Of the veterans who were injured and lost a limb in the post-9/11 wars, many lost . According to of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, of these veterans, “About 40 percent to 60 percent also sustained a brain injury. Because of some of the lessons learned and the innovations that have taken place on the battlefield… we were taking care of service members who in previous conflicts would have died.”
In fact, because of advances in trauma care, more than 90 percent of all soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who were injured in the field survived. Many of the seriously injured that in the past might have killed them.
US deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom also include 130 service members who died in other locations besides Afghanistan, including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen.