Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the released POW, is being treated at Brooke Army Medical Center. It's in the news every day. And every day, as always happens with any mention of Brooke, memories never far from my consciousness come flooding back.
On another occasion like this a few years ago, I wrote down a few thoughts. Now, as the United States contemplates getting back into the war in Iraq, I found myself rereading them.
In 1967, I was a corpsman in the army, stationed at Fort Sam Houston and working the night shift in the E.R. at Brooke Army Hospital. One of my jobs was to assist transferring patients arriving from Vietnam at Kelly Air Force Base.
The inside of the planes was not well lit. There were a few seats up front for the guys who could walk. The rest of the compartment had litters along the sides, suspended by straps from the ceiling with the IV bottles. There were usually two flight nurses who looked like they needed about six weeks off. They radioed ahead specifying the type of transport needed and they decided who was taken off first.
Once there was a colonel out there, dressed in his Class A best, whose job was to welcome these guys home and give them Purple Hearts. The colonel's job wasn't easy and no one — not the wounded, the nurses, the corpsman or the drivers — tried to make it easier for him. I can still see him standing there looking completely helpless and useless.
I had a friend who was an X-ray tech who also worked the night shift. One of his jobs was to do chest X-rays every morning for the patients in the burn unit. The severely burned were particularly susceptible to infection, especially pneumonia. A few times, when I wasn't busy in the E.R., I helped him get the X-rays done by passing him the cassettes and taking those exposed. We passed them between us in a way that he could get a sterile slipcover on them to protect the wounds from contact with the cassettes. The burn unit staff helped position the cassettes and move the patients as needed.
I wasn't allowed in there; everyone was dressed as if in surgery. I could see the patients through the glass. That's as close as I got, yet those images have been with me ever since. I tried to imagine the horror for the wounded and their families who wouldn't be able to recognize their sons. And, of course, I couldn't.
Wounded who survived the burn unit back then were transferred to another hospital building called Beach Pavilion, where I occasionally had business. Once I found myself on the burn step-down unit, where the patients where trying to rehab themselves while undergoing skin grafting, surgeries to relieve contractures and simply trying to learn to cope. There was a guy sitting in a chair wearing a hospital gown and robe. Every part of his body visible — his head, neck, arms, hands and lower legs — was burned. He had no ears. His nose was a tiny knob with the nostrils looking large and way out of proportion. His fingers were little stubs. It was impossible to guess his age.
