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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Secret War, Strange New Wounds, and Silence From the Pentagon
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/us-army-marines-artillery-isis-pentagon.htmlNo paywall
https://archive.ph/bnUcR
When Javier Ortiz came home from a secret mission in Syria, the ghost of a dead girl appeared to him in his kitchen. She was pale and covered in chalky dust, as if hit by an explosion, and her eyes stared at him with a glare as dark and heavy as oil.
The 21-year-old Marine was part of an artillery gun crew that fought against the Islamic State, and he knew that his units huge cannons had killed hundreds of enemy fighters. The ghost, he was sure, was their revenge.
A shiver went through him. He backed into another room in his apartment near Camp Pendleton in California and flicked on the lights, certain that he was imagining things. She was still there.
A few days later, in the barracks not far away, a 22-year-old Marine named Austin Powell pounded on his neighbors door in tears and stammered: Theres something in my room! Im hearing something in my room!
*snip*
Long read, but definitely worth the time.
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WhiskeyGrinder
(22,931 posts)This cannot be the price we pay for "safety" in the world.
Chainfire
(17,757 posts)It has always been true and it will always be true. We would prefer that soldiers would just follow tradition and treat their wounds with alcohol like real men.
Native
(6,038 posts)Thank you for posting this. I hope everyone can take the time to read it in it's entirety.
riverbendviewgal
(4,266 posts)Should be given medical help. Their benefits should not be taken away. The first thing I thought of are the football injuries. In these cases there are thousands more. Truly tragic 😥.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)niyad
(116,413 posts)the goddamned do- nothing military brass. FUCK WAR. This is the Agent Orange horror writ large. Our people are, quite literally, cannon fodder, and yet, those responsible for their care lie, deny, equivocate, and condemn them, and their loved ones, to horror and misery.
MAY ALL INVOLVED RECEIVE EVERYTHING THEY DESERVE.
drmeow
(5,106 posts)Not the damage from guns, not the fact that mounting evidence was ignored by military brass, not that military personal were revictimized - none of it.
mountain grammy
(26,914 posts)With no help. No excuse for this.