February 4, 2004

I am an Army Nurse Corps Captain stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington D.C., and I feel compelled to share with anyone who will listen what I have seen. You see, when OIF troops are evac’d out of Germany, the huge majority are brought here to WRAMC by the Air Force flight nurses and docs. I do not have access to any of the numbers of how many wounded and what types of injuries, etc, but I can honestly tell you that the OIF wounded occupy more than half of our two major intensive care units (SICU and MICU) at any given time.

At times, we get so full and are expecting more to arrive, that we have to hound the docs to transfer somebody out of our unit to a ward upstairs so we have some beds for these soldiers. Most of these wounded soldiers come in to our unit on a ventilator breathing for them, with severe wounds caused by IEDs (improvised roadside bombs) or AK-47 GSW (gun shot wounds). Many, many soldiers have already lost arms, limbs, or eyes before they even get to us, and many have received dozens of units of blood before they left Germany.