US Losses - Photos Hidden
By US News Media
From Abolkhaseb.net
1-15-5

This is war
Thursday 13 January 2005 @ 09:57

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Spc. Sam Ross, 21, combat engineer, 82nd Airborne Division, was injured May 18, 2003 in Baghdad when a bomb blew up during a munitions disposal operation. He is blind and an amputee. Photographed in the woods near his trailer where he lives alone in Dunbar Township, Pennsylvania October 19, 2003.

"I lost my left leg, just below the knee. Lost my eyesight, which is still unsettled about whether it will come back or not. I have shrapnel in pretty much every part of my body. Got my finger blown off. It don't work right. I had a hole blown through my right leg. Had 3 skin grafts to try and repair it. It's not too bad right now. It hurts a lot, that's about it. You know not really anything major. Just little things. I get headaches. I have a piece of shrapnel in my neck that came up through my vest and went into my throat and it's sitting behind my trachea, and when I swallow it kind of feels like I have a pill in my throat. Some stuff like that. And my left ear, it don't work either."


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Spc. Luis Calderon, 22, from Puerto Rico, a tank operator, 4th Infantry Division, was injured May 5, 2003 in Tikrit, when a concrete wall with Saddam's face on it, which he was ordered to destroy, came crashing down on his tank severing his spinal cord and leaving him a quadriplegic. Photographed at the Miami Veterans' Hospital December 17, 2003.

"I did my job. I got an Army Commendation medal. I didn't get a purple heart. I feel like I deserve one. It would make me more confident that I really did something. I'm disappointed that when they ask you to go, we go. And when we ask them where is our reward for doing something, they take their time. I don't know. I don't know how the system runs but it's pretty bad. For the moment right now, I just want to heal."


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Pfc. Alan Jermaine Lewis, 23, a machine-gunner, 3rd Infantry Division was wounded July 16, 2003 on Highway 8 in Baghdad when the Humvee he was driving hit a land mine blowing off both legs, burning his face, and breaking his left arm in 6 places. He was delivering ice to other soldiers at the time. Photographed at home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 23, 2003.

"I remember every detail about my legs. Every detail from the scars to the ingrown toenails to the birthmarks to the burn marks. I made it a habit even before I even joined the military, to cherish every part of my body, cause I would always look at it like, 'What if this finger was gone, would I be able to function without it?' Things like that I've always had on my mind. I don't know why, maybe it was God's way of preparing me for what was going to happen. I've been dealing with the military since I was a sophomore in high school. They came to the school like 6 times a year all military branches. They had a recruiting station like a block from our high school. It was just right there."


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PFC Randall Clunen, 19, 101st Airborne, stationed in Tal Afar, was pulling guard December 8, 2003 when a suicide bomber broke through security and exploded himself and his vehicle. Chunks of shrapnel ripped into Clunen's face. Photographed at home Salem, Ohio February 14, 2004.

"I have no political feelings. I'm just a soldier out there. You know, we're trying to help them live like us so they can be free and not be scared to do anything. Trying to set them free. That's how we looked at it. Sometimes we hated being over there because they just didn't respect what we were doing. We were trying to help them and they didn't want us there at all...It was a car bomb. A suicide bomber. He came just ripping through the gate and he exploded the car and himself. I got hit. My nose was sitting over here like on the left side of my face and I couldn't breathe so they had to cut a trache in. I was bleeding extremely bad. They kept me in a room by myself because I was just like really bad looking. I had tubes running all through."


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Cpl Tyson Johnson III, 22, a mechanic with 205 Military Intelligence, was injured in a mortar attack on the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on September 20, 2003. He suffered massive internal injuries and is 100 percent disabled. Photographed at home in Prichard, Alabama May 6, 2004.

"It was crazy. The Iraqis, they wake up about 5 in the morning and they walking like zombies, just walking, walking, like walking dead type junk. I'm serious. Most of my friends they were losing it out there. They would do anything to get out of there, do anything. I had one of my guys, he used to tell me -- my wife just had my son, I can't wait to get home and see him. And, you know, he died out there. He sure did and I have to think about that every day. Shrapnel down the back, shrapnel that came in and hit my head, punctured my lungs. I broke both of my arms. I lost a kidney. My intestines was messed up. They took an artery out of my left leg and put it into this right arm. They pretty much took my life. Pretty much."

Much more at the Purple Heart's gallery http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0412...ehearts_01.html by Nina Berman.



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Tony Nave, 6, leaves the service Saturday for his father, Maj. Kevin Nave, Michigan's first known casualty of the war. (The Detriot News)

This is war.

You may not have seen it, but the target='_blank'>Pentagon ban on filming coffins defied thread in the Civil Liberties forum deals with a similar topic.