Blood Brothers
Among the Soldiers of Ward 57
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This "expert piece of journalism by a brave man about brave men" follows three soldiers and a reporter through eighteen months on Ward 57, Walter Reed's amputee wing (The Washington Post)
Time magazine's Michael Weisskopf was riding through Baghdad in the back of a U.S. Army Humvee when he heard a metallic thunk. Looking down, he spotted a small object inches from his feet and reached down to take it in his hand. Then everything went black.
Weisskopf lost his hand and was sent to Ward 57 at Walter Reed Medical Center, the wing reserved for amputees. There he met soldiers Pete Damon, Luis Rodriguez, and Bobby Isaacs, alongside whom he navigated the bewildering process of recovery and began reconciling life before that day in Baghdad with everything that would follow his release.
Blood Brothers is the story of this difficult passage—a story that begins with healthy men heading off to war, and continues through the months in Ward 57 as they prepare for a different life than the one they left. A chronicle of devastation and recovery, this is a deeply affecting portrait of the private aftermath of combat casualties.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reporter Weisskopf, at 58, was accompanying a patrol in Baghdad in 2003 when he picked up a grenade that flew into his Humvee. This book relates the consequences, beginning with a detailed account of a medic's emergency treatment of Weisskopf's shattered hand, his speedy transport to an aid station, helicopter flight to a front-line hospital, flight to the trauma center in Germany and, finally, to amputee Ward 57 of Washington's Walter Reed Hospital. Readers quickly learn that amputees make up 3% of Iraq's wounded twice that of previous wars thanks to the Kevlar helmets and sturdy body armor that protect all but the soldier's limbs from otherwise fatal explosions. Besides recounting his own successful recovery from the trauma of losing a hand, Weisskopf adds stories of three American soldiers who also endured months of torment before adjusting to new lives, though they were not necessarily typical. Other patients mentioned in passing do very badly. Pain is universal; many amputees suffer numerous operations and take narcotics for years. Modern prostheses are ingenious but heavy and difficult to use. Readers with a low tolerance for inspirational stories will still find plenty of technical and medical details of one tragic, little-publicized consequence of the Iraq war.
