Can You Hold?

One term that keeps appearing in the stories about Walter Reed is "medical holding company", which is simply a temporary company for persons passing through between permanent assignments. I was in two holding companies during my brief military career: four days at Oakland Army Base waiting to ship out to Vietnam and just over two weeks at the 90th Replacement Battalion in Long Binh. The extended stay at the latter occurred because they pulled me and some other infantrymen out of regular processing to serve as iternal security guards for a couple weeks.

The memory I have from both experiences is being in limbo, unattached and unconnected to anyone who cares. I was just there, being processed, but other than moving me through the system, no one paid much attention to me. During the two week guard stint, I was pretty much on my own as long as I stayed in the battalion area and showed up for duty. It wasn't bad duty but I could not receive mail since I had no permanent address. What made it bearable was that it was good time not in the field and the fact that I talked my way into access to the battalion library.

The sense of being cast adrift comes back to me as I read about the soldiers at Walter Reed and other military hospitals. I had no particular needs when I was on hold so the indifference wasn't a big deal. Had I really needed something--like the wounded from Iraq--I would have been shit out of luck. They sure are.