Trip home is just start of road back

[thedrifter]

October 01, 2003

Trip home is just start of road back

By Tom Vanden Brook
USA Today


Sitting on a hospital bed, Army medic Cory McCarthy recalls having a bad feeling about his last mission.
It was early August, and his unit was searching for an official of Saddam Hussein?s former regime near Kirkuk. They were in a spot where, two nights before, a patrol of soldiers was ambushed in a hail of rocket-propelled grenades. McCarthy had treated some of the men that night for neck and head injuries. One soldier died.

?This doesn?t feel right,? McCarthy, 22, told a sergeant.

Moments later, attackers used remote control to detonate an artillery round that had been half-buried in the road. Shrapnel tore into the rear of McCarthy?s Humvee. ?Doc, I?m hit! I?m hit!? a machine-gunner cried out to the sandy-haired medic. McCarthy looked at his own right hand: It was mangled and blood-drenched.

?Wait a second, dude, I?m hit too,? he said.

As he ?zoned in and out of consciousness,? McCarthy clutched his good luck charm ? a Scooby-Doo doll.

Today, McCarthy is one of hundreds of soldiers and Marines patching together their lives in military hospitals across the United States.

Since the war in Iraq began March 19, the Army says that more than 900 of its soldiers have been wounded in action, in addition to 120 killed in action. More than 260 of the most seriously injured have been sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Its military doctors have been treating soldiers since World War I.

A few miles away, doctors and nurses at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., tend to wounded sailors and Marines. Fifty-seven Marines have been killed in action, and 278 wounded.

In official Washington and the national news media, fatalities make news on a regular basis. But at least seven times as many men and women have been wounded in battle, and their names and stories are not as well known.

Many are horribly injured, having lost legs or arms. Many are young, college-age men and women who saw the military as a brief duty on the way to careers and families. Many are like McCarthy: young people proud of what they?re doing in Iraq but hoping not to die for it.

?As a parent, that?s a nightmare that you live with through war,? says McCarthy?s father, Michael, 53, of Gilroy, Calif. ?When you get that call, your whole world starts crashing down around you.?

Since President Bush?s declaration May 1 that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, wounded soldiers have continued to arrive in Washington every week. They come aboard cargo jets, essentially huge air ambulances, at the rate of 50 per week now. But only ?a handful? of those coming home now have been wounded in combat, Walter Reed says.

Cory McCarthy arrived at Walter Reed in mid-August. A boyish soldier from the southern tip of Silicon Valley, McCarthy has had at least nine surgeries. He undergoes physical therapy every day.

Despite his ordeal, McCarthy says he?d love to go back to his unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade. But his mission for now is to regain the use of his dominant hand. That means at least another year of physical therapy.

?I wish they?d send me to Iraq for a week,? he says. ?My guys call me ?Doc.? When they do that, you know you have their respect. It was hard to leave them.?

Advances in body armor have helped save the lives of many of the troops, says Cmdr. Philip Perdue, a trauma surgeon at the naval medical center. But limbs are still exposed, and high-powered weapons and explosions can tear them apart.

Some of the wounded will need prostheses. Others, such as McCarthy, will require lengthy therapy to regain use of hands, arms or legs.

?It?s an honor to be able to take care of them,? Perdue says. ?It?s the best practice in the United States. There is no finer set of patients.?


Surprise attack

Army Spc. Latoya Lucas grew up in the nation?s capital. Looking for a career, she joined the Army four years ago.

?I got tired of working at Red Lobster,? she says from her hospital bed, a star-spangled quilt covering her broken body.

On July 21, Lucas, 24, went on a ?chow run,? in Mosul, carrying breakfast to fellow soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division.

?I heard some shots, then I just saw fire,? she says. ?I don?t remember how I got out of the vehicle.?

A direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade had thrown her from the burning wreck.

?I knew I was badly hurt,? she says. ?But I just waited there patiently ? I didn?t want to go into shock. They tied me up and made sure I didn?t bleed to death. I told them I couldn?t die because I had a husband and a daughter at home.?

The attack fractured her pelvis, snapped bones in her arms and hands and damaged her Achilles tendon. Shrapnel sliced into the flesh on her arms and legs. Surgeons at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany called her husband, Mike, three times for permission to go ahead with the operations that saved her life.

?Those were extremely dark times,? Mike Lucas, 26, says. ?They didn?t know if she?d make it. They didn?t know if they could stop her bleeding, didn?t know if they could save her leg.?

Now in physical therapy, she takes several minutes to bend her knee. The effort drains her. With the help of two therapists, she slides off a table. She pivots for an instant on her strong leg and settles on a reclining bed. She cannot walk on her own, but that is her goal.

Mike Lucas says it?s difficult to watch his wife struggle. But he sees progress, and he marvels at her strength. ?From Day 1, she?s never said, ?Why me?? She just told me that this is what soldiers do.?


A seasoned veteran at 23

At the naval hospital in Bethesda, Marine Cpl. Gardner Meija of Roselle, N.J., recalls surviving some of the war?s heaviest fighting with bumps and bruises. Meija, 23, was part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. He fought Iraqi troops and militants from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad.

?We saw a lot, if not most, of the action,? Mejia says.

On April 10, one day after Baghdad fell, his unit came under heavy fire inside the city.

?A lot of sniper fire and RPGs. Every two seconds,? he says.

The Marines fired on an Iraqi tank that had been hammering them. Ammunition inside the tank exploded and threw shrapnel. A chunk of metal nearly sheared off Mejia?s middle finger and lodged itself in his right hand.

?With the adrenaline flowing, you don?t really feel it,? he says.

After the shooting subsided and he had been treated in the field, he called his wife, Paola, on a satellite phone lent by a reporter embedded with his unit. He told his wife, who was home with their son Aaron, 2, what happened and said that he was OK. He asked her to speak with his mother to assure her.

The battle changed him. It makes him savor every day.

?Because now I know it?s a day I won?t see again,? he says.

Mejia is optimistic about regaining the use of his hand. As he leaves, he offers his left hand and right forearm to shake. ?I?d like to thank the mothers of America for their sacrifice,? he says.


Young faces

Many of the wounded here are young. Many face uncertain futures, so as they mend, they?re forced to rethink their life plans.

McCarthy, the injured medic, threads his way through a ward at Walter Reed that is filled with the walking wounded: a young man with bandages covering stumps where his hands should be slings a backpack over his shoulder; another, missing a leg, practices with crutches. A four-star general exits the room of another soldier, closes the door quietly and walks away with his head down.

Chatty and salty, McCarthy heads to therapy. He says he?s learning to do everything with his left hand. He sits down and peels away yards of gauze dressing, and a therapist looks at his mutilated right hand. A splint immobilizes his fingers.

A metal pin, holding together the bones in his hand, protrudes from the skin. Scars zigzag around a skin graft and up his forearm.


Vivid memories

Details of the attack remain fresh in McCarthy?s mind.

?All of a sudden, we hear a loud ka-boom,? he remembers. ?It wasn?t a boom. It was a KA-BOOM. I got thrown across my Humvee. And I remember my hand feeling really numb.

?I was telling myself I don?t want to look at my hand. I don?t want to look at it. I was like, ?Crap.? ?

The blast severed an artery in his wrist. The bones in his hand were shattered; his thumb dangled by threads of tissue. Shrapnel was embedded in his arms and legs.

He turned to a buddy in his Humvee and instructed him on applying a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding in his wrist. ?I told him, ?You?re going to help fix me.? ?

McCarthy kept on assessing other soldiers? wounds before the blood loss had him drifting out of consciousness. He remembers asking a buddy to pack his Scooby-Doo doll.

?Every single mission since I got out of airborne school, I had this Scooby-Doo doll with me,? McCarthy says. ?He?s my jump buddy.?

Scooby never made it back.

McCarthy flexes the muscles lightly, and the therapist massages his hand to reduce swelling.

?The doctors tell me there?s a good chance I might have full use of my hand,? McCarthy says.

?Right now, I?d just like to go back and spend a week in Iraq with my guys,? he says.

Though he has no feeling in his thumb, he says, ?My ultimate goal is to become a firefighter and start playing my saxophone again.?

His father is hopeful.

?Cory?s a very determined guy,? Michael McCarthy says. ?Always has been. But time will tell.?

Michael and Carol McCarthy learned that their son had been wounded after he landed at the hospital at Landstuhl.

The McCarthys were eager to see their son, but they couldn?t afford the trip to Washington from their home in Gilroy.

Then a story about their son appeared in their hometown newspaper. The City Council voted to pay for their flight. Private donors and the Department of Veterans Affairs helped out as well. ?We?re very, very grateful,? Michael McCarthy says. ?We were very moved.?

But he thinks not just of his son. He wants people to remember the sacrifices being made in Iraq.

?These kids are all volunteers,? he says. ?They enlisted for patriotism or money for school or for a better life. They?re over there fighting and dying every day. And they?re doing it for us. We can?t forget that.?

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/stor...59-2262581.php


Sempers,

Roger