America's North Shore Journal

Raziqullah laid motionless on the green stretcher as blood oozed across his forehead, dripping onto the floor of Forward Operating Base Blessing’s aid station. Army Maj. Durren Hightower, a physician’s assistant, looked up from the massive head wound that exposed the 15-year-old boy’s brain, and sighed, “You know he isn’t going to have a good outcome, right?” One of the medics, fighting to keep the boy breathing by pumping oxygen into his lungs, replied quietly, “Yes sir.” Raziqullah, a shepherd, who like many Afghans has only one name, left home early on the morning of April 23 to tend to his flock in the mountains around his village of Gosalak. His family found him hours later at the mountain’s rocky bottom. He had fallen. The boy’s two uncles rushed him from his … Read entire article »