21.09.11
Impudent OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan (AP) — It is a gossip, the military surgeon says, that every U.S. Marine has with his corpsman, the buddy who is first to favour him if he is wounded by an insurgent's bomb.
The Marine says, "'If I suffer defeat my manhood, then I don't want to live through it,'" according to Naval forces Lt. Richard Whitehead, surgeon for 1st Battalion, 5th Sea Regiment, which is fighting in one of the most treacherous combat areas of Afghanistan.
"They ask us not to protect them if their 'junk' gets blown off," said Whitehead, using a slang compromise concerning for genitals. "Usually, we laugh. We joke with them about it. At the same every so often old-fashioned, you know that you're going to treat them anyway."
This is a world of veneration, resolve and dark humor that is mostly hidden from accounts of the one cost of the war in Afghanistan. American troops who rounds on foot in bomb-laced areas identify they might lose a leg, or two, if they step in the wrong place. But for juvenile men in their prime, most unmarried and without children, the prospect of losing their procreative organs seems even worse.
Source: The Associated Press