Monday, February 19, 2007
Casualties of War
Residents of Mologne House
The follow up to yesterday's article in the Washington Post about Walter Reed Hospital is heartrending. To think that there will be more wounded soldiers who will go through the experience described so movingly by Anne Hull and Dana Priest, and the unwillingness of the Bush Administration to heed public opinion here in America and overseas is frustrating. The president is staying the course as he sees it. He gives speeches about making sacrifice and the numbers of dead and wounded soldiers keep going up. So many of them in their twenties, and some below legal drinking age.
The nation owes them. That is not questioned. But is everything possible being done for their recovery and rehabilitation ? For some, the life they knew is gone forever. For others there is hope. They must receive all the help they need.
*****
The Hotel Aftermath Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons By Anne Hull and Dana Priest Washington Post Monday, February 19, 2007 Excerpts The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water. But the wounded of Mologne House are still soldiers -- Hooah! -- so their lives are ruled by platoon sergeants. Each morning they must rise at dawn for formation, though many are half-snowed on pain meds and sleeping pills. Mostly what the soldiers do together is wait: for appointments, evaluations, signatures and lost paperwork to be found. It's like another wife told Annette McLeod: "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will." When a smooth-cheeked soldier with no legs orders a fried chicken dinner and two bottles of grape soda to go, a kitchen worker comes out to his wheelchair and gently places the Styrofoam container on his lap. A scrawny young soldier sits alone in his wheelchair at a nearby table, his eyes closed and his chin dropped to his chest, an empty Corona bottle in front of him. Those who aren't old enough to buy a drink at the bar huddle outside near a magnolia tree and smoke cigarettes. Wearing hoodies and furry bedroom slippers, they look like kids at summer camp who've crept out of their rooms, except some have empty pants legs or limbs pinned by medieval-looking hardware. Medication is a favorite topic. "Dude, [expletive] Paxil saved my life." "I been on methadone for a year, I'm tryin' to get off it." "I didn't take my Seroquel last night and I had nightmares of charred bodies, burned crispy like campfire marshmallows." Mologne House is afloat on a river of painkillers and antipsychotic drugs. One night, a strapping young infantryman loses it with a woman who is high on her son's painkillers. "Quit taking all the soldier medicine!" he screams. Pill bottles clutter the nightstands: pills for depression or insomnia, to stop nightmares and pain, to calm the nerves. Months roll by and life becomes a blue-and-gold hotel room where the bathroom mirror shows the naked disfigurement of war's ravages. There are toys in the lobby of Mologne House because children live here. Domestic disputes occur because wives or girlfriends have moved here. Financial tensions are palpable. After her husband's traumatic injury insurance policy came in, one wife cleared out with the money. Older National Guard members worry about the jobs they can no longer perform back home. While Mologne House has a full bar, there is not one counselor or psychologist assigned there to assist soldiers and families in crisis -- an idea proposed by Walter Reed social workers but rejected by the military command that runs the post. After a while, the bizarre becomes routine. On Friday nights, antiwar protesters stand outside the gates of Walter Reed holding signs that say "Love Troops, Hate War, Bring them Home Now." Inside the gates, doctors in white coats wait at the hospital entrance for the incoming bus full of newly wounded soldiers who've just landed at Andrews Air Force Base. And set back from the gate, up on a hill, Mologne House, with a bowl of red apples on the front desk. At Mologne House, the rooms empty and fill, empty and fill. The lobby chandelier glows and the bowl of red apples waits on the front desk. An announcement goes up for Texas Hold 'Em poker in the bar. One cold night an exhausted mother with two suitcases tied together with rope shows up at the front desk and says, "I am here for my son." And so it begins. |
