wrong. There is no asking if a wounded soldier is a republican or a democrat. There are only the questions asked of what can be done to save the life of another of our finest. There is no time in an army field hospital to debate the why. There is hardly enough time to debate what must be done to save a life.
For some of the soldiers, like the program itself, their story is now over. There will be a small blurb in the local paper how the town hero has come home to be buried with honors. The tales are becoming so commonplace to the point the term hero has lost its defining edge. We as a nation have polluted the word anyway. We throw it around for someone scoring a touchdown or kicking a goal or winning a golf tournament to the point our soldiers deserve being called something more than heroes. I wish I knew what the word was. Surely God in his infinite wisdom knows it as he takes each of them to his breast whether today or decades from now.
For other soldiers, numbering 10,000 or more, who have permanent disabilities from this war, they are thrown a quick parade and given a town key and a nice article in the newspaper and then they are left on their own with only the help of family and friends and a criminally under funded veterans administration to help them exist through the rest of their lives. We can find all the money we need to chase agenda and can spend obscene sums chasing political ambitions but we cannot find the funds to support those whose purpose as our warriors is no longer possible. We chose to disregard them as we would a week old newspaper that no longer has any purpose or interest to us.
They were soldiers once. They were some of the finest among us and now that they are damaged or spent and we don’t have the time or the money to give them what we have seen taken from them. More than just soldiers bleed in those field hospitals. Our humanity and gratefulness as a nation ebbs away as well. With each drop of blood on those tables and floors, we are less as a nation than we were before.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
» left by robert melaccio sr. (2 years 4 days ago.)
Outstanding article!It reminds me of "We Were Soldiers"! I have written much out of the hurt in my heart. I have come to the realization that while there is much good in our nation there are other agendas at work. Perhaps our leaders, who profess to be troubled, should be in one of these units for a day or so? Maybe then they will understand you don't go to war on a wim and ill equiped in plan and material and you go there to win! The blood is on us all for not being committed in total! Respond to this comment
» left by Mike Fak(4,652) Mike Fak (2 years 3 days ago.)
Thank you Robert. I use to take comfort in my friends and classmates who died in VietNam with the feeling that they had helped us learn a terrible lesson not to get stuck in the mier of another unstable country. Unfortunately our leaders don't walk the wall in Washington or this mess wouldn't be. Thanks again. Mike Respond to this comment
» left by David Tanguay from Jennings,Fl. (2 years 2 days ago.)
Yeah Mike behind the scenes is where many of the real heroes are. The doctors working beyond human endurance, to save lives. It takes a special kind of man or woman to have the courage to deal with the horrifying realities of war. To restore a body which has been torn apart, all they see is a human being that needs to go on living. “God bless them”
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