The group at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. R to L: Bruce Higdon,
Jeff Bacon, Me, Rick Kirkman, Jeff Keane, Stephan Pastis and one of our NNMC guides

So now I am rested and recovered (mostly) from the NCS/USO trip to Landstuhl, Germany to visit wounded U.S. soldiers with a group of cartoonists. Prior to flying out to Germany, we spent Monday last week visiting recovering soldiers in the D.C. area.

Our group in D.C. consisted of trip organizer Jeff Bacon (“Broadside”/Naval Times), NCS President Jeff Keane (“The Family Circus”), Rick Kirkman (“Baby Blues”), Bruce Higdon (“Punderstatements”"/Freelance caricaturist), Stephen Pastis (“Pearls Before Swine”) and myself. This is a fun group of talented cartoonists, and needless to say we were cracking jokes (and each other up) all week long.

On Monday the 29th we left our hotel in Silver Spring, MD and traveled to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. This is a center of excellence for head trauma and other serious wounds, and is one of the principal places of surgery and treatment for soldiers just back from action as well as continuing treatment for complicated injuries. Our guides escorted us to the patient wards to see some of these brave wounded kids.

The way it works is this: the patients are told who we are and asked if they’d like us to visit. Then a list is created for us of the people who would like to see us. We are brought to their rooms and briefed prior to entering on their names, rank, injuries, when and where it happened, their state of mind and mood at the time and if they have any family there as well. In some cases we had to get “gowned up” in surgical scrubs and gloves so we did not bring in any infections or other bugs into the patient’s area. We had five patients our list. We were not allowed to take our own pictures, but they got pictures with us for them to keep.

I was at a bit of a disadvantage within the group. The others had a character they could draw. I did not, unless you include Alfred E. Neuman. I did a few Alfreds later, but what I mostly did was caricatures of the soldiers and staff. I was worried about that, as I was afraid I’d have to decide if I should or should not include some of the ghastly injuries that would be obvious on them. As it happened, few of the soldiers had any head traumas, so I could draw their faces and not have to address their injuries. Actually my caricatures ended up being a pretty big hit with most of the folks we saw. Bruce also drew caricatures and occasionally his army character. Chip also did some caricatures of either the patient or some politicians like Bush, Clinton or Obama. The others did their strip characters and added the name or some reference to the subject. (more…)