U.S. military treats many soldiers' wounds 'in theater'

When Sgt. Chris Milton was recovering from his combat injury, his days hardly varied: As the wind off the Afghan desert coated everything in a talcum-like dust, he spent two hours on "the rack," as he called his physical therapy. In his sweltering tent, he watched movies or played computer games. Before he went to sleep, he hooked himself up to electrodes that sped the healing of his spine.

The rest of the time he spent thinking about his unit still in combat nearby, about the war and about how faith can come between men.

A growing number of soldiers like Milton are being treated for non-life-threatening wounds and sent back to combat without ever leaving Afghanistan. Army doctors and commanders say the practice speeds recovery and gets injured soldiers back to their units more quickly than sending them to Germany or the United States for treatment.


Caring for the wounded in Afghanistan helps their morale, they say, by keeping them more connected to their buddies.

But Milton, a 29-year-old squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division, says that even though his company was nearby at its Arghandab River Valley outpost, he never felt more isolated, at war not only with the Taliban, but at times with the Army, and even himself.

Being away from his unit for two months gave him plenty of time to ponder a war in which victory seems difficult to define, much less achieve. It left him skeptical that the Army knows best about his medical treatment and even about the tactics for winning the war in this part of Afghanistan, which has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the conflict.

"We're over here fighting a war that doesn't matter," said the powerfully built Ohio native, who defies easy definition: a soldier fighting Muslim militants, but one unafraid of challenging fellow GIs who equate Muslims with terrorists. "It's never going to change."

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Milton is in the 101st Airborne's 2nd Brigade, one of the additional units ordered to Afghanistan last year by President Obama to try to stem what military commanders acknowledged had become a worsening insurgency.

His platoon arrived in June with more than 20 men. But after being sent to a small U.S. base called Combat Outpost Nolen, it was down to fewer than a dozen by August.

Several soldiers lost limbs or suffered such severe injuries that they had to be flown home. Others, like Milton, have been sent to the rear in hope that they can recover and return to duty.

Milton was injured during a supply mission in July. He was traveling in one of the Army's heavily armored mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles when a bomb detonated beneath it and blasted the front end skyward.

Then the vehicle slammed to the ground, and "all I remember is grabbing the gunner" in the rooftop turret to keep from being thrown out, Milton said.

He suffered a compressed spine. Army medics gave him painkillers so he could remain with his squad, because his dwindling unit needed every available man. That suited Milton, who couldn't stand the thought of leaving.

"I didn't want to be evacuated," he said. "I had to be there for my soldiers."

But the drugs only masked his injuries, and his back gave out three weeks later as he was carrying a soldier who had collapsed from the heat.

He was taken by helicopter to the U.S. air base near Kandahar, and after rest and physical therapy, was moved to Forward Operating Base Wilson, closer to his unit in Arghandab.

Doctors prescribed more painkillers, but he stopped taking them, convinced that they exacerbated his injuries.

"They had me so doped up before that I didn't know I was injured," he said.