If you are reading this, you ignored my warning about how destructive and disturbing modern battlefield wounds can be. For example, a friend of mine who was a U.S. Marine rifle company commander in Vietnam, was horribly wounded just as he stepped into a rice paddy when a mortar round exploded in the water about four feet in front of him and knocked him about twenty feet backwards through the air into a tree. The force of the explosion was so great that all of his teeth were knocked out and both of his eyes had popped from their sockets and were hanging down in front of his face. He also had numerous cuts and broken bones, but the Navy medics saved this captain's sight and his life. My friend has told me that he still has bad dreams about the experience. Recent wars can produce even more gory wounds than that Vietnam incident. An example of a typical Iraq war battlefield wound is pictured to the left. It shows an Army mortician trying to reshape the head of an American soldier killed by an incredibly powerful roadside bomb. The gruesome reality is clear from what that mortician told the photographer. "When I got this guy to work on," the mortician said, "his head was as flat as a pancake and as wide as a manhole cover." Of course, I know that what I have said so far could make a sensitive reader have nightmares, but the reality of modern battle wounds is often far worse than anything I have shown you yet. Consider then the following example. A young U.S. rifleman was moving into a dangerous neighborhood in Baghdad. His platoon sergeant told him to keep his eyes open for trip-wires or other signs of explosive devices because the insurgent Moslem fighters would have probably booby-trapped some of the buildings and vehicles along the side of the road. When the unfortunate G.I. in this picture pounded open the door of a suspicious building, an enormous blast sent dozens of pieces of steel hurtling through the air. One of these shards of steel hit the G.I. in the chest and sliced on through and out the back of the guy's chest leaving a horrible gaping hole in the soldier's side, a hole so big that the man's internal organs are visible through the hole. It is probably not necessary to mention any more examples to make the point clearly: modern battlefield wounds can truly be horrible.