Modern War Heroes

I found this page over at Good.is. It is a series of photos showing troops inhabiting Saddam’s palaces in Iraq. The contrast between the opulent surroundings and the working soldiers is certainly an interesting one.

I found this story on DETnews.com (The Detroit News) and thought it was really sweet. To sum it up, a young Iraqi boy named Mohammed who had been injured in a house fire when he was an infant. He has had a hard life growing up. He lost his father to terrorists who didn’t like that he was acting as an interpreter for the American forces. They killed him and threatened his family.With his father dead, his mother had no means for support and begged on the streets.

But Mohammed caught the eye of Michigan soldier David Howell. David swore that he would do what he could for the young man. He said he “felt an obligation as an American to do something for this family”.

After hard works and miles of red tape, Howell succeeded  in his efforts to have Mohammed relocated to the United States. Here he received much needed medical care and reconstructive surgery.

Mohammed is scheduled to return to Iraq in April. Understandably he has mixed feelings about the journey.

“I am excited about seeing my brothers and sisters, but I am not excited about going back to Iraq,” said Mohammed, who calls his family weekly to share his progress. “There are terrorists there. I am afraid I am going to get killed in Iraq.” (source)

One day hopefully Mohammed can feel safe at home once again.

While American forces are performing heroic acts, and thankfully, are getting plenty of credit for their heroism, there are yet unsung heroes on the Iraqi front. They are the Iraqi translators.

These brave men face hardships unknown to us. They are looked on as traitors to their countrymen, even though their mission is peace. The translators perform a valuable service to the American military, and without them they wouldn’t be able to do what they do.The translators have to follow the troops into hostile territory, and often they are injured or killed.

But the Iraqi translators face real danger. Often they hide their faces, and use aliases and accents to hide their identity. If their identity is discovered, it’s not only themselves who can can to harm. The Iraqi people see them as traitors, and as such, they go after the entire family.

These men have taken up a job that is every bit as tough as being a soldier, but remain behind the scenes. I’ve read many articles that mention a lost translator, but the writers rarely mention the mens’ names. So take a moment to give a thought and a prayer to the Iraqi translators who have dedicated themselves to doing what they think is right, even if their entire country is against them.

For more about the Iraqi translators, click here.

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.

Sergeant Gunnar Swanson joined the US Army and began serving in Iraq in 2003. During his time there, he and his fellow soldiers spent many hours playing with the local Iraqi children. They gave the kids toys and snacks, shared each other’s language, and played games with them. But months later, war reared its ugly head, and Swanson found himself pointing a gun at a young boy whom they believed was an insurgent.

Luckily, Swanson didn’t have to shoot that day, but the fact that he had had to point a loaded gun at a child and be prepared to shoot tormented him.

“Pointing a gun at a child, threatening to shoot him,” Swanson told the Christian Science Monitor. “I was 25 years old at the time, and it has weighed pretty heavy on me ever since then.”

After Swanson’s tour was complete, he moved to Key Largo and got a job training dolphins. However, despite landing what might be considered a dream job, Gunnar wasn’t happy. He continued to think about the Iraqi children.

So he moved to Minnesota and got a program manager job with War Kids Relief, a non-profit organization set up to help children in war-torn countries, such as Iraq, get help and much needed education.

As part of a fund raising venture for the organization, Swanson vowed to walk from Dallas to Minnesota, a journey of 1,000 miles. It was known as A Soldier’s March for Peace. He began walking of July 4th and finished September 10th. All along the way, Swanson stopped at schools to talk of his mission and the problems facing the children in Afghanistan and Iraq. He even helped them write letters to their overseas peers.

By the end of his long walk, Swanson’s feet were covered in painful blisters, but he knows it was worth it.

“I do this to protect kids in Iraq, Afghanistan, and here at home,” Swanson wrote. “I do this for my friends who didn’t make it home with me from Iraq. I do it for my nephews and my future children. I do it for every kid I see playing on a playground, riding bike down the street, or playing ball in the park.”

Quotes from Gimundo

Missing man formation over the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii.

The “Missing Man” formation is a touching memorial to those lost in the airforce. It is a rare thing for those not in the military to witness. It is performed by the pilots flying in formation, just as if the lost man were still there.

It is believed that the tradition started in Britain at the funeral of Manfred von Richthofen, or the “Red Baron”. While that is just common belief, it is known for certain that its genesis orginates  during World War I.

For more information of the Missing Man formation, visit aiipowmia.com to learn more.

I found this account over at the website DamnInteresting.com. And the website does live up to its name. But first, I’d like you to check out the story of Virginia Hall, a woman born in Maryland in 1906.

Long story short, when Virginia was only 26, she went on a hunting trip in Turkey and accidentally shot herself in the leg. Sadly, the injury was so extensive that the doctors couldn’t save the limb and had to amputate.

But that didn’t stop her from making history. She ended up as a clerk in France and was trapped when Nazi Germany invaded in 1940. She snuck out of the country and joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Britain. SEO was created by Winston Churchill and was an effort to wage war in ways that didn’t involve direct military engagement. Known as the “Baker Street Irregulars,” they engaged in spreading propaganda and spying.

Virginia was sent to German occupied France to spy. The Nazis were aware of her presence, but not who she was. She was known to them only as “the woman with the limp”. Virginia spent 15 months on her first tour – most spies only spent three.  She spent most of that time in France assisting the Resistance, helping them receive supply drops from the Allies.

In 1942 she was forced to flee over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain when German troops were moving forcefully through France.

When she returned to London, Virginia signed on with the American intelligence office, the Office of Strategic Service. They sent her back to France in 1944 disguised as an elderly woman. This time she operated in a much more guerrilla fashion – destroying bridges, sabotaging trains, and causing overall havoc for the German forces.

Keep in mind that she only had one leg – and she managed all this.

Virginia Hall was the only woman during World War II to receive the US Distinguished Service Cross. I believe that she more than deserved that honor.

I believe I’ve posted before on the absolute mess our veterans are in when dealing with health care. And so many veterans are in desperate need of good health care. Why is this so hard for our government to provide? These men and women put themselves on the line for their country. The least our country could do for them in return is to guarantee care for the physical and emotional injuries these brave people incur in the field.

I found this article giving a few points about how badly cared for are veterans are, and in some cases, the deadliness of that poor care. It was originally posted on Veterans’ Day, but I thought that some of it was worth repeating.

These figures aren’t exactly pretty. The United States government should be ashamed of itself in that it lets these men and women suffer, and in many cases die, without proper post-war treatment.

A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.

The researchers, who released their analysis today [Tuesday], pointedly say the health reform legislation pending in the House and Senate will not significantly affect this grim picture.

The Harvard group analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2009 Current Population Survey, which surveyed Americans about their insurance coverage and veteran status, and found that 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2008. Veterans were only classified as uninsured if they neither had health insurance nor received ongoing care at Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals or clinics.

Using their recently published findings in the American Journal of Public Health that show being uninsured raises an individual’s odds of dying by 40 percent (causing 44,798 deaths in the United States annually among those aged 17 to 64), they arrived at their estimate of 2,266 preventable deaths of non-elderly veterans in 2008.

…While many Americans believe that all veterans can get care from the VA, even combat veterans may not be able to obtain VA care, Woolhandler said. As a rule, VA facilities provide care for any veteran who is disabled by a condition connected to his or her military service and care for specific medical conditions acquired during military service.

Woolhandler said veterans who pass a means test are eligible for care in VA facilities, but have lower priority status…Veterans with higher incomes are classified in the lowest priority group and are not eligible for VA enrollment. (Mother Jones)

This isn’t right. I believe the author, James Ridgeway, quoting these statistics said it all right here:

So after these men and women risk their lives in the military, we throw them on the mercy of the private system of medicine-for-profit, which is touted as a cherished part of the American way of life. It all gives a whole new meaning to dying for your country.

I found this very interesting. These women are able to walk the lines between two cultures and open communications in places that our male soldiers have only had glimpses of.

I’ve been reading a recent internal summary of how Marine “Female Engagement Teams,” or FETs, have worked in Afghanistan. The bottom line is that done right, this approach works surprisingly well, with benefits among the population that can’t be achieved by males. The findings run directly contrary to several assertions made in the comments reacting to my previous post on this subject.

First, Afghans don’t seem to mind the female teams. Paradoxically, “Female Marines are extended the respect shown to men, but granted the access reserved for women,” the report finds. “In other words, the culture is more flexible than we’ve conditioned ourselves to think.”

Second, the teams have been successful in reaching the other half of the population, one that carries disproportionate influence with the prime Taliban recruiting pool. “Local women wield more influence than many of us imagined-influence on their husbands, brothers, and especially their adolescent sons.”

When one patrol that took a FET with it was observed, the female Marines were invited inside several compounds, while the male Marines stayed outside. “And in each case, the FET succeeded in breaking the ice and getting women to open up and discuss their daily lives and concerns.” Nor was this an isolated event. When patrols returned, “we discovered some Afghan women had been anticipating the opportunity to meet American women. In one home, the women said they had caught glimpses of the patrolling FET through a crack in the wall and that they had ‘prayed you would come to us.’” The fact that the Afghan women welcomed return visits indicated that their men hadn’t punished them for speaking to Americans.

The women interviewed also had surprisingly diverse backgrounds. Though all impoverished now, some had once been prosperous. One group of young women reported that they had been held captive by the Taliban.

The interactions also seemed to change how some local men viewed the Marine presence. “One gentleman with a gray beard who opened his home to the FET put it this way: ‘Your men come to fight, but we know the women are here to help.’” Read on…