On 3/1/06, Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ...who, after having lost a leg in Iraq, has PTSD. The story is spread > out over several months, starting last November.
Didn't quite realize this was Doonesbury until I looked. Speaking of PTSD, while visiting my folks in North Carolina last week, I took a side trip to meet Wes' crew chief, who was very, very badly injured by the same rocket that killed Wes. The fact that he's alive is amazing; the fact that he lost part of his brain and yet you'd hardly know it to meet him, is even more astonishing. But he has plenty to deal with, physically and psychologically, 15 months later. Among my first words to him were, "Thank you for serving," and "Welcome home." I try to remember to say that to every vet I meet. Perhaps it seems absurd to thank people for serving in a war I oppose, but life is absurd. Good people serve, are hurt and die, in wrong wars. He filled me in on the incident. Their crew had been shuttling Iraqi National Guard troops into Fallujah, accompanied by a couple of translators. They'd drop off troops and then advance to the next block of the city to give covering fire. They were at their base and refueling site, north of the city near the train station (story and picture from the day before Wes died: http://www.political-news.org/breaking/2099/iraq-train-station-turned-into-us-base.html; this one has a map: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6442623/). They had arranged their AAVs (a/k/a amtracs) in a semi-circle facing the city. The crew of four was in or around the vehicle -- this area as considered to be safe at this point (the train station had been seized the day before). The crew chief said he heard a big boom and saw a cloud of dust fly up, fairly far away. Fifteen or 20 minutes later, another one, closer, hit. When the third one hit, he was inside the vehicle, saw a bright flash of light and next thing he knew, he was face-down on the floor, noticing that he was bleeding badly, thinking, "This is not good." He said that he looked around and saw more blood and thought, "This is really not good." The AAV was smoking... and it was loaded with ammunition. Not a good situation. A number of Marines immediately ran to the vehicle to get the crew out. He said one was stopped because he wasn't wearing body armor. Between the ammunition and the fact that whoever was firing the rockets had their range, it was a brave thing to rush in there. A fourth round hit at some point, but he wasn't sure when. When they started treating him, he says his heart rate was 25 and respirations 8. He was mising part of his skull, a piece of his brain, one of his shoulder blades was shattered and there was a quarter-sized hole (an exit wound, apparently) next to his other shoulder. From what he described, he apparently had double hemothorax -- bleeding into both lungs, causing them to collapse. Somebody did a tracheotomy with a ball-point pen. Around this time, he passed out. One of the reasons he survived, I imagine, is that the helo pad for medevac was right nearby (he had thought the dust from the first round was from a helo at first). He eventually ended up in Germany and didn't come out of the coma until he was at Bethesda. He was so critically injured (the most critically of their entire batallion) that the Marines flew his family to Germany from South Carolina, partly to see him, partly in hopes that it would help bring him out of the coma and recover. At Bethesda, they told him he wasn't out of the woods yet -- there were three things that might still kill him: pneumonia, a stroke or infection. He said, "I got all three. At the same time." Yet he survived. He's blind on one side of one eye and he's having to learn to read and write again, which he says is the hardest thing he's ever done ("And you've been in combat," I replied.) Perhaps hardest of all, he feels responsible for Wes' death. He says he had just asked Wes to start the vehicle. "I should have done that myself," he said. He told me that they found one of Wes' boots 100 yards in one direction, his helmet 50 yards the other way. And we talked about how some of Wes' friends had to collect what they could find of his body. As I probably have said here before, Wes has two graves. One is in Texas and now I know pretty much where the other is -- at the Fallujah train station. I was very glad to meet Wes' crew chief, even though it was difficult. From my own experiences as a paramedic, I know that it is good to tell your story to somebody who will listen and accept it without trying to fix anything, just to be a witness to the horror and absurdity, the helplessness. That's what I tried to do, though I found myself saying that somehow, it is okay that Wes died. We didn't want that, we'd undo it if we could, but somehow, we can accept it. He asked me if I thought it would be okay for him to get a tattoo of Wes' dog tags. It's fine with me, but I suggested he ask Chayla. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
