MRE board member Sig Christenson reminds us of the price we’ve paid in fighting two wars as photographer Kin Man Hui and he spent a night at Lackland Air Force Base as a medical evacuation flight landed there. Christenson also thought a great deal about the people there at the base who have helped our warriors begin to recover from their wounds. Even those who haven’t deployed are veterans in some ways. Here’s a look at their war.
2nd Lt. Brenda Herrera (left) chats with a wounded soldier after being transported from a C-17 aircraft to the bus at Lackland AFB on Friday. Herrera is a member of the 559th Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility. The CASF has moved about 1,500 patients since July 19. Photo: Kin Man Hui, Kmhui@express-news.net / San Antonio Express-News
CASF work deeply meaningful
By Sig Christenson
San Antonio Express-News
The roar of jet engines announced the arrival of another medical evacuation flight here as an Air Force crew sat in a bus.
Running late, the C-17 landed on Lackland AFB’s Kelly Field Annex at 10:15 p.m. Friday with precious cargo: wounded troops. They were quickly moved out of the jet and driven to the nearby Wilford Hall Ambulatory Surgical Center.
One GI fresh from his fourth tour of the war zone since the Iraq invasion stared out the window as the bus rolled past a road on the South Side not far from a relative. He had no visible wounds, but was in pain.
“I started having mental issues,” said the 28-year-old staff sergeant, who has spent 52 months of war in two countries over nine years. “I guess everything caught up with me finally.”
