Landstuhl hospital’s trauma status on the line as Afghan War winds down

Landstuhl hospital’s trauma status on the line as Afghan War winds down
by Matt Millham
Stars and Stripes
Published: May 3, 2013

LANDSTUHL, Germany — On returning from his first trip to Afghanistan as defense secretary in March, Chuck Hagel had planned a stopover that is something of a tradition for administration officials conducting America’s longest war — a visit to injured troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

But there was a hitch in the plan that would have seemed nearly impossible a year ago. The day Hagel planned to visit the hospital — the first stop for all injured U.S. personnel evacuated from the war zone — not a single American casualty was laid up there.

Col. Barbara Holcomb, Landstuhl’s commander, cautioned against reading too much into the rare absence of U.S. casualties.

“The following day we had 12.”

But, she said, the number of wounded streaming out of Afghanistan has been trending downward since 2010, when nearly 500 U.S. servicemembers deployed there died. Earlier this year, the entire U.S.-led coalition went more than a month without losing a servicemember in combat — the longest such streak in 10 years, according to an Associated Press casualty database.
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