SAN ANTONIO – The 59th Medical Wing at Lackland Air Force Base received an American flag Thursday that offered hope to thousands of soldiers, sailors, Airmen and Marines who were wounded in Iraq.
The flag is one of four displayed in Hero's Highway, a tent that wounded troops entered as they were brought into the Air Force Theatre Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq.
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Over seven years, 35,000 patients were treated at the hospital in Balad.
More than 9,000 of those wounded warriors passed under the flag which was presented to the 59th Medical Wing.
Retired Col. Charles Hardin, who was the commander at the hospital from January 2005 to May 2005, said the glimpse at the flag offered hope.
"You could see the relief on their faces," he said. "That flag meant all the world to them at that moment."
It was a sign that they were in American territory -- and would be taken care of.
"Once they saw it, they knew they were safe," Victoria Immanivong, an Airman who worked as a medical technician at the hospital, said. "I think it was a relief to be back in safe hands."
Part of the relief came from the quality of the hospital they were entering. The Balad hospital had 99 percent survivability, the highest in military medical history.
"With the severity of those injuries, that, in and of itself, is a miracle," Hardin said.
Many of those miracles were performed at the hands of physicians, nurses and technicians from Wilford Hall.
"It's a fitting reminder for all our medics here as they walk through these corridors of how important their mission is to the nation," Maj. Gen. Byron Hepburn, the 59th Medical Wing commander, said.