Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401300202
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by SIDNEY BARRITT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is no exaggeration to say that war typifies all the worst characteristics of human nature.
At the very same time, in the face of all the savagery, deprivation, want and misery, equal but polar opposite characteristics shine forth in some cosmic attempt to balance the scales. So, while verses from Homer and Virgil celebrate the great battles of antiquity, their verses also record the earliest efforts to bind the wounds of battle. Other forms of ancient art - pottery, wall frescoes, tombstones - do likewise in an age long before photography. And now this book does the same using the camera's eternal eye.
Dr. Stanely Burns has accumulated a collection of photographs of medicine on the battlefield, dating from the American Civil War to the very present in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. One of the first is chillingly evocative of the charnel house opening scene of Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves" wherein he has suffered a leg wound that will lead to amputation under brutal conditions.
And so the photos proceed through World War I with its trenches, gassed and blinded soldiers, and those with "shell shock," the equivalent of the current Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; World War II complete with burned survivors of Hiroshima; Korea with the introduction of the helicopter, a modern extension of the basic principle of rapid evacuation of casualties first worked out in Napoleon's time; and Vietnam, still too close to memory.
The text only enhances the photography as it draws on skills of veteran reporters, some of them eyewitnesses to events in this century, and even William Styron for a touching introduction. The effect is striking and well-worth an evening's reading and contemplation.
- Sidney Barritt is a Roanoke physician.
by CNB