| The Other Casualties of War August 24, 2004 NINA BERMAN was aware of the ever-increasing numbers of soldiers killed in Iraq, but like so many others she wondered about the casualties that were never discussed. What about the wounded? How would those young men and women deal with learning to walk with prosthetic legs, to get dressed with new arms made of plastic, to adjust to blindness, to get around on canes and crutches and wheelchairs, to deal with brain injuries, to live their lives? Berman spent a few years reporting at The Record in the Eighties. Later she switched her main interest from words to pictures and left daily journalism to hone her craft. In the years since, she has covered war in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and has shot any number of less bloody stories for Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and National Geographic, among others. She wondered about the wounded. The Pentagon hasn't been generous with numbers, but in any war the injured outnumber the troops killed. In Korea and Vietnam, the ratio was nearly 3 to 1. It was 4 to 1 in Iraq through last September. So Berman sought them out, traveling back roads to mobile homes and major highways to Veterans Administration hospitals. The result is her new book "Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq" (Trolley Books; London). In it, Berman tells 20 stories in stark, occasionally ironic photographs and some compelling interviews. These are pictures to make you raise your hand involuntarily to cover your mouth, to make you avert your eyes. There's no gore, but this isn't easy stuff. Jeremy Feldbusch stands as close to attention as he can get, his hands curled to an unnatural degree, one arm seeming alarmingly longer than the other. Hanging from the antlers of his eight-point buck on his bedroom wall are his Ranger hats and his dogtags. A Teddy bear, a toy bald eagle, his Purple Heart, a picture of Feldbusch when he was whole, and an autographed football rest on his bureau. He will have no use for footballs, no chance to hunt deer. "I was a biology major," he tells Berman. "At one point in my life I wanted to be a doctor." But there never will be a Dr. Feldbusch. He was wounded in an artillery attack 16 months ago. He is blind. His brain is injured. "I don't have any regrets. I had some fun over there," he says, and then, "I don't want to talk about the military anymore." Feldbusch has two deep scars on his forehead just over his eyes. The look on his face, what is it? Unglued might describe it best, the look of a man who wanted to be a doctor, toss a football, maybe hand that Teddy bear over to a son or daughter some day, but who has some sense that he'll probably have other things to do. As Berman talks with Sam Ross while taking his picture on a country road at night - headlights illuminating his eyes and his plastic and metal left leg - he says he has no sorrow. But he looks perturbed, like he wants to say something but is unsure of his eloquence. As it happens, he defines eloquence. "I lost my left leg just below the knee. Lost my eyesight ... 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 three 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." Ross lives alone in a trailer. "I sleep," he says. "I was always considered the pretty boy in high school," says Jose Martinez. "I was always told cute, handsome, whatever. And I always relied on my physical appearance. That's why I think sometimes I'm glad this happened to me because it made me open my eyes." Martinez, 20, was in a Humvee that rolled over a mine. There was a fire. He suffered severe burns to his pretty face, which is pretty no more. Now his face looks rubbery, and despite the determined set of his jaw, he looks fragile. You see just a glint of reflected light in his eye. It's a scary picture. He's been told he's a hero. "And I say thank you. I appreciate that. That title is a big thing. I've been very fortunate to benefit from how things have worked out for me," he says. Many of these soldiers want to return to their buddies and units. But some are bereft. "I just don't have nothing anymore," says Carl Sampson who lost his left eye and part of his brain when a roadside bomb exploded. Berman met with Sampson, 36, and his aunt Mona. He tries to express himself: "I went through all them months asleep. Didn't know where I was. I don't remember nothing. I just wish I could talk about the, the... I wish I could get my... If I could get it working. I would be all right." Mona says: "It's just his words can't match up yet because of the brain injury." And some are ambivalent. Alan Jermaine Lewis' truck hit a land mine. He lost both legs. He suffered severe burns to the face, and broke his left arm in six places. "The reasons for going to war were bogus, but we were right to go in there. Saddam was a bad guy," Lewis says. © 2004 The Bergen Record |
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