When I read Denise Grady’s Struggling Back From War's Once-Deadly Wounds in the Sunday Times, I realized that I had forgotten about the war. It had been pushed to somewhere in the periphery of my consciousness by the mundane, but seemingly urgent, matters in my life.

The article follows 23-yr-old Jason Poole, who received injuries in the war requiring him to relearn to read, speak, walk; he lost an eye, some hearing, and has needed facial reconstruction. He has had to re-think his plans for college, for marriage, and he sometimes feels like people look at him like he’s a freak. And he’s not alone.

As Grady says,

Men and women like Corporal Poole, with multiple devastating injuries, are the new face of the wounded, a singular legacy of the war in Iraq. Many suffered wounds that would have been fatal in earlier wars but were saved by helmets, body armor, advances in battlefield medicine and swift evacuation to hospitals. As a result, the survival rate among Americans hurt in Iraq is higher than in any previous war - seven to eight survivors for every death, compared with just two per death in World War II.

This shift from fatalities to debilitating wounds, particularly brain injury, has been followed by the press and online (see the Army News Service, USA Today, PBS, NPR), but Grady’s piece walks us through the devastating, frustrating, and hopeful steps of the recovery and re-integration process from this type of injury.

Or at least it enters as a timely reminder that this exists, it isn’t going away, and we have to take at least 20 minutes out of our Sunday morning to face it.