Guts and Glory

In the course of my usual reading, I came across a Bad Attitudes reference to Just a Bump in the Roadway which linked to the New Yorker, which has this poignant story about one of our wounded soldiers in Iraq. As Melanie, author of JaBitR points out, "wounded," or "hurt," hardly begins to describe the extent of the injuries suffered by the men and women stationed in Iraq:

Cain’s right leg was a mangled slab of splintered bone and stringy red muscles; Blohm knew it couldn’t be saved. Both knees were visibly dislocated. The left thigh was twisted at a bad angle, indicating a broken femur, and the leg appeared both seared and flayed. Cain was shrieking in agony and panic. Brown, the senior medic on the scene, climbed up into the cab with him.