Children of the Brave
A post for this past Memorial Day
To the southwest is Fort Leonard Wood, one of the US Army's primary Basic Training bases. To the southeast is Fort Campbell, headquarters of the 101st Airborne. To the east is Scott Air Force Base, headquarters of the 18th Air Force and the Air Mobility Command, center of the US Military's airborne transport fleet. St. Louis is the nearest major city for a substantial number of military personnel here in mid-America. Troops of olive-grey-green digi-cam fatigue clad soldiers are a common sight snaking their way through the terminals at St. Louis' Lambert International Airport. And their children are a common presence here at Wash U / St. Louis Children's Hospital.
For many children whose mother or father is based at one of the region's many facilities, Wash U / St. Louis is the nearest lung transplant center, nearest Phase I oncology center, nearest pediatric neurosurgery center. And many more are the children whose parents are based elsewhere or have been deployed to the frontlines of Iraq or Afganistan, and so the children stay with spouses or families living in the vast region that Wash U is the primary final referal center for. To the sands of Anbar and the mountains of Kandahar America has sent her sons and daughters. And *their* sons and daughters are among those we routinely serve here at Wash U.
Say what you will about the decisions the previous Commander in Chief and his administration made. Say what you will about the previous Commander in Chief and his administration, with regards to their planning, to their decision making, to their prioritization and their heed of evidence or history. Say what you will about the current Commander in Chief's handling of what he has inherited from his predecessor. History will certainly have much to say on all those accounts. But history is for the future, and that will take care of itself. For now, our duty and our privelege is to care for the soldier and the veteran sent off to fight, a story told in The Lights at the VAMC, from service as a medical student on Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. And now as a pediatrician, our duty and privelege is to care each day for the children those soldiers left behind.
We set aside particular days on the calendar to remember and honor our soldiers and our veterans, and this is appropriate and good. But far more important is what we do on all the rest of the days of the year to support those who we let our government send off to war. We owe each day our best to all the children we are priveleged to serve; but we have a special debt to the children of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen sent abroad. On our cancer services, our surgery services, our intensive care units, we fight for the children of those who our country ordered into battle. They who serve left their children to our keeping. And in this trust, we shall not fail them.