The Secret Life of a Wounded American Soldier

The Secret Life of a Wounded American Soldier
The Fiscal Times
By MAUREEN MACKEY
June 11, 2013

We know the federal government will spend roughly $2 million on long-term medical costs for each of the 866,181 American soldiers injured during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – for a total cost of $1.7 trillion.

What we don’t know is the intimate and gritty details of the lives of the people involved – the struggles and stresses of the men and women who have fought for America and were wounded, disabled, disoriented or in some other way afflicted.

Scores of young Americans have risked their lives over the last decade or more, but we don’t really know what they’ve been through.

“I have to admit, [no] veterans spoke to me of war until I returned from one,” says Brian Turner, author of the poem, “The Hurt Locker,” from which the hit 2008 film took its title. “They told me a great many things about war and wartime experience – but always in stories that circled around or remained on the periphery of actual combat experience.”

Now a new book, Outside the Wire: American Soldiers’ Voices from Afghanistan, for which Turner wrote the foreword, greatly helps our understanding.

Thirty-eight soldiers and their spouses shared the bravery and the fear, the pride and the pain they experienced on the battlefield. “Our soldiers carry the weight of war for each of us,” says Christine Leche, who taught creative writing and English at Bagram Air Base, one of the largest U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, and pulled these essays together. Too often our soldiers are stereotyped, says Leche in her book. Maybe “as a culture we honor them” – but most of us don’t know them.
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