Reading “War, Literature & the Arts” Again

Here’s an excerpt from another post on the blog I quoted from a few days ago, “War, Literature & the Arts.”

This post is by the same person who wrote the post I quoted from a few days ago: James Moad II. From what self gleans from his posts, he is apparently stationed at a U.S. base in Germany. The title of this post is “The Poet and the Wounded Warrior’s Return.” Moad had to visit a military hospital for damage to a rotator cuff, and here is what he witnessed:

As I left the hospital, passing by the ER, I watched a crowd of medical personnel gather around a bus that had just arrived. They began offloading stretchers, one after another, filled with the wounded warriors who’d arrived at Ramstein Air Base just a few hours before on C-17s. I examined their faces, and after twenty years of service, many looked like little boys to me. With IVs hovering above blanketed bodies, the stretchers moved briskly past me toward surgeons and doctors waiting to treat the physical wounds of war. After watching the scene unfold before me, returning to the U.S. for surgery seemed like a modest inconvenience.

Moad goes on to recount watching an episode of Frontline while recuperating in Colorado Springs. From there, he discusses post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is a very, very interesting post.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.