LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the military’s largest and most advanced medical facility. It’s where doctors send some of the most seriously burned and wounded soldiers to recover, sometimes with artificial limbs. Since the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, thousands of soldiers, like Private Carlos Gomez, have suffered injuries like his. He was on a scouting mission and was seriously wounded when his vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in Afghanistan earlier this year.

PVT CARLOS GOMEZ: Well, the blast, it shot us straight up in the air so the impact actually broke my left leg. It shattered my heel and my bones down my right, left leg, I mean, and my right leg got crushed. They couldn’t save it anymore so they had to amputate it here at Brooke Army Medical Center.

SEVERSON: Two other soldiers were wounded in the blast. One was killed. At first Gomez wasn’t sure he wanted to live....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

1. evan miller wrote: Our wounded and their families need the regular, fervent prayers of the Church.  What they face, particularly when they leave the familiar world of active duty, is truly daunting. November 1, 1:34 pm | [comment link]

Registered members must log in to comment.