Michael Woodard

We came there in the spring of 1963. Our house stood alone in the newly subdivided farmlands south of Nashville. Its only companions were scattered foundations representing the future homes of families whose lives we would share for years.

Medics flung open the cargo doors and deposited an Iraqi man whose drawn and lined face exposed a life well acquainted with war and hardship. Shouted instructions to “Get him to Balad!” — the site of the big American trauma hospital — sent us on our way.