Casualty of War

I have an image in my mind that I'm sure will stay with me forever.  It's of a young 22 year old American man who is one of the many casualties of the wars we humans seem to wage constantly against one another.


I was sitting on a bench in Barry's Bay waiting for my companions to finish shopping at the Victoria Day street sales when a gentleman sat beside me and started up a conversation.  If I'd been a young woman, I would have assumed he was trying to pick me up but now that I'm an old gal I feel pretty confident that any strange man talking to me is just that...an innocent conversation.  This knowledge frees me to meet and chat with any number of strangers and it's a nice feeling.


He had a vintage car that he was showing and selling.  I learned where he acquired it (from an old aunt) and why he was selling it (pension money just didn't pay all the bills).  He had an accent that didn't sound Canadian so I asked him where he was from and he was indeed a Canadian who had lived many years in Texas.  I mentioned that my daughter was an American and married to a retired Air Force man.  The gentleman was a Viet Nam war veteran and that's how we came to talk about his grandson who had been seriously wounded in Afghanistan.


He told me how he'd been talking to the young man just the day before and how the boy had told him he still hadn't gotten his head together.  I asked what he meant and he told me his grandson had been in the American military and stationed in Afghanistan when he'd had a landmine explode beneath him.  The injuries were immense, taking a leg and hand, buttocks and the "family jewels".  He went on to say that his grandson developed gangrene in his leg and it had to be further amputated above the knee.  I kept thinking how this was a 22 year old young man with his whole life ahead of him and how it shouldn't have turned out this way for him.  I worried about how injuries like this would affect his sanity.


I know such injuries are not unique in war but most of what we hear are anonymous stories printed in the newspapers or heard on the news.  We don't usually put a human face on the casualties.  It shook my soul to hear this man repeat his grandson's words..."I still haven't got my head together".  How could he?  How can he?


Of course I spouted on about how we have no right to be sending troops to other countries and interfering in their politics but it sounded stupid, even to my own ears.  I know some of the reasons we invade other countries are valid ones and probably help to keep a degree of peace in the world but it's still such a shame that it's our young ones who actually face the enemy.  It's our young soldiers who are put in the worst danger and on foreign soil.


War means death and dismemberment.  It means killing or being prepared to kill.  It means suffering.  War is waged because of greed or intolerance.  It's waged to gain power.  It's waged to stop terrorists from becoming strong enough to become a threat.  Many reasons but many cloaking the true reason, too.  Whatever the reason, wars are deadlier for the foot soldier than the 5 star generals who send them there.


It's a war half way around the world, in a country most of us wouldn't even care to visit, that brought a 22 year old Texan to where he'll live the rest of his life limbless and sexless.  I wonder if he and his loved ones think it was worth it.