Modern War Heroes

This would have to be a mom’s worst nightmare. Her son is overseas fighting in Iraq, and she gets word that his troop was involved in a serious bombing attack. I would image she would wait nervously for the news about her son’s fate.

Tammy Gollinger knows how this feels. She received word from the government that her son Randy was alive, but critically injured. And that’s all they would tell her.

Tammy desperately wanted to be by her son’s side, but no information about him was forthcoming. She didn’t even know the extent of his injuries, and Randy himself couldn’t contact her due to the fact that he was unconscious the majority of the time.

This lack of information would start a mother’s nightmare. She eventually found out that Randy had suffered enormous trauma to his right leg and that it was only hanging by skin. His face had also been crushed and he had lost his right eye. The doctors thought he was going to die.

Tammy had trouble even reaching her son. The military told her to “stay put” and when she did finally manage to locate him and arrive at the hospital, they denied her entry.

However, using her connections as a hospital employee, she managed to get paperwork allowing her entry to her son’s bedside.

“The devastation of walking into that hospital room for the first time will never leave my mind,” recalls Tammy. “The smell alone was terrible. His leg was gangrenous. Since they didn’t think he was going to live, they left him in one piece. My first order of business was to order the doctors to remove my son’s leg and save his life. I knew in my heart that if he lived 48 hours, he had a chance of surviving.” (source)

Randy survived, but he had a long road to recovery, both physically and emotionally. He suffered from depression, and hated the reflection in the mirror. Slowly, with years of plastic reconstruction and therapy, Randy has made a comeback. Now, at 23, he is happy and living with his girlfriend.

Read the full article here.

This post features another doctor who really went the extra mile to help his patients. This man really is a hero in every sense of the word.

In war, physical endurance and hardship is the norm. But this man figured out a way to help the people trapped in German war camps, along with his entire hometown, without ever having to pick up a gun.

In a time when innocent people were brutally murdered only for their nationality and religion, one soldier stands out among the rest.

He defied the Germans, repeatedly risking his life to save the lives of thousands. Dr. Eugene Lazowski is considered a hero to many, but for him, saving others was his only option—it was simply the right thing to do.

Dr. Lazowski was a soldier and doctor in the Polish Army, Polish Underground Army and Red Cross during World War II. Based on a medical discovery by his friend, Stanislaw Matulewicz, he created a fake epidemic of a dangerous infectious disease, Epidemic Typhus, in the town Rozwadow, as well as surrounding villages.

Brilliant! What better way to keep the Germans from taking over the town? Apparently the Germans were highly susceptible to the disease and avoided the “patients” (along with a community-wide quarantine) as much as humanly possible. What a remarkable man to be able to put such a plan into motion, and to have it succeed!

Read on for the entire amazing story.

Dedication to a cause has no limits:

With bombs falling around them, Doctors Without Borders refused to leave Iraq — continuing to work in a Baghdad hospital treating the torrent of sick and wounded despite the dangers of war.It wasn’t long before two members of the Medecins Sans Frontieres — as the group is known internationally — were carted away to the regime’s most notorious prisons by the Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies.

“The way that they presented it, [it is] as if they don’t believe humanitarian work at all,” said Ibrahim Younis, 31, an aid worker taken from his hotel April 2 along with Francois Calas, 44, head of the doctors’ Baghdad mission.

Calas and Younis were held in a vast jail and two crowded prisons before being freed April 11. The two men and four volunteer doctors who worked at al Kindi hospital in northeast Baghdad resumed their healing work a short time later. Read on…

This is truly an inspiring account. While these men aren’t soldiers, they risked it all to be where they were most needed. And they didn’t let their bad experiences get them down or discourage them. They jumped back into the fray!