The Wheelchair Brigade

After an anti-tank mine destroyed his foot and part of his leg in Iraq, Capt. David Rozelle, 31, considered his future. In another era, the commander of a cavalry troop would have been heralded for his bravery and likely issued a medical retirement.

But Rozelle experienced a different message while hospitalized at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. [...]

In a shift in military culture, the U.S. armed forces have recently announced new efforts to keep seriously wounded or disabled soldiers on active duty. Although there is no clear written policy, the sentiment is being echoed down from the White House.

"When we're talking about forced discharge, we're talking about another age and another" military, President Bush told wounded soldiers at Walter Reed last year.

You think maybe Dubya took the wrong message away from Nicholson's visit to the field hospital in The Bridge On The River Kwai?

To be fair, Rozelle is gung-ho enough. But his casual inisistence that, "I'm gonna take a spare leg with me to war. If I need one, I'll e-mail my prosthetist and say, 'Send me a leg,'" is one of the more disturbing utterances of the war to-date.

Our disposable culture has become so disposable that even human body parts are now a dime-a-dozen. And the military has so inculcated its grunts in the culture of death and killing that nothing, not even the loss of a limb, will keep its 21st Century warriors out of the field.

Posted by Eddie Tews at December 1, 2004 10:41 AM