As we prepare to observe Veterans Day on Friday, I've got something for you to think long and hard about. Almost half of all Afghanistan and Iraq war Veterans are disabled. Awful, isn't it?

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in daily life and forget about the enormous sacrifices our troops have made and so I'm going to put it into perspective for you. According to the Boston Globe, 45% of our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans (or almost half) have applied for disability benefits.  That's more than double the disability rate from the first Gulf War. And it gets worse.

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No injured soldier is above another, but check this out- the Daily Mail says that soldiers filing for disability now have more injuries than in previous wars.  Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have an average of eight ailments. Vietnam vets had fewer than four problems.  World War Two and Korean War vets had two. We do need to keep in mind though that we didn’t know a whole lot about things like concussions and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in earlier wars, so this is part of the reason the numbers are even higher now.

USA Today grabbed some stats from the Department of Veteran Affairs and numbers terrifying- they discovered that "more than 1,600 Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans have lost limbs. Over 156 are blind.  More than 177,000 have suffered hearing loss and upwards of 200 need face transplants."

Also, these numbers don't cover the number of silent troops- those are the ones who have experienced horrific things and haven’t spoken up.

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If you're interested in discovering ways that you can help our wounded soldiers, please check this out.

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