Reconstructing Lives (Edinburgh, until February 2013)

Current exhibit at Edinburgh Castle: 

Reconstructing Lives

National War Museum
Fri 9 March 2012 - February 2013
Free with admission to Edinburgh Castle

From the official description:
"Reconstructing Lives takes a fascinating and moving look at the experiences of those who have lost limbs in war, whether military or civilian, and the technology which helps rebuild their lives....On display you'll find prosthetics, ranging from a 16th century iron hand to  a modern i-limb hand developed by Touch Bionics."

Here's a report with photos, by someone who visited the exhibit.  And here are blog entries about the exhibit, by museum staffers.

CFP: Commemorating the Disabled Soldier (Ypres, Belgium, 4-6 November 2013)

[From H-Disability]

Call for papers

Commemorating the disabled soldier: Comparative approaches to the history of war, disability and remembrance, 1914-1940

International conference (Ypres, Belgium, 4th-6th November 2013) & special issue First World War Studies

Organized/edited by Prof. Pieter Verstraete (KU Leuven), Dr. Martina Salvante (Trinity College Dublin) & Prof. Julie Anderson (University of Kent) – with the financial support of the Province West-Flanders, the In Flanders Fields Museum, the Centre d’Histoire des Sociétés, des Sciences et des Conflits & the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders.

2014 will mark 100 years since the outbreak of the Great War. On the occasion of this important anniversary the Centre for the History of Education of the KU Leuven (Belgium), the Centre for War Studies of Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and the Centre for the History of Medicine of the University of Kent (United Kingdom) propose to organize an international conference aimed at reflecting on the impact of that specific event on soldiers’ bodies and minds. Millions of men all over the globe, in fact, returned home limbless, sightless, deaf, disfigured or mentally distressed.

In the last decades disability history has attracted an increasing interest in the scholarly community, thus becoming a well-established field, which has been highlighting, among others, the experiences of impaired people, medical and rehabilitative techniques, charitable institutions and welfare measures, public reception and private emotions. The First World War has somehow represented a watershed both in the visibility and the treatment of impairment and disablement owing to the massive amount of men who suffered physical injuries or mental disorder symptoms as a consequence of the conflict. These men happened, therefore, to embody the destructiveness of war and performed as human and living ‘sites of memory’. Because of their heralded heroism in the battlefields, shattered soldiers, however, were commonly considered worthy and in need of an (economic and medical) assistance that disabled civilians had not experienced beforehand. In spite of such considerations and of the yet numerous studies focusing on the interrelation between war and disablement (Julie Anderson, Joanna Burke, Ana Carden-Coyne, Deborah Cohen, David Gerber, Sabine Kienitz, Marina Larsson just to mention few), there has never been organized so far an international conference dealing exclusively with such a topic in an historical and comparative perspective.

Disabled veterans have always been involved in the commemorations of the Great War, but they have never been the focal point of any celebration. That is why we believe that the upcoming centenary of 2014 may provide us with an important opportunity to reflect upon the impact of war on the individual lives of those (and their families) who came back impaired, as well as on the institutions (charities, governmental agencies, ministries, associations, etc.) taking charge of their care and assistance during and after the conflict. Hence, we’d like to explore the question of the political, social, medical and cultural legacies of war disability in postwar society. The conference as well as the special issue will be specifically interested in strengthening comparative and transnational approaches. Contributions on rather unknown case studies and geographical/national areas are especially welcomed.

The gathering of international scholars coming from different countries would be, therefore, the occasion for in-depth discussions, reviews of previous studies, and outlining of future research perspectives. Potential topics might include, but are not limited to: medicine/surgery and treatment, rehabilitation and vocational retraining, associations and self-advocacy, charities and care-giving, war pensions, experience and memory, visual and textual representation (of the disabled themselves), suffering and pain, the place and function of the disabled body at inter-war commemorative activities, the international shaping of a global discourse on the mutilated body, the influence of war-related discourse on the over-all care for the disabled in general etc. Although the main conference will be focused on the First World War the call for papers, however, also is open for contributions that deal with the impact of subsequent conflicts on the soldier’s body and mind.

Besides the organization of an international conference which will be held on November 4th-6th 2013 the organizers also envisage first of all a special issue in the International Journal of the Society for First World War Studies. The Editor-in-chief already has approved the idea and the issue would be published in 2014. Furthermore, the organizers aim at publishing a book that would gather some/all of the papers presented at the conference. That would be the first book presenting a wide array of (trans)national cases on the subject of disability and the Great War, by getting together, thus, diverse hypotheses, methodologies and sources; In this way it would make European scholars as well as European citizens aware of the existence of disabled soldiers from the Great War and their particular place in the upcoming centennial celebration.

Practical & financial information

We are very pleased to announce that we will be able to accept and reimburse 13 scholars a sum of maximum 500 euro’s to cover their travel expenses to and from Ypres/Belgium where the conference will be held. Besides that the organizational committee will also pay for the accommodation (2 nights). Included also is a visit to the world famous and recently renovated In Flanders Fields Museum as well as a guided tour on the second day to the Western front line.

Please do also note that after the international conference “Commemorating the disabled soldier” will be ended, there will be another conference organized dealing especially with the relation between medicine and the Great War. Closely linked to this event two exhibitions will take place in Ghent and Ypres on the history of psychiatry and medicine in relation to the Great War. Unfortunately we will not be able to pay for additional nights.

Time line & deadlines

Submission of abstract and short CV: December 1st 2012 – Abstract=600 words/CV=Maximum 20 lines
Letter of acceptance (abstract): January 2013
First draft of the manuscript: June 1st 2013
Comments by the editors: September 1st 2013
Conference at Ypres: November 4th-6th 2013
Second draft of the manuscript: December 1st 2013
Final manuscript for First World War Studies: February 1st 2014

Submission of abstracts

Abstracts containing no more than 600 words and a CV of no more than 20 lines should be sent to Pieter.verstraete@ppw.kuleuven.be before December 1st 2012.

Looking forward to some thought provoking contributions as well as fruitful discussion,

The editorial committee,
Pieter Verstraete, Martina Salvante & Julie Anderson

October 12: Frances Dana Gage (1808-1884)

[Visual description: engraved portrait of Frances Dana Gage]

You have attempted to mold seventeen millions of human souls into one shape, and make them all do one thing.

--Frances Dana Gage, on women's restricted place in society

Today marks the 201st anniversary of the birth of Frances Dana Gage, an American reformer, suffragist, and abolitionist. She was born in Ohio, married there, and raised eight children. She presided over a woman's rights convention in 1851 in Akron, where she famously introduced Sojourner Truth as a speaker (the refrain "Ain't I a Woman?" came from Gage's summary of Truth's speech that day). She toured giving lectures on woman's rights and abolition throughout the "old West." During the Civil War, she worked for the Sanitary Commission, visiting military hospitals and prisons.

In 1865, she was in a bad carriage accident and never recovered from her wounds; this was followed by a stroke in 1867. So her post-war work was more in writing and encouraging the movements she held dear. She was also a frequent contributor of fiction to the literary magazines of the day, and wrote children's books, poetry, and novels as well.

Gage was a Universalist by lifelong religious affiliation, but "Then came the war, then trouble, then paralysis, and for 14 years I have not listened to a sermon because I am too great a cripple. I have read much, thought much, and feel that life is too precious to be given to doctrines."

September 7: Daniel Inouye (b. 1924)

[Image description: A black-and-white portrait of a young Daniel Inouye]
Oftentimes, it takes as much, if not more, courage to speak out and oppose our government’s actions. It should be viewed no less patriotically than those who wave the American flag.

Happy 85th birthday to Senator Daniel Inouye, who has served in the Senate continuously since 1959. Inouye is also one of the several disabled veterans serving in Congress.

He was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Honolulu, and joined the Army in 1943; Japanese-Americans were prevented from enlisting before that year. In April 1945, his right forearm was amputated due to battlefield injuries in Italy. He met future colleague Bob Dole when both were recovering from their war injuries at an army hospital. Inouye abandoned plans for a medical career and used the GI Bill to study political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The day Hawaii became a state in 1959, Inouye was sworn in as its first senator.

Conference: War Wounds (Canberra, 24-25 September 2009)

[Image description: Logo for the conference, central photo is black and white, a young man in uniform, arm in a sling)

A conference announcement from the H-Net digest. Aside from the cringeworthy "triumph over" language here, it looks like an interesting program:

BAE Systems Theatre,
Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Thursday 24 and Friday 25 September, 2009

The history of warfare and the history of medicine have been closely linked. War has often been an accelerator of advances in medical treatment and surgery as doctors and nurses struggled to cope with the human cost and suffering of mankind’s most destructive acts.

The major wars of the last hundred years—from the First World War to more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—have driven advances in treatments for wounds and pain management, the use of antibacterial agents and more effective prophylaxis against disease and infection, as well as the development of radical new approaches to evacuating, treating and healing the injured.

Nevertheless, war continues to inflict its toll of carnage and human misery on not just combatants but also civilians who are, too often, either the intended or accidental targets of modern conflicts. The relationship between medicine and the military can also produce challenges and conflict.

For veterans and their families the post-war legacy of combat experience can sometimes seem as severe and persistent as the effects of wounds and injuries. War-damaged veterans are reminder of the enduring impact of war on Australian society.

The Australian War Memorial is convening this two-day conference to bring together eminent historians specialising in the medical and demographic consequences of warfare, medical practitioners and researchers in the field of military medicine, former and serving medical officers, surgeons, nurses and veterans. They will explore the impact of war, wounds and trauma through the historical record and personal experiences.

Conference themes

Major themes to be addressed by speakers include:

• Casualties in war, treatment in the field and medical evacuation, surgical teams and field hospitals
• Soldiers’ and doctors’ perspectives (personal accounts) of wounds and treatment
• Mine casualties, fear of wounds and acute trauma on the battlefield
• Shell shock, self inflicted wounds and combat fatigue
• Illnesses and diseases of war (malaria, dysentery, venereal disease, etc.), maintaining soldiers’ health, the evolution of service medicine
• Facially disfigured soldiers, advances in surgery, rehabilitation of wounded veterans
• The cost of war and veterans’ health studies, the aftermath and post mortems, including the debate over the effects of ‘Agent Orange’ in Vietnam
• Living with the effects, triumph over disabilities
• The lighter side (doctors’ and veterans’ memories)

Join us at the Australian War Memorial for an absorbing, stimulating and, at times, confronting exploration of the interaction of medicine and war.

This conference is being convened by the Australian War Memorial. The support of the Australian Government through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is gratefully acknowledged.

More information.

March 17: Josef Sudek (1896-1976)

[Visual description: An older Josef Sudek, seated at a table showing the remains of coffee, smiling, his hand on his lap]

"We traveled down the Italian boot until we came to that place--I had to disappear in the middle of the concert; in the dark I got lost, but I had to search. Far outside the city towards dawn, in the fields bathed by the morning dew, finally I found the place. But my arm wasn't there--only the poor peasant farmhouse was still standing in my place. They had brought me into it the day when I was shot in the right arm. They could never put it together again, and for years I was going from hospital to hospital..."

--Josef Sudek, describing a 1926 trip back to the site of his 1916 battle injury in Italy; found here.

Born on this date in 1896, Czech photographer Josef Sudek. As a young man, he was apprenticed to a bookbinder, who may have been the first to introduce Sudek to photography. The year he turned 20, Sudek's right arm was amputated at the shoulder, after injuries and infection sustained in battle during World War I. Apparently he was given a camera during his convalescence in the veterans hospital, and found it agreed with his interests. Sudek studied photography after the war in Prague, while living on his Army disability pension. In 1924 he co-founded the Czech Photographic Society.

Josef Sudek's work is considered neo-romantic, painterly, haunting. He created series that captured the light inside a cathedral, or the Bohemian woodlands, or panoramic Prague nightscapes. "I love the life of objects," he said. "I like to tell stories about the life of inanimate objects." His own crowded studio was the subject of another series, called "Labyrinths."

Manet's "Rue Mosnier with Flags" (1878)

[Visual description: painting by Edouard Manet, a street scene in daylight, with French flags flying from every building; in the foreground, a figure with one leg uses crutches, back to the viewer, wearing a large blue coat and a black hat]

We went to the Getty today, a gorgeous day here in Los Angeles. The Getty is a wheel-friendly place with free admission and amazing views, so it's a low-stress place for us to go be a tourist family in our own town, and we go a few times a year. This time I spotted the Manet above--hadn't noticed it before, somehow, but it's in the permanent collection there. Tyler Green's blog Modern Art Notes had a good discussion of this painting's historical context earlier this year; an excerpt:

You can't miss the one-legged man--likely a war vet--at the left of the painting. The scene is apparently set on that national holiday and Manet juxtaposes the man against one of Baron Haussmann's famously straight Parisian streets. On the right -- on the other side of the street -- are Haussmann's new streetlights and a prosperous family. They all ignore the one-legged man. Manet is reminding us of the cost of war and of France's willful negligence of its warriors.

November 17: Winifred Holt (1870-1945)

[Image description: black-and-white archival photo of two men seated at a table, in French military uniforms; they have their hands on a small checkerboard; one man appears to have his eyelids closed, and the other has fabric patches over both eyes; behind them, a woman in seated, and has her own hand stretched toward the checkerboard]

Co-founder of Lighthouse International (formerly the New York Association for the Blind) Winifred Holt was born on this date in 1870, in New York City, the daughter of publisher Henry Holt. She was a force in early twentieth-century advocacy --she and her organization worked for inclusion of blind children in New York public schools, for summer camps, vocational training programs and social groups run by and for blind people, for rehabilitation of blinded WWI veterans. She also worked for changes in medical protocols to prevent a common cause of blindness in newborns. She encouraged similar "Lighthouses" to operate in other cities around the world. Many of the projects she started continue in some form today.

In the photo above (found here, in the Library of Congress's Bain Collection), Holt is seen teaching newly blind French soldiers to play checkers in a rehabilitation program in France (Holt received the Legion d'Honneur for her wartime work there). Holt trained as a sculptor when she was a young woman; her best known work is a 1907 bas-relief bronze portrait of Helen Keller, online here. She also wrote a biography of blind English MP and postmaster Henry Fawcett.

Paddy's Lamentation

A post about disability history that takes note of St. Patrick's Day? No problem. A well-known 19c. immigration ballad, "Paddy's Lamentation," is about an Irishman who arrives in America just in time to be recruited into the Union Army, and he loses a leg in combat. There are many recorded versions of this, and quite a number of YouTube videos featuring the song, but I've chosen a simple performance by young man playing a guitar (a stationary camera is pointed at the guitar; we rarely catch the singer's whole face, but he's a young white man with a beard):

Lyrics:

Well it's by the hush, me boys, and sure that's to hold your noise
And listen to poor Paddy's sad narration
I was by hunger pressed, and in poverty distressed
So I took a thought I'd leave the Irish nation

CHORUS: Here's to you boys, now take my advice
To America I'll have you(s) not be comin'
There ain't nothing here but war, where the murderin' cannons roar
And I wish I was at home in dear old Dublin

Well meself and a hundred more, to America sailed o'er
Our fortunes to be made we were searchin'
When we got to Yankee land, they shoved a gun into our hands
Saying "Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln"

CHORUS

General Meagher to us he said, if you get shot or lose a leg
Every mother's son of you will get a pension
Well meself I lost me leg, they gave me a wooden peg,
And by God this is the truth to you I mention

CHORUS

More disability history on Flickr

cp 1855
Originally uploaded by otisarchives1

[Image description: sepia-toned photo of an African-American man in uniform, seated, facing the camera, with one leg amputated; the leg on the viewer's left is exposed to show the healed surgical site. A set of crutches are leaning against the chair.]

This time, it's content from the Otis Historical Archives in Washington DC, which specializes in images from the history of public health and military medicine, but there are other themes too. Image above is of "Buffalo Soldier" CPL Edward Scott of the 10th US Cavalry, injured 3 May 1886 at the Battle of Pinito Pass, Mexico (sent to chase down Geronimo and his men). These images (about 600 of them) aren't part of the Flickr Commons project yet, but apparently that's in the works; meanwhile, you can still browse and add comments.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: Battlefield Biker has more of Corporal Scott's story, including this quote from a letter written by his rescuer, Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke: "The wounded Corporal [Scott] has had to have his leg cut off, the ball that shattered it lodging in the other instep. This man rode seven miles without a groan, remarking to the Captin that he had seen forty men in one fight in a worse fix than he was. Such have I found the colored soldier."

January 14: Harold Russell (1914-2002)

Boy, you ought to see me open a bottle of beer.

--"Homer Parrish," as played by Harold Russell

Born on this date in 1914 in Nova Scotia, Harold Russell, pictured at right with the two Oscars he won in 1947 for a single role, in Best Years of Our Lives. Though he was Canadian-born and raised, he was living in the US and working as a meatcutter when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941; he joined the Army the very next day. While making a training film in 1944, a defective fuse blew up and both hands had to be amputated. He used hooks thereafter, with a grace that, by all accounts, dispelled dubious onlookers' concerns.

Russell appeared in an Army documentary about rehabilitation, Diary of a Sergeant, while he was a student at Boston University. He was spotted by director William Wyler, and cast to play a disabled veteran in The Best Years of Our Lives. He won two Oscars for the role: one a "special" Oscar for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans," and one for Best Supporting Actor, as voted by the Academy. After the hubbub surrounding his Oscar wins, Russell returned to Boston University and finished a degree in business.

Russell published an autobiography, Victory in my Hands (1949). For many years he was National Commander of the American Veterans (AMVETS), and chaired the President's Commission on the Employment of the Handicapped.

Leg splints and mid-century modern design

"What works is better than what looks good. The 'looks good' can change, but what works, works."

--Ray Eames

I was enjoying the extensive online Library of Congress exhibit, The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention today. The Eameses were important mid-20c. designers, who are best known for plywood, fiberglass and wire-mesh chairs and other furniture, among their many other endeavors. Even if you don't know their name, some element of their work is probably familiar to most Americans.

Why is this relevant to disability studies? Well... during World War II, they were part of a team of designers hired by the US government. (This wasn't unusual; my great-aunt Mimi was a shoe designer during the war; the government needed designs that could be mass-produced within the limits of wartime supplies, thus... canvas shoes.) One of the items Ray and Charles Eames designed was a molded plywood leg splint for the US Navy. Note that the original splints are now prized by collectors, like most Eames designs. The Eameses even featured a sculpture made from their splint on their 1944 Christmas card. The splint label above was designed by Ray Eames.

The technical solutions, materials, and sinuous shapes the Eameses used in the splint project were turned, after the war, to the design of durable, ergonomic, molded plywood furniture. Just one more example--like the audiobook, TV captions, Montessori schools, etc. etc.--where innovations are worked out first for disability-related applications, and only later translated to wider use.

MacArthur Fellows 2007: Disability researchers in the mix

One of this year's newly announced batch of MacArthur Fellows is Yoky Matsuoka (b. 1971) an engineer at the University of Washington-Seattle. Matsuoka designs very high-tech anatomical models, including an intricate robotic hand, exoskeletal appliances to improve fine-motor use, and another project that uses wearable haptic devices in post-stroke therapies.

Another, Jonathan Shay (b. 1941, portrait at left), is a Boston-based psychiatrist and classicist who takes humanistic approaches to psychological injury in Vietnam (and now Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq) War veterans. His book titles may give a good flavor of his work: Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (1994) and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (2002). Shay is himself a stroke survivor who has experienced post-stroke paralysis.

Conference: When the Soldiers Return

The conference ‘When the Soldiers Return’ will be held in Australia at the University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, 28-30 November 2007. This conference will bring together scholars investigating the legacy of war, its effects on the broader society and culture, and the central role returned soldiers play in these processes.

Check out just some of the papers on the program that deal with disability (and there are surely others, but these titles stuck out for me):

Sandy McFarlane and Keith Horsley, "Florence Nightingale: A Sufferer of a Post-Deployment Syndrome"

Margaret Goldswain, "The War-Damaged Soldier in Australia after the Great War"

Melanie Oppenheimer, "'Fated to a life of suffering': Graythwaite, the Australian Red Cross, and Returned Soldiers, 1916-1939"

Keith Horsley and Sandy McFarlane, "Post-Deployment Syndromes Following Wars in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries"

Kristy Muir, "'There were no ticker tape parades for us': Homecomings of Veterans with Mental Health Problems"

Jim Porteous, "Rehabilitation of Injured or Ill Australian Defence Force Members"

Jen Hawksley, "Histories from the Asylum: 'The Unknown Patient'"

Kerry Neale, "'Without the Faces of Men': The Return of Facially Disfigured Australian Veterans from the Great War"

Marina Larsson, "'The Part We Do Not See': Disabled Australian Soldiers and Family Caregiving after World War I"

Stephen Clarke, "The Long Shadow of War: The New Zealand Experience of 'Burnt-Out Diggers' during the 1920s and 1930s"

Curious to learn more about any of these projects? The program (linked above) includes abstracts for all of them.

Illustration above: a stamp that promotes Esperanto as a way to end war, with a simple illustration in green of a uniformed man on crutches; from the 1920s, I think? (Lost the cite. Bad historian.)

July 29: Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944)

Eunice Tietjens, born on this date in 1884 (and pictured at right, in a head-and-shoulders photo), was a Chicago-based poet and associate editor of the influential magazine Poetry. She also traveled widely, in China, Africa, and the South Pacific. For sixteen months during World War I, she went to be a foreign correspondent in France, for the Chicago Daily News. The experience left her horrified; in her horror, she wrote the following poem:

Song for a Blind Man Who Could Not Go to War

You who have no eyes to see
You were spared what shaketh me.

Houses ribbed against the sky
Where the storm of steel went by;

Barbed wire rusting in the rain,
Still unwashed of human pain;

Children's eyes grown black with fear;
Grief too dead for sound or tear;

Earth with clotted death for yield;
Crows above a battlefield;

Brains like paint spilled on a wall,
And flesh that has no form at all;

And after nights when souls have gone
The lovely, heedless, heartless dawn.

You who have no eyes to see
You were spared what shaketh me.

Paris, 1918

Tietjens was surely underestimating the way such horrors might be perceived without visual inputs--but it's still a poem that conveys something of the post-WWI sense of appalled weariness and rethinking assumptions. She's been shaken into different thinking about impairment... and about sunrises, too. (Another poem of interest is her "From a Hospital Bed," which begins with the evocative lines, "This is a house of many-fingered pain/Swift fingers, pitiless, that probe and press:/A sullen house, where torture is and stress,/ And where drugged nightmare dreams grow real again.")

Both quoted poems are from Tietjens' Body and Raiment (Knopf, 1919). (Thanks again, Google Books.)

"Convalescence and California: The Civil War Comes West"

From a post today on H-California (wish I could make this lecture--but I'll be at a conference in San Francisco):

The Department of History at CSU Northridge will hold the annual W.P. Whitsett Lecture in California and Western history on Friday, April 20th at 8 p.m. in the Grand Salon of the University Student Union at CSU Northridge. Professor William Deverell, Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and Professor of History at the University of Southern California, will lecture on "Convalescence and California: The Civil War Comes West".

The public is invited. The lecture will be followed by a reception. Since seating is limited, please call the Department of History at 818-677-3566 to make a reservation and to obtain information on parking.

Professor Deverell has a forthcoming study on The Redemptive West: Convalescence, Healing, and the Post-Civil War Nation. His Whitsett lecture will explore several themes from this study, most notably the extent to which soldiers and their families, their lives shattered by the war, looked to California for hope and rejuvenation, just as the nation looked to the far West for national redemption.

Postscript: While looking up links for this post, I came across an interesting photo collection online: they're images of the 75th reunion at Gettysburg in the summer 1938. Surviving Civil War veterans (and they must all have been in their 90s) from across the United States, Confederate and Union alike, took buses and trains to Gettysburg for a last gathering. The photos are moving, and a great many of them include men in wheelchairs, or with canes. (I've been in Gettysburg in July a couple times--it was really steamy, miserably hot and humid--I hope the tent city that was erected for the reunion was more comfortable for all those old veterans.)

Only the tip of the iceberg

In scanning the Sunday morning menu of news programs, the non-hygienic and deplorable conditions at the Walter Reed Medical Facility was the topic du jour. As one would expect, there was rhetoric both trying to explain actions taken to remedy the problem, as well as, aggressive statements minimizing the issue.

The journalist Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who conducted a thorough four month investigation of the facility, explained that she had spoken with the various parties involved. Initially she had been contacted by a person who knew someone who was very frustrated with the poor living conditions at this renowned military health facility. She soon discovered that it was not one or even ten people who were appalled by these conditions but a significant number of patients' families and others who had access to the interior of this outpatient infirmary.

Now this story has opened a Pandora's Box from which different voices are resounding and into which the public is peering.

I have utmost respect for those women and men who are returning from Iraq, with and without medical impairments. What disturbs me is that the same deplorable conditions and substandard care and services are every day occurrences in the lives of many people with disabilities, as well as the elderly, who are living in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. The United States government is quick to covet credit as the world's most developed and advanced country yet under its very eyes, we see physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in these facilities.

There have been sporadic investigative reports through the years of the conditions in nursing homes but there is never a resonating unified public outcry for surveillance and for humane corrective action to be enforced.

We all respect and honor those who have been injured by a historical misadventure, the Iraq war, of which they had no part in creating. We the public should not express any less shock or demand any less purposeful and immediate action against the living conditions that demoralize people with disabilities and the elderly who live in facilities in situations that would never be tolerated by these in power if they were themselves to residence of the same facilities.

The difficult road of recovering soldiers at the Walter Reed Medical Center

Today's Sunday Washington Post features a front page story on the administrative delays and outpatient challenges that war-wounded and war-weary soldiers are facing at the United States Army's top medical facility in Washington, D.C. The editors of DS,TU wish to express our gratitude to the investigative reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull [email contacts] who spent four months conducting their undercover investigation of the out-patient world at Walter Reed. This is a major story that is getting heavy play in the blogosphere [see commentary of Pastor Dan]. Please share your thoughts with your congressional representatives; let them know that you care about the disabled veteran of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to bear witness to and express our compassion for these men and women.

Share this shortened link, http://tinyurl.com/32sfbd

Update: The fallout from this published expose has been swift. Following the resignation of the general in charge of the Walter Reed Medical Center, Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, on Thursday, the news arrived Friday, March 02, 2007 that Secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey, had also been asked to resign by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Veterans' History Project at the Library of Congress

In time for Veterans' Day Weekend, check out the Veterans' History Project at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. It's a wide-ranging effort to gather first-hand records--ephemera, interviews, images, etc.--from all US veterans and others (USO workers, flight instructors, medical volunteers), involved in any 20th-century conflict. They're seeking donations and they offer a Field Kit for anyone who wants to conduct an oral-history interview to add to the project's holdings.

What's already online is searchable, and full of disability history stories. For example: There's a transcribed interview with Robert Del Malak (b. 1946), a Vietnam-era veteran; he was in the Navy for a year when he began to experience vision loss from macular degeneration, and was discharged. George Baxter (b. 1930) lost a leg in Korea--his photo (shown at left) and audio of an interview with Baxter are on the site now. There's also a photo album and audio of an interview with Charles Amsler (b. 1913), a WWII medical corpsman who lost a leg to bone cancer in 1948. Wendy Wamsley Taines (b. 1971) describes her PTSD from service as a medic in the Persian Gulf War, in an audio interview at the site.

These are just collections with online content. There's much, much more in the project's archives. Go have a search around--it's incredibly varied content, and the collection is still growing.

October 26: Sarah Broom Macnaughtan (1864-1916)

I am rather surprised to find how little the quite young girls seem to mind the sight of wounds and suffering. They are bright and witty about amputations, and do not shudder at anything. I am feeling rather out-of-date amongst them. (38-39)

Scottish novelist Sarah Broom Macnaughtan, born in Lanarkshire this date in 1864, worked as a volunteer nurse during wars in the Balkans, South Africa, and Belgium. Her diaries of her war work were published posthumously as My War Experiences in Two Continents (1919), available online, full-text, open-access at Project Gutenberg. More eye-witness passages:

Now I have got to work at the hospital. There are 25,000 amputation cases in Petrograd. The men at my hospital are mostly convalescent, but, of course, their wounds require dressing. This is never done in their beds, as the English plan is, but each man is carried in turn to the "salle des pansements," and is laid on an operating-table and has his fresh dressings put on, and is then carried back to bed again. It is a good plan, I think. The hospital keeps me busy all the morning. Once more I begin to see severed limbs and gashed flesh, and the old question arises, "Why, what evil hath he done?" This war is the crucifixion of the youth of the world. (198-199)

I heard a voice behind me say, "The blind are coming first," and from the train there came groping one by one young men with their eyes shot out. They felt for the step of the train, and waited bewildered till someone came to lead them; then, with their sightless eyes looking upwards more than ours do, they moved stumbling along. Poor fellows, they'll never see home; but they turned with smiles of delight when the band, in its grey uniforms and fur caps, began to play the National Anthem. These were the first wounded prisoners from Germany, sent home because they could never fight again—quite useless men, too sorely hurt to stand once more under raining bullets and hurtling shell-fire—so back they came, and like dazed creatures they got out of the train, carrying their little bundles, limping, groping, but home. After the blind came those who had lost limbs—one-legged men, men still in bandages, men hobbling with sticks or with an arm round a comrade's neck, and then the stretcher cases. There was one man carrying his crutches like a cross. Others lay twisted sideways. Some never moved their heads from their pillows. All seemed to me to have about them a splendid dignity which made the long, battered, suffering company into some great pageant. (201-202)

[Image, above: a WWI-era American Red Cross poster from the Minnesota Historical Society's Visual Resources Database.]