Tending to Bodies Near the Breaking Point

One recent morning, 13 soldiers came to visit her in the small wooden medical hut of a 100-man camp near the village of Rahman Khel, cradled by the snow-tipped mountains of Paktia Province near the Pakistani border. One after another, the soldiers told her of their twisted knees, back pains or shoulder strains — the increasingly familiar-sounding toll of a long war.

After multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of these soldiers’ bodies are nearing the breaking point. It is up to Captain Odom, 28, from Moselle, Miss. — the only physical therapist attached to the 3,500 men and women of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division — to keep them together.

“These bodies get a beating,” she said as she spent the next 12 hours stretching out legs, lifting arms or standing on a box to lean over and pummel pulled back muscles, accompanied by sighs, groans, thanks and the occasional curse.

“They walk up and down mountains carrying a lot of gear, just a lot of weight, and that can result in daily aches and pains, and also injuries,” she said. “I am keeping them doing their job, living their lives with as little pain as possible.”

These soldiers are likely to be some of the last Americans to serve in Afghanistan, and as troops are beginning to withdraw ahead of the 2014 deadline, the war here can take on an end-of-the-race feel at times: the finish line is distant but finally in sight, and Captain Odom is working just to keep her charges running till they can reach it.

The action these days is rarely about face-to-face combat. Instead, it is an effort to keep up with an elusive enemy that slips from the looming mountains this time of year and moves invisibly from village to village through the woods and fields, heading west for the fighting season.

For the Army company based at this outpost, among the 19 on Captain Odom’s rounds, it involves long, bone-rattling journeys in armored vehicles protected against roadside bombs or suicide attacks. Or it is a five-hour slog encased in ever more elaborate body armor — designed to protect against a distant sniper shot or rocket. But it can add at least 35 pounds to a soldier’s load, even without his helmet, pistol, ammunition, water, medical kit and rifle.

“When you carry all this stuff and then go climb one of those mountains, it definitely takes a toll on your body,” said Sgt. James Daoust, a company medic.

Today’s protection is the I.O.T.V., or improvised outer tactical vest, a bulky affair that involves heavy ceramic block plates, side plates, deltoid protectors and groin guards. Some soldiers even have Kevlar underwear. (At higher altitudes, soldiers are allowed to wear a slimmed down I.O.T.V., called a platecarrier, but it is still heavy.) Around the bases in this region, sweating soldiers in shorts and sneakers run laps around the outer perimeter wearing the vests just to get used to them.

Captain Odom, who has broad rosy cheeks and a practical, considerate manner, represents a new kind of emphasis in the military on getting to these kind of injuries quickly, even mundane ones like twisted ankles or tweaked backs, before repeated strain can force soldiers out of the war altogether.

She was encouraged to go into the military by her uncle, a retired colonel, after she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. Now, she is five months from the end of her first tour of duty. She seems comfortable sprinting from a standing start in the darkness to board a waiting Black Hawk, or flying over the Afghan mountains in the moonlight, bound for yet another camp in her 19,000-square-mile territory, carrying her medical bag and an M4 carbine.