Henry J. Cook III, the national commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart,
recently had a firsthand view of the amazing care the more seriously wounded warriors
receive while being transported from one medical facility to another.
In November, he attended a small ceremony where a Boeing C-17 transport aircraft
of the 172nd Airlift Wing of the Mississippi Air National Guard was acknowledged
for successfully posting its millionth hour of medical evacuation flight time with
the wing.
The Jackson, Miss.-based wing has rolled up those flight hours
by routinely making trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to ferry wounded warriors home
to military hospitals throughout the United States.
This aircraft was selected to be named "The Spirit of the Purple
Heart" due to its special longtime military mission.
On Jan. 14, Cook flew in that plane from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Brooke
Army Medical Center in San Antonio with eight wounded warriors on board.
One of them was set up in an intensive-care module while the remaining seven were
on standard litters. Cook said that in addition to the flight crew, an Air Force
medical team of two medical doctors and about seven nurses was present.
The patient in intensive care had a doctor and nurse at his side for the entire
flight, "constantly monitoring the patient and all of the medical equipment" attached
to him, he said.
"The care and concern for the patients exceeded any that I have ever witnessed in
my experience in the military and out," Cook said in a recent interview. The entire
medical staff worked "tirelessly and with total dedication to the patients' care."
When the plane landed in San Antonio, it was met by at least six ambulances, and
the patients were carefully offloaded with the medical personnel.
For Cook, a retired Green Beret who was seriously wounded during the Vietnam War
and required a medical evacuation back to the U.S., the offloading triggered an
avalanche of painful memories of the agony he experienced while waiting on a litter
to be offloaded 40 years ago.
"The comparison with the treatment that today's warriors receive and how poorly
I and my fellow wounded warriors were treated 40 years ago is like night and day.
Some of us were left on those litters for hours.
"The good news today is our wounded warriors receive a level and quality of care
unprecedented in our history, as it should be."
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