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Caring for the Wounded

The New England Journal of Medicine is running a photo essay in this week’s edition entitled “Caring for the Wounded in Iraq.” Like the photojournalistic work I mentioned a few days ago, “Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq,” it’s a glimpse at the reality that hides behind statistics like the number of U.S. troops wounded in action (nearly 10,000).

You can find the photo essay here (or go here for a PDF version). The photographs are mostly unsparing clinical images of soldiers who have suffered severe trauma. “High-energy gunshot wound passing through knee” is one of the typically dispassionate captions. To me, the pictures testify to two things: the extraordinary destructive power of modern weapons, even the improvised ones wielded by the Iraqi guerrillas; and the near-miraculous capacities of medical technology. The doctors and nurses you see in the pictures are using every means at their disposal to save bodies torn apart by explosives and shrapnel. In many cases, they’re succeeding. (As “Purple Hearts” testifies, though, it’s not as easy to put the people back together.)

Once again, I’m reminded of one of Walt Whitman’s Civil War poems, “The Wound-Dresser.” The hospital scene and means of treatment he depicts are primitive by our standards. But the sense of heartbreaking destruction of lives is the same:

“The crush’d head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away),

The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,

Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard

(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!

In mercy come quickly).

“From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,

I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,

Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side-falling head,

His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,

And has not yet look’d on it.

“I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,

But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,

And the yellow-blue countenance see.

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,

Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,

While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.

“I am faithful, I do not give out,

The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,

These and more I dress with impassive hand (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame).”

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The Tribune on Max

The Chicago Tribune is running a nearly heroic-scale obit on Max. Here’s the lead:

“Australian-born Maxwell McCrohon was a journalistic visionary whose innovations in design, story-packaging and feature writing changed the face of the Chicago journalism and had a wide impact throughout the U.S. newspaper industry.”

And a fun detail recounting his early days at the Chicago American:

“He also was a fill-in movie reviewer. A sample lead from one of his reviews: ‘The Frenchmen who produced the film version of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” have spread the rather bitter bread of his play with a heavily spiced syrup of sex.’ ”

12/10/04: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is carrying Hearst’s more workaday version of the obit. The WLS site in Chicago is running the AP’s version at length. And the Washington Times has UPI’s take.

12/11/04: The New York Times has an obit, too, this morning.

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Max

One of our family’s oldest and greatest friends, Max McCrohon, died yesterday. He’d been sick a long time with emphysema (I remember him as an unregenerate smoker of unfiltered Camels) and, for the past three or four years, with lung cancer. There’s a lot I could say — that everyone in my family could say — about Max (and about all the McCrohons). For now, just this: He was the one who inspired me to become a journalist and who gave me my first opportunity to work in a newsroom. And he and his wife Nancy somehow were always welcoming to the Brekke kids; their home was always, always open to us. I honestly can’t imagine what my life would have been like without him, and them.

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Will Work for Cookie

News from the world of online help-wanted ads (in the midst of all this blogging and freelancing and handwringing about life and the world in general, a job search is theoretically happening here at Infospigot World Headquarters; but that’s another long, sad story, for later; much later). Just now on Craigslist, I spot this posting: **MANAGING EDITOR FELLOWSHIP.**

Interesting! “Managing Editor Fellowship.” It’s for VegNews, “America’s premier vegetarian lifestyle magazine.” It looks like a real magazine, and it sounds like they want a real managing editor. The ad says, “The candidate will work alongside the editor-in-chief and with dozens of experienced writers to build a top-notch editorial department. Person will manage magazine’s editorial lineup, work with writers on revisions, read and pitch stories, field inquiries, plan future editorial, research story ideas, and have an opportunity to write for the magazine.”

And in return for the 50+ hours a week the ad, with admirable frankness, says this job will require, the managing editor fellow will get 100 bucks a week (it’s a stipend, not a salary). Plus a furnished cottage somewhere in San Francisco, and other perks, including ” all-you-can-eat vegan cookies.”

Hey, give them points for trying something creative. It’s not always true that you only get what you pay for. I’ve seen plenty of mediocre people pulling down big bucks and talented ones who were seriously underpaid. On the other hand, I always wonder about organizations that say they want the kind of talent that can “build a top-notch editorial department” while offering what amounts to spare change and (in this case) baked goods as part of the compensation package.

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1941

Because the “Spigot is the ‘Spigot, let’s note before the calendar changes that today is December 7, the anniversary (on this side of the International Date Line) of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that finally dragged the United States into the global conflict that had already cost millions of lives in Europe and Asia. The same week of the attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, the Soviets stopped the German advance on Moscow — German units made it into outlying areas of the capital –and threw the invaders into a retreat that nearly became a rout.

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By Tandem to L.A.

Here’s a beautiful little story by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Steve Rubinstein (a fine reporter and writer who you have a sense from the outside has been a little misused over the years, or maybe that’s just me projecting) about a tandem bike trip he took with his 13-year-old son from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. There’s a nice, relaxed feel to the writing, and the trip sounds fun, too:

For seven days we were 15 inches apart. During the teenage years, that is very long and very close. Perhaps the seating plan helped. On a tandem, the teenager cannot read his father’s facial expression, and the father cannot keep an eye on the teenager at all. We invested in a pair of squirt guns to improve father-son communication, especially when the midafternoon heat kicked in.

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The Wounded

Purplehearts_cover_1

Found this listed on Kottke.org: The Purple Hearts Gallery. Portraits of American troops seriously wounded in Iraq, with brief accounts from each about what happened, how they feel about it, and what their lives are like now. Another aspect of the war that most of us know exists but never see.

"But like here in California, nobody really knows what the soldiers are going through, what’s happening to them. They see on TV, oh yeah, two soldiers got wounded today and they think, yeah, he’ll be alright. But that soldier is scarred for life both physically and mentally, but like they don’t understand. They see one soldier wounded and they’ll forget about it like as soon as they change the channel, you know." (Army Specialist Robert Acosta, Santa Ana, California)

(Note: The gallery contains selections from "Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq," a book of pictures and essays on Iraq.)

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Beleaguered, Deceased, DUSTWUN

Noodling around with some research on how our military reports casualties — ultimately, I’m interested in just how they’ve accounted for Iraqi casualties since the war started — I happened across a trove of public but obscure documents outlining rules for handling casualty reports and the casualties themselves. It’s strangely absorbing reading: They cover everything from how to identify mutilated bodies to how NOK (next of kin, in militaryspeak) notification should be handled. And the juxtaposition between the messy, imprecise methods of war and the meticulousness of planning for its inevitable outcome is almost weird. (Actually, the meticulousness is probably a good thing; I found a story online that noted that during the Vietnam War, the military authorized taxi drivers to deliver casualty notifications to next of kin).

From Army Regulation 600-8-1, “Army Casualty Operations/ Assistance/ Insurance” (224 pp., PDF):

Item Name/Description: Casualty Status (11x)

Instructions: Enter one of the following casualty status codes.

Codes:

BESIEGED—Besieged by a hostile force. The type casualty code must be hostile.

BELEAGUERED—Beleaguered by a hostile force. The type casualty code must be hostile.

CAPTURED—Captured by a hostile force. The type casualty code must be hostile.

DETAINED—Individual is detained in a foreign country. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

DECEASED—Individual casualty is dead. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

DUSTWUN—Individual whereabouts unknown. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

INTERNED—Individual is interned in a foreign country. The type casualty code must be nonhostile.

MIA—Individual whose whereabouts and status are unknown but are attributable to hostile activity. The type casualty code must be hostile.

MISSING—Individual whose whereabouts and status are unknown, provided the absence appears to be involuntary. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

NSI—Not seriously injured or ill. Treated at a medical facility and released. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

RMC—Returned to military control. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

SI—Seriously injured, wounded, or ill. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

SPECAT—Special category patient, usually an amputee. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

SPEINT—Special interest. Not seriously injured or ill. Incident could be news worthy. The type casualty code must be nonhostile.

VSI—Very seriously injured, wounded, or ill. The type casualty code can be either hostile or nonhostile.

Format Example:

03. DECEASED

03. VSI

From Army Regulation 638-2, “Procedures for the Care and Disposition of Remains and Disposition of Personal Effects” (141 pp., PDF):

Visual recognition of remains must be done with extreme deliberation and care. The unit commander may identify remains by visual recognition only when the remains facial features are not disfigured. The commander’s identification must be based upon a close and direct examination of the remains by a person or persons who knew the decedent well (roommate, squad leader, close friend). The visual recognition is recorded on DD Form 565 (Statement of Recognition of Deceased). A sample DD Form 565 is located at figure 3–1. DD Form 565 is an enclosure to DA Form 2773 (Statement of Identification).

And from Department of Defense Instruction 1300.18, “Military Personnel Casualty Matters, Policies,

and Procedures”:

In those circumstances where the reason for a member’s absence is uncertain and it is possible that the member is a casualty whose absence is involuntary, but there is not sufficient evidence to determine immediately that the member is missing or deceased, the member should be designated DUSTWUN [Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown]. This procedure is particularly useful when hostilities prevent the immediate determination of a member’s actual status, or when search and rescue efforts are ongoing.

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A Death in Iraq

The Department of Defense says that one of the soldiers killed over the weekend (and one of the 16 who have died so far in December) was Army Staff Sergeant Cari Anne Gasiewicz, 28 (according to the Army Times, she’d been promoted from specialist just this fall). She was in a convoy hit by two IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. The Buffalo News reports she was from Cheektowaga, New York, spoke fluent Arabic, and was serving in a military intelligence battalion.

A soldier who was riding in Gasiewicz’s truck and who was wounded herself in the attack has blogged an account of the incident. (Later: And here, another soldier blogger describes his acquaintance with Sgt. Gasiewicz in Iraq before she was killed.)

In May, the Buffalo News interviewed Gasiewicz as part of a story on the challenges facing military women stationed in Iraq. From that story:

“Cari Gasiewicz, a Depew native who holds the rank of specialist in the Army’s Military Intelligence Battalion based out of Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga., speaks Arabic fluently. She has been working as an linguist in Iraq since earlier this year.

“Her job is to talk to the Iraqis about their feelings on the American presence there, the war effort and similar subjects.

“Children, especially, seem very open to the women soldiers, she said.

” ‘The children love talking to American soldiers. They are amazed that American females know how to speak Arabic,’ said Gasiewicz, who attended Canisius College for three years before joining the Army.

“Gasiewicz said she hopes to be home early next year.

“One day, while on duty, she said, she made friends with a group of Iraqi children — and was amazed by their reaction to her.

” ‘They were talking to me like crazy,’ she wrote in an e-mail from her station in Iraq, just west of Baghdad. ‘Right before I left, one of the kids tapped me on my arm and gave me one of his marbles as a gift.’ ”

” … Women soldiers face much the same challenges as male ones. Of course, there are a few dilemmas that are unique.

“Marriage proposals, for example.

“Gasiewicz, 27,received three proposals from Iraqi men in the past few months.

” ‘They were all very young,’ Gasiewicz wrote in an e-mail. ‘I think one was 15 — the time they get married here — one was 22, and the other was 35 and had three wives already. So I had to let them down nicely.’

She’s the 28th Army woman to die in Iraq, including one from the Army Reserve, four from the Army National Guard, and a civilian Army employee.

Updated 12/9/04

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How to Get Me …

… to quit reading a book.

You could argue that it’s not that hard. In one of my many guilt-ridden dimensions, the guilt grows out of not getting through as many books as I’d like to. Last one completed (a couple weeks ago): “To Conquer the Air,” by James Tobin (the Wright Brothers’ saga). As soon as I’d finished Tobin, picked up a book called “They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus,” published in 2002 by Elizabeth Weil, a writer I’ve respected (used to see her stuff in Fast Company magazine, and in one of my former incarnations, as an editor at Wired News, I tried to get her to write some stuff for us, but she said she was too busy).

“They All Laughed” is the story of a failed space start-up called Rotary Rocket. The company tried to build a reusable launch vehicle to go to orbit and back. It turns out it’s not as easy as it looks, and the effort just barely got off the ground, in a literal sense, while burning tens of millions of dollars. On forums like Amazon’s reader reviews, “They All Laughed” got a mixed reception. Insiders from the new private-space launch community felt she’d caricatured their efforts, to some extent. But worse, in their eyes, she’d just gotten important facts wrong. I thought the comments sounded like sour grapes. So I bought a used copy online for about five bucks.

I got to page 47 (of 230, including two “acknowledgements” pages). I may get farther, but I’ve found reading the book to be disspiriting. It’s just deflating to see something so ambitious and promising so full of simple factual errors. I actually outlined a few of the simple space-related ones on Amazon. But what makes me feel like quitting is the appearance of errors on workaday details such as the names of roads. We’re told that there’s an exit off Interstate 5 for Mercy Springs Road — no, actually, it’s Mercey Springs Road; or that the town of Mojave, very colorfully described as permeated by “a mood of repressed violence,” is on Highway 57; well, no, it’s actually Highway 58. And why should I take the author’s word about the town’s moods or the characters’ quirks or how a rocket works or anything else if she can’t get this elementary stuff straight?