[A-List] UK military: forgotten casualties

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Life goes on

We focus on the death toll in Iraq. But what future for the squaddies the
war has put in wheelchairs?

Ed Guiton
Thursday December 9, 2004
The Guardian

Watching the quagmire developing in Iraq, it's difficult not to focus on the
number killed. But it's the wounded I worry about. All the people who
weren't rescued so publicly as sad little Ali, the small, photogenic boy
whisked off to Kuwait for hi-tech surgery. I keep thinking: "How many in
wheelchairs? How many paraplegics? How many tetraplegics (quadriplegics,
like me)? How will they manage?"

How will they cope in Baghdad without Margaret Hassan, the Care worker
kidnapped and murdered by psychopaths? She had lived in Iraq for 30 years
and her special project was looking after those confined to wheelchairs. It
was particularly poignant seeing a demonstration of Iraqis in a phalanx of
wheelchairs demanding her release. Her captors shot her in the head anyway.

Jason Burke of the Observer reports that, of British personnel wounded in
Iraq: "At least 12 have lost one or more limbs and scores more have suffered
permanent harm from traumatic brain injuries or wounds that damage organs or
the spine."

God only knows how many Iraqis are injured: "We don't do body counts," say
the Americans; the figure for wounded must be many times the frighteningly
high number of those killed. It is comforting to think some of the
grievously wounded Iraqis may be taken care of by their extended families,
but how often have we heard that a bomb or a missile has obliterated an
entire family, save one survivor, severely injured? What then?

The survivors from British forces are treated in hospitals in the south of
England and in Germany. We never hear much about them, other than what a
"heroic sacrifice they have made on our behalf". The nature of that
sacrifice is never specified. I have some idea of what the future holds for
those young people confined to wheelchairs. I keep seeing, in my mind's eye,
embittered young men and women with broken spines eventually struggling
through rehab in spinal units, trying to come to terms with their condition.
At first there may be bravado but this will be followed by depression.

They all face a future of ruined personal lives; unable to walk or dance or
play sport in the way they used to. Their sex lives are going to be severely
messed up. They will make the best of it, but what a sacrifice. Their
partners - if they have partners - will be put under intolerable strain and
many will leave, which could lead to a lifetime of loneliness for the
veteran.

Fortunately, for some, there is the prospect of treatments for spinal injury
in the relatively near future - being young, they have the advantage of
time. But many others will be beyond help.

Nevertheless, they all face struggles with the Ministry of Defence over
compensation and pensions and benefit income from social services. Not for
them the six- and even seven-figure sums paid to people injured in workplace
or road accidents. Quite a few of the wounded squaddies would probably not
be in the army if they had any money. Where are they going to live? They
probably don't own houses, and they may find it difficult to get anything
other than very basic and low-paid work.

You may think this is me shroud-waving when normally I'm reasonably upbeat
about what disabled people can make of their lives. If they are lucky they
may form new relationships - it happens in the most unlikely of
circumstances - and some will find new partners. These days there are sports
adapted for the disabled, and numerous ways they can enjoy the outdoors.
They can pursue their education if they can summon up the motivation and
learn computer skills to replace some of the physical abilities they have
lost.

It is simply that, to me, they have put themselves - or been put by others -
in danger so gratuitously, so unnecessarily, and have entered into the
enterprise so casually. Young people just looking for a job, or a life more
interesting than long-term unemployment. Territorials looking for extra
income and adventure games, little realising that one day things would turn
serious.

Blair, Hoon and Straw ought to be forced on to our television screens to
read a list of the dead and maimed. Then, if people still think war is
justified, let them vote for it in the full knowledge of its consequences
for the survivors who continue to live among us, largely unnoticed.