One for the grandkids

I will now make a statement that even the most simple among my readers (a null statement made simply for rhetorical purposes as my readers are decidedly not simple) will agree without hesitation: when given the choice, it is always better to choose not to be shot than to be shot. If you disagree with this or even quibble, you are a loon. This obvious statement could be codified with the smart man's rule of warfare, were there such a code. I make this disclaimer lest any of you doubt that I, being a smart man who follows even hypothetical smart man's codes, DO NOT WANT TO BE SHOT. Not in Iraq, not ever, not anywhere. Disclaimers like this are inevitably followed with a something that makes you wonder if the disclaimer is just there to ward off critics, and this is no exception. At risk of being lumped with the loons, I proceed:

As I walked into the clinic tonight, the sea-foam green curtain was drawn around one of the trauma beds, a terrible thing to see as sea-foam green is well known in naval and literary circles to be a harbinger of pain and unhappiness. The positive sign was that the whole hospital was not in code blue status, but any sane person still hates to see sea-foam green. As the night progressed about thirty minutes, the doctor* who I would want to be operated on had I been shot (WHICH I DO NOT WANT TO BE) came out with what in years to come will be a momento this soldier will show his grandkids. He had been shot from behind and the bullet had gone through his left tricep and entered his chest... almost. The bullet had pierced that part of his under arm that connects to his pectoral, stayed completely outside the ribcage and had lodged itself in his Bible. You hear stories about people carrying their Bible in their pocket and it stopping the bullet from hitting them, and while the bullet still did hit him, the fact that it hit his Bible rather than changing course by two inches killing him should be enough to confirm in a lifelong way the belief that caused him to carry the Bible in the first place.

Now I will repeat this once more: I DO NOT WANT TO EVER BE SHOT. If one is to be shot though (WHICH I DO NOT WANT TO BE) that's about as neat a story as you can get, in an outpatient only down for a couple weeks, sort of way. Not nearly as neat as my hopeful war story when I get home: I WAS NEVER SHOT, but a (distant) second.

*This is the doctor who did the operating in the Washington Post story I linked the other day. Some say the story is embellished, and one doctor proudly claims that he was the main hurdle over come, but it is still a cool story.