08 March 2010

A word about the UK Daily Mail / MailOnline story

How sad that the simple truths of a story can get lost in the retelling.

It was a story of how The Many pulled together and did everything in their power to meet The Needs of The One.

A story of how we as human beings take care of one another. A story of military medicine at it's finest.

Because I was personally named in the MailOnline article (which was republished by Michael Yon at his site) as having done something I did not do, I would like to formally set the record straight.

Michael Yon contacted Soldiers' Angels to improve communications about Soldier X's status between his officers in Afghanistan and the German civilian hospital after he was moved from British to US and then German medical care. Soldiers' Angels did not directly contact the Acute Lung Rescue Team. Soldiers' Angels' role is to support soldiers and soldiers' families, not to initiate or intervene in medical care.

100% of the credit goes to the coalition military medical teams, who pulled together across the world to save a human life - no matter what nationality. They would have done it for anyone. That is the spirit of my original blog post on this story, "The needs of the one."

Greyhawk has the real story, and tells it much better than I can.

I have contacted both Peter Almond, the author of the MailOnline story, and Michael Yon about the error. Both acknowledged that an unfortunate mistake was made in Mr. Almond's MailOnline article. Michael Yon has published a correction on his Facebook page. He also later added the correction as a comment below the story on his main web site, although I certainly would have preferred a more prominent correction appended directly to the article. (Update, 8 March 1900 GMT: Michael Yon has added the correction at the end of his reprint of Mr. Almond's article. Thank you, Michael.) As far as I know, there has not been a correction of any kind made by the MailOnline.

We fight because it's the right thing to do; because all of humanity is our tribe.

God bless all who answer that call, and God bless those who care for them.

2 comments:

BobConnolly said...

It's only because the 'embellished' account is so utterly within the realm of possibility for those of us who know and appreciate what you and the SA gang do at Landstuhl that this is even an issue.  If someone said POTUS made the call for a lung machine, we would all know that the reporter must have gotten it wrong.  :-[

Even without this, the record of you and the rest of the SA gang is a model for good and generous people everywhere.  It is the gold standard for which the rest of us strive...... :)

Maggie45 said...

What Bob said, AND MaryAnn, you have true humility. I pray for you every day that God continue to give you the strength to do all that you do. I think that you have no idea how, in your quiet way, you inspire so many of us. Thank you.