Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Women Amputees: Toll of War, "Sorrowing Lies My Land"
They are the ones we don't read much about. Women combat amputees. The Post article by Donna St. George describes the experience of a few of them."Their numbers are small, 11 in three years of war, compared with more than 350 men. They are not quite a band of sisters, but more a chain of women linked by history and experience and fate -- one extending herself to another who then might offer something for the next."
Latest data from Iraq Coalition Casualties:- They have discovered, at various points of their recovery, that gender has made a difference -- "not better or worse," as Halfaker put it, "just different."
- For Halfaker, an athlete with a strong sense of her physical self, the world was transformed June 19, 2004, on a night patrol through Baqubah, Iraq. Out of nowhere had come the rocket-propelled grenade, exploding behind her head.
- Another soldier's arm was sheared off. Blood was everywhere.
- "Get us out of the kill zone!" she yelled to the Humvee driver. She was a 24-year-old first lieutenant, a platoon leader who two months earlier had led her unit in repulsing a six-hour attack on a police station in Diyala province. As medics worked to stabilize her, she warned: "You bastards better not cut my arm off."
In March 2006: 50
Total since beginning of the war: 2378 (Female fatalities 57)
Injured (not returned to duty): 8058
Injured (returned to duty): 9491
Civilians killed by military intervention in Iraq: 34,511 (Minimum) 38,660 (Maximum)
Source: Iraq Body Count
"War hath no fury like a noncombatant"
Note: "Sorrowing Lies My Land" is the title of a book by the Goan author Lambert Mascarenhas. It was written long before the unjustified war in Iraq.
