Nightmare At Walter Reed
If you can read this article without weeping, you are far tougher than I. How can we countenance treating wounded soldiers this way?
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely — a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them — the majority soldiers, with some Marines — have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially — they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 — that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
Read the rest, but be warned that it just gets more heartbreaking.
February 18th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I would like to believe that there are some places heating up in hell for all the people responsible for creating this hell here for our vets.
February 18th, 2007 at 4:02 am
This pretty much says it all:
“If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can’t they have Spanish-speaking translators when he’s injured?” Morales asked. “It’s so confusing, so disorienting.”
February 18th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Maybe Douglas MacArthur should have said, “Old soldiers never die. They just waste away.” This is a sad state of affairs, but two acronyms much in vogue during my military service come to mind — SNAFU AND FUBAR.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I’ve knocked around the military my entire life and have always cringed about the VA and the healthcare out wonderful vets have received.
As a healthcare worker today, I know that when we deal with a VA patient we’ve got our hands full, usually of BS.
God bless them.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:52 am
I’m not going to assign blame here, BL. I don’t give a damn if it’s the administration’s fault, or Congress’ fault or the military’s or the friggin tooth fairy’s. This has got to be fixed. No excuse is acceptable from anyone. Spend the money and fix it. Period.
February 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I’m a child of the military. It’s not gonna get any better. But let’s send some more troops over and compound the problem anyway!
February 19th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
This story and the follow on on Monday’s Washington Post makes me disgusted! Where is the issue of comand accounability. The whole system is broke, fix it and not excuses! Fire a few people within the command structure while you at it.