Hidden Tragedy

Stars and Stripes:

Look at the photos on Capt. Andy Houghton’s Web site and you see one thing the same in every one, whether he’s with his family, at West Point, in uniform, in Iraq, or even trussed up with duct tape.

That mile-wide smile.
...
“From first light to lights out,” Ziebarth said, “his face beamed from cheek to cheek with a wide smile that couldn’t help but spread optimism and motivation.”

During his months in Iraq, his platoon carried out 400 combat missions. Houghton personally led many of them, including the one near Samarra early on the morning of July 10 — his first day back after two weeks of leave in Texas. As he watched from the open commander’s hatch of his Bradley fighting vehicle, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded near his face.

At least three of Houghton’s soldiers — Sgt. Charles Fray, Pfc. Adrian Stone and Pfc. Nicholas Blodgett (who was killed 11 days later in a separate attack) — rushed to his aid.

By the time he reached a field hospital, Houghton had lost two quarts of blood and had no pulse or blood pressure...But a nurse on duty matched his blood type and gave him a direct transfusion, allowing him to transfer to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Houghton lay comatose for a month with his parents, George and Cindy, by his side. His brother, Matt, stayed with him, too, leaving to attend his graduation from Army Officer Candidate School.

Houghton died Aug. 9, three days after a hemorrhage badly damaged his brain. That day, the Army promoted him to captain.

As I understand it, the Pentagon does not count deaths like Houghton's in their officially-released stats because he did not die in-theater. How many other US troops, I wonder, have been killed by their service in Iraq without being included in the mounting butcher's bill?

Elvis56 from Lunaville has this to say in comments:

Actually, they do count him. This is the url for the DoD release
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040810-1104.html
He will be included as Killed in Action.
...
I just checked - he is listed as a hostile death.

So I was misinformed about who is included in the official stats--I'm honestly not sure how I got that in my head. Sorry about that.

[further update: elvis indicates in an e-mail that all such deaths are recorded in a similar manner. Via info he provided me, I found a casualty summary (PDF) at this site which indicates the number of people who have died of wounds, and "includes died of wounds where wounding occurred in theater and death occurred elsewhere."

I still wonder about the total number of medical evacuations from the Iraqi theater, which I've seen could be anywhere from 11,000 up to 22,000. Anybody know where I can get an official number? The only thing I've got is a transcript from Democracy Now! that pegs the figure at 18,00, representing 11,700 troops.]

ntodd