HUFF POST: A 22-year-old Marine Corps corporal, Southern is just one of a growing number of young Americans — 16,000 or more, so far, out of 2.3 million American troops sent overseas — who volunteered for Iraq or Afghanistan and came back alive but catastrophically wounded…
Proportionately fewer American troops are being killed outright on the battlefield, thanks in part to better protective equipment and improved medical care. “We are stealing some people from death,” Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Caravalho, a senior Army medical officer, told me at the Pentagon.
Still, more Americans are being wounded in combat. And their wounds are more severe and complex, raising difficult issues for military medicine and for the nation on which disabled soldiers will depend for a lifetime of care… (more)
