Among Heroes
Our finest, who deserve the best.
By John Hillen - NRO
I first went to Walter Reed Army Hospital in the spring of 1970 to visit my father. I was four years old and pretty out of control. He was a 34-year-old infantry major who had his second combat tour in Vietnam cut short by a bullet that went through an arm and both legs, severing the femoral artery and breaking the femur in his thigh. He escaped bleeding to death by minutes, almost went to the heavens again in a field hospital in Vietnam, and eventually found his way months later to Walter Reed and a family reunion. It's my first memory of my father — a big figure in a white plaster body cast and traction smelling like Hai Karate cologne. I don't remember any other patients in his ward, but he has always made it a point to note that no matter how bad off they felt they were (including the amputees), they all knew they were a good sight luckier than the ones that never returned at all. Most of them were trying like hell to get back on active duty and even back to field.
#aD#So today with today's generation of warriors. A visit to Walter Reed shows that the stuff of warriors has been passed down to a new generation and not rubbed out by the nihilism of pop culture and everything else we blame for "corrupting our youth." The first vet I talked to was Brad — all of 19. Brad is an EOD man — an explosive ordinance disposal specialist. Given that almost all these wounded vets and many others were hurt by improvised explosive devices in Iraq, Brad has them critical skill necessary for this phase of the war. He lost a thumb and a forefinger when one exploded in his hand. His obsession is to pass his medical board review and get back to his unit in Mosul and back to work. I don't know how the board will view an eight-fingered bomb disposal expert but I would have Brad back on the first flight to Mosul for morale's sack itself — both his and his units. The best therapy for a vet capable of it is usually RTD — return to duty. Most of them want it that way. When wounded men returned to my in Desert Storm, they went right back into the line and would broke no special treatment.
Others had injuries too severe to warrant anything other than a medical discharge. This depressed me as the government does a lousy job of taking care of our vets once they are off active duty. One young cavalry supply sergeant had been blasted into a coma and was without sight and hearing for sometime. Restored now but looking in a perpetual daze, he still had cotton pressed into his raw ears. He was headed back to a dead-end town in the California desert to do...something. For the life of me I couldn't think of one good reason why companies that do business with the government (which is about everybody these days) shouldn't have an accessible training program available to guys like him at Walter Reed. If these vets want to, they should be able to wheel down the hall and sign up to be an Oracle database administrator in an instant.
By far and away, the best thing about the Saturday open house at Walter Reed was how hard it was to break into a conversation with one of these young wounded veterans — given that most of them were surrounded by three or four young women. Someone blessed had the foresight to arrange for a legion of cool and cute girls to hang out with the vets. The guys were in heaven. It looked like the most natural thing in the world to see a 19-year-old with one empty sleeve playing cards with four girls who were fighting over which one got to help him with the cards. They all looked completely at ease with each other — nothing forced or patronizing (Chuckles the Clown and the semi-professional karaoke singers though, were a bit out of place). Cute girls and free food is the order of the day for these heroes.
By the way, my Dad got out months later, served another nine years on active duty including parachute status, had a robust second career and even went on the NR cruise last November. I hope the vets we met yesterday can have similar good fortune and are aided by whatever assistance they need from a grateful country.
— John Hillen, a contributing editor at National Review, was a defense-policy adviser to the Bush campaign in 2000. |
