Landstuhl staff busy as Afghan fight intensifies

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Chaplain (Cmdr.) Joseph Sheldon comforts a wounded inbound patient from Afghanistan last week at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany.


Landstuhl staff busy as Afghan fight intensifies
By Seth Robbins, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, November 13, 2009

LANDSTUHL, Germany — On a drizzly, frigid morning, about 20 injured servicemembers were unloaded from buses at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

Some walked off. Others lay on gurneys covered in green blankets that had kept them warm on the long flight from Afghanistan. As the hospital staff eased the wounded off the buses, the mood grew solemn, as it often has lately.

“Hey ‘Devil Dog,’ how you doing?” asked a staff member as he pushed a sandy-haired Marine through the hospital’s front doors.

The number of combat-wounded troops from Afghanistan treated at the hospital has spiked during the past three months. Doctors from Landstuhl — the first stop for the wounded from the war zone — saw 163 troops with battle injuries during August, 152 in September and 109 in October.

The uptick coincides with some of the deadliest months for coalition and NATO troops fighting there. A record 72 were killed in August, 61 in September, and then 62 in October, according to independent Web site icasualties.org.


Rest if article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66065