"They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets." Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. The large-caliber guns of artillery warfare with their power to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments and the mangling, deadly fallout of shrapnel had made clear, at the war's outset, that mankind's military technology wildly outpaced its medical: "Every fracture in this war is a huge open wound," one American doctor reported, "with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." The very nature of trench warfare, moreover, proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries: "he.soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. On every front-political, economic, technological, social, spiritual-World War I was changing Europe forever, while claiming the lives of 8 million of her fighting men and wounding 21 million more. Through a diverse range of literature, we are brought face to face with the way in which War dismantles a sense of self which has its roots in the experience of violence and it's far reaching impact in the transitions to civilian life.Wounded tommies facetiously called it "The Tin Noses Shop." Located within the 3rd London General Hospital, its proper name was the "Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department" either way, it represented one of the many acts of desperate improvisation borne of the Great War, which had overwhelmed all conventional strategies for dealing with trauma to body, mind and soul. It dives into contemporary American war literature which redefined the landscapes of narratives about the Iraq war. It journeys through the literature on war exploring and juxtaposing the viewpoints on the war from the American war story genre and to cultural and political perspectives. The book invites the reader to critically look through a number of lenses at the many faces of war. The book addresses the tragedy of the impossibility of making that which is seen in war become unseen as it etches into our brains, bodies and stories. It addresses the adjustment impacts on the returning Warrior and the futility in trying to regain what is lost whether it is through medication, therapy, alcohol or drugs.
It moves across the landscape of holistic health care that defies the narrow parameters of evidence-based modalities. It looks at the “Beast” and “the elephant” that is rarely addressed. It opens into the invisible wounds scratching away at the veneer masking the depths of pain and terror.
This is not a comfortable look that romanticizes the Warrior and killing.
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