"Purple
Hearts - My Heart is Burning"
An Exhibition
and a Book
About the Wounded Veterans
from the War in Iraq
PressInfo #
224
July
16, 2005
By
Annette
Schiffmann, TFF Associate
Denne artikel på dansk
og på svensk
"I didn't join the army to serve my
country, but to escape from the awful boredom in Orange
County, to get away from my gang, and from the drugs."
Robert Acosta had just reached the
age of 18 when he signed up with the US military. He was
19 when he was deployed to Iraq from his base in Hanau in
Germany, and three months later a hand grenade someone
had thrown at his Humvee exploded. "There's no way on
earth to get you prepared for the situation where all of
a sudden you see your own hand lying on the ground in
front of you and everywhere across the walls there are
little, bloody pieces of you," he says.
While he speaks, again and again
with his left hand he turns and twists the hook that now
substitutes for his right - it is disturbing for him to
talk about it, each time again.
Robert
Acosta, Photo by Nina Berman © 2005
New York photographer Nina Berman
who works, among other papers, for the New York Times,
has photographed him one year ago, and with him seventeen
other Iraq veterans (one of them a woman). "Since nobody
else was doing it - there was not a single photo in the
news - I started looking for the veterans in google, with
entries like "amputated legs or arms, or artificial
limbs."
In February 2005, the website of
the U.S. Department of Defense listed 11,442 wounded
soldiers, counting only those wounded in battle. Luis
Calderon from Puerto Rico - 22 years old today - is not
among those listed. His quadriplegia - paralysis from the
neck downward - is the result of a concrete wall crashing
down on him after he had ventured to destroy it with his
tank because it had a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein
painted on it.
Also not listed is José
Martinez, now 20 years old. His face is completely
mutilated with burn scars from a landmine exploding
beneath his Humvee - but it was not "in battle." Jordan
Johnson, now 23 years, is missing on the list as well.
Her right leg was shattered and smashed during a truck
accident, not "in battle". No Purple Heart for them - and
thus no pension.
At least not unless they fight for
it.
Up to now, the Walter Reed Military
Hospital (Washington) alone has admitted more than 17,000
wounded, coming either from Iraq directly or from
Landstuhl in Germany, while the hospital of the Navy has
registered another 11,000 - also counting those admitted
to smaller hospitals, the aggregate number of U.S.
soldiers wounded in Iraq is estimated at 37,000. Those
wounded "only" mentally or in their souls, with psychic
disturbances and traumas in bodies unwounded in outward
appearance, aren't counted at all.
In March 2005 Nina Berman received
World Press Photo Award for shooting these photos, as
well as for her book Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq. To
her, this equivalent of an Oscar for photographers isn't
too important.
The recruiting market is highly
competitive, and the recruiters get paid for success.
They pull up with their buses in front of schools and
offer the kids free computer games - on the condition
that they give away their home addresses and phone
numbers. The games themselves are designed to test
various skills needed in the military, and after the
evaluation of the results the recruiters call the parents
or the kids at their homes and offer them money and
opportunities.
"There are so many who don't have
anything else they could do," says Robert Acosta and
shrugs his shoulders, helplessly and angrily. "One of
these guys here has a father who is in jail because of
manslaughter, his mother took off when he was a little
boy. The army has been the only family he ever had -
shit, man." Now Alex Presman is 26 and has to live with
only one leg left. Alan Jarmaine Lewis, now 23, is
another one of those who had been hoping "to belong" to
something and someone - his father, his sister and his
friend were all shot during various gang fights in
Chicago when he was only seven. He has lost both legs in
Iraq, and his face is badly burnt.
Since January 2005 the recruiters
have had a hard time reaching their quota, and so by now
they offer up to $ 18,000 to the youth in case they sign
up for the army. But these days, colored people, most
women, and many others as well are hardly tempted by any
such offers, regardless of poverty, a feeling of
senselessness, or the general lack of perspectives - by
now even the government's PR version of the numbers of
wounded and dead convey the real threat to life and
health of going to fight in Iraq.
It is the first opening of the
exhibition in Germany at the German-American Institute in
Heidelberg. In the big stairway of the Institute the
walls are plastered with the endlessly long lists of dead
Iraqi civilians - Iraqbodycount was able to name 6.900
out of 100.000 - in words: one hundred thousand. Robert
Acosta is on his way upstairs to the opening. When he
realizes what he is looking at, he suddenly has tears in
his eyes. "Oh shit," he whispers and turns away - "and
all that for nothing."
Three days later, in Freiburg, he
lends a helping hand in fixing the lists to the walls.
"My little brother is 16 now, and lately he was like:
maybe the Army would be cool. One recruiter has already
been at our house, but I tell you, if this guy or another
of his kind dares to show up another time, I'm going to
shake my hook in front of him."
"Yes - we will make their life a
living hell with our work - that's our most important
contribution against this war for the coming months,"
says Nina Berman - and looking at her grim smile, you are
inclined to believe it.
Learn more about
"Purple Heart - My Heart is Burning"
Open
Democracy: Nina Berman - Purple Hearts - Back from
Iraq
"The dead tell no stories. It is the wounded that survive
and present us with our own complicity". To mark the
second anniversary of the start of the Iraq war,
openDemocracy presents ten portraits from "Purple Hearts:
Back from Iraq", the acclaimed photography collection on
wounded American soldiers, by the award-winning
photographer Nina Berman.
Mother
Jones - The Damage Done
Digital
Journalist - Purple Hearts thumbs - Nina Berman's
photos
Nina
Berman's book, Purple Hearts
Information
Clearing House - Purple Hearts. A Documentary by Roel van
Broekhoven
A photo series that the New York-based Nina Berman made
of wounded Iraq veterans led to the making of this
documentary. She also wrote the book 'Purple Hearts, Back
from Iraq', in which soldiers tell their stories.
Documentary filmmaker Roel van Broekhoven crossed the
United States to visit the people portrayed in Berman's
photos.
In detail, they recount what happened on the day they got
injured; how they arrived back home, blind or legless;
how they have to try to forget the war now, in small
towns around Alabama and Pittsburgh, or in Washington and
L.A. Officially recognised as "heroes," a Purple Heart on
the uniform in the closet, most of these soldiers long to
go back to an army that has no use for them anymore. A
story that President Bush would probably prefer not to
see propagated.
The
Iraq Body Count
Operation
Truth - U.S. Soldiers against the war
In Germany alone, the
Exhibition
"Purple Hearts - My Heart Is
Burning" has already been
shown in Heidelberg, Freiburg, Tübingen, Aachen,
Saarbruecken, Herford, Hannover, Duesseldorf.
CONTACT
For more information about the
exhibition and renting it, contact Annette Schiffmann -
anna.schiff@t-online.de
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