Talk:Units
From Milipedia
Are you one of the thousands of soldiers deployed in Desert Storm? Or do you know a soldier that was deployed? Tell us your story.
Being one of the thousands deployed in 1991, I was not prepared for what I saw. As a young doctor, my experience consisted of med/surge floor and pre and post opt. patients. When I was thrust into battle I wasn't ready to care for gunshot wounds and RPG fragment wounds. The first soldier I treated had half of his leg gone from a mine that he hit while driving across the desert. “We couldn’t save his leg but, we did save his life!” That was more important at that time to save our fellow soldier.
It had been three weeks since my deployment and I had treat more than five hundred soldiers, from minor cuts to server gunshot wounds. My stomach had toughened up and I no longer became ill at the site of these injuries, which to this day I can still see in great detail. I was promoted to field medic and sent on the front line with the soldiers and really became aware of just how bad things were.
The burning oil fields turned day into night, with black thick clouds of smoke from the oil pipelines that had been set ablaze, that rained black oil all over everything. How could someone destroy a country so easily without any regards to how it would affect his own people. Saddam Hussein never thought twice about who he was killing, just to kill as many of us as he could in order to achieve his goal of taking over Saudi Arabia.
When I can back state side I couldn’t sleep for months without help from medication. I couldn’t work or even leave my house. Every sound or movement placed my right back on that oiled soaked black sand with hundreds of bodies all around me needing medical help, pulling at me, and the screams of pain that echoed out of the dark for help. “I can’t take it! I can’t take it I screamed!” To wake myself up or bring myself back to reality! I am home! I am home! I kept repeating to myself, as I sat on the floor in the bedroom, wondering if those images would ever go away.
It’s been seventeen years, since that day in the field and sixteen years since I returned home and the images are still there, but they don’t have a hold on me, like it was when I first return home, but I still have problems with sudden noises and plans flying over me and sleeping.
