An intimate look at war amputees' journey

An intimate look at war amputees' journey
Sunday, October 15, 2006
MIKE FRANCIS
C asualty counters already know the gruesome, underreported toll of the war in Iraq: For every U.S. serviceperson killed, about seven or eight others are wounded. Thanks to advances in battlefield medicine and armor, more of the wounded survive now than would have survived earlier wars.
Yet we don't hear as much about the wounded, despite the smattering of news stories from places like Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Brooke Army Medical Center, where amputees undergo therapy. The Defense Department doesn't report statistics for the wounded in the same way it does for those killed, nor do reporters spend as much time studying the slow-moving dramas of people trying to reassemble their lives. That's why a book that takes a long, intimate look at the issue is welcome.