Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
June 10, 2008
Pg. B1
At Andrews Air Force Base, medical evacuees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make their first stop in the homeland.
By Steve Vogel, Washington Post Staff Writer
An hour before the C-17 touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Capt. Norman Ellis briefed his crew on who would be arriving on the transport plane.
The patients included a 25-year-old male suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury; a 22-year-old male who overdosed on heroin; a 24-year-old male whose face was peppered by a rocket-propelled grenade; a 24-year-old male with a gunshot wound to his left arm.
The afternoon briefing was the first step in an elaborate process set in motion three times a week at Andrews, the first stop in the United States for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Best known as the home to the president's Air Force One, Andrews is also the busiest military aeromedical staging center in the nation.
Every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, medical staff members and volunteers carry litters off the plane after the transatlantic flight; doctors examine patients; buses arrive to cart the most seriously wounded to the region's military hospitals; and volunteers greet those staying briefly at Andrews before heading to a hospital closer to home.
Nearly 6,000 patients went through Andrews last year, including those wounded in battle, suffering physical or mental illnesses or injured in accidents. Iraqi children and a military dog injured by a bomb have also arrived at the base in Prince George's County.
No end to the mission is in sight. The Air Force is in the midst of a $4.8 million renovation of patient rooms and a clinic at the base's Malcolm Grow Medical Center that will enable Andrews to continue as the hub for returning wounded soldiers for years to come. There has been a marked improvement since the first 1 1/2 years of the Iraq war, when the base gymnasium was used as a staging area for many arriving patients.
On this Tuesday afternoon, four litter bearers carried Army Sgt. 1st Class Perry Meeks down the cargo plane's ramp and placed him gingerly in an awaiting ambulance bus, already loaded with soldiers on stretchers.
A week earlier, Meeks, 37, a platoon sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, was on patrol near Tikrit, Iraq, when a 100-pound explosive blew his armored vehicle 25 yards through the air. Meeks suffered fractures in his face, ribs and collar bone, a damaged spleen, a collapsed lung and an injured eye. But he considered himself lucky. Two soldiers in his heavy weapons platoon were killed in the blast, and another was wounded more severely than he was.
Meeks's journey had taken him through Balad Air Base in Iraq and Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. "I'm eager to get back to the States," Meeks said from his stretcher, "but not this way."
Before each flight arrives, the flight surgeon, nurses and other medical staff members gather for a mission brief.
For Ellis, a nurse who joined the Air Force after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the mission is personal. His father lost his left arm in combat with the Army in Korea. "I like to think someone like me helped him," said Ellis, a Detroit native. "Taking care of the guys who are taking fire is the most important thing I can do."
Volunteers, most of them airmen working at Andrews in other jobs, arrived to help the medical staff carry the litters off the plane as quickly as possible. The volunteers practiced under the watchful eye of Army Master Sgt. Luella M. VanArsdale, who has spent much of the war dealing with casualties.
She oversaw funeral preparations for the Indiana Army National Guard, a tougher job emotionally than assisting the wounded arriving at Andrews. "This is way more comforting for me to know these kids are coming home," she said.
At 3:30, as the plane prepared to land, the medical staff and volunteers boarded three ambulance buses before convoying out to the tarmac.
Once on the ground, the C-17 taxied into position near the buses. After a U.S. customs agent boarded the plane and checked paperwork, a team emerged from the buses and walked onto the tarmac.
Maj. Eneya Mulagha, the flight surgeon, boarded the plane and assessed patients. Mulagha, an Air Force reservist, was taking time from his internal medical practice in Fredericksburg to work at the staging facility.
"It's easily been the highlight of my medical and Air Force career, just being able to help these guys out," he said. "Some of the injuries I've seen here -- the amputations, the trauma -- are unbelievable, but these guys will smile and shake your hand."
At a signal, the three buses drove to the rear of the plane. The bus bound for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington was the first loaded. About a third of the patients, generally the worst wounded, would go to Walter Reed. On another day, some of those patients would have gone to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
The remaining patients took the short ride to the Andrews staging facility. Most of them left the next morning for hospitals closer to their home bases.
Meeks, the wounded airborne sergeant, left the next morning for Fort Campbell, Ky., where his wife and three children awaited.
The flight co-pilot, Capt. Katie Lord, wearing a desert tan flight suit and unwinding after the nine-hour flight from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, watched from the tarmac as the wounded were carried off her plane.
Lord, with the Mississippi Air National Guard, has been flying the mission for three years. She used to talk to the patients during the flights, but she doesn't as much anymore, particularly after realizing that some of the grievously injured soldiers she was carrying home were not even 20 years old.
"I found I was carrying work home with me too much," she said. "Separating work from emotion is very hard."
A few minutes later, the buses loaded with patients who would be staying at Andrews rumbled down base roads with their lights flashing and then backed into the staging facility. The patients emerged: some walking, some carried on litters.
Red Cross volunteers lined up to greet them as they passed. "Welcome home, we're glad to have you," one called out. "We've got a hot meal waiting for you."
Meeks was carried off the bus with a tube coming out of his chest to keep his lung inflated. Once Meeks arrived in his room, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Eric Londres checked his vital signs. He found Meeks was running a fever of more than 100 degrees. It is not uncommon for wounded patients to show signs of wear and tear after the pressurization, vibration and temperature changes of the long flights.
A few minutes later, Mulagha, the flight surgeon, popped in to give Meeks a quick look-over and ordered a chest X-ray to make sure his damaged lung was still inflated.
"I'll come back and bother you later," Mulagha told him.
"I'm not going anywhere," Meeks replied.
Londres helped Meeks into a wheelchair and took him on a tour, showing him the nurses' station and pointing out the food cart, which would be serving filet mignon that night.
"And now, the highlight of our tour," Londres announced.
He rolled Meeks into the Maryland Room, a lounge built with contributions from the Greater Prince George's Business Roundtable and staffed by Red Cross volunteers.
Meeks looked over the offerings, including a 60-inch television screen with surround sound, oversize recliners, plasma monitor video game terminals, Internet terminals and a full kitchen with donated snack foods.
Elsie and Ed Smolarsky, retirees from Upper Marlboro, were among a half-dozen Red Cross volunteers waiting there. As logistical chief, Ed Smolarsky was responsible for keeping the lounge's "magic refrigerator" perpetually stocked with cold sodas and juices.
Elsie Smolarsky began greeting flights of wounded during the Vietnam War, when her husband was stationed at Andrews.
"It was a lot different then," she said.
In those days, there was no advance notice of arriving flights, and she would listen for the distinctive whir of the C-141 Starlifter cargo planes.
The wounded troops arriving from Vietnam, she said, "were in a little rougher shape" than those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, given the advances in military medicine on the battlefield and during the transit home.
But the fundamental principle of providing a friendly face and the comforts of home has not changed. "As my husband says, it's like having a bunch of new sons and daughters coming in every day," she said.
Meeks sat back in his wheelchair. One foot was in a cast, the other adorned in a flashy silver running shoe that looked incongruous on the tough airborne sergeant. He asked an attendant to take it off. It had been issued to him by a worker at Landstuhl.
"What a knucklehead," Meeks groused.
It was his only beef. "I can't complain about any of the medical treatment," he said. "Even my wife doesn't treat me that good."
June 10, 2008
Pg. B1
At Andrews Air Force Base, medical evacuees from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make their first stop in the homeland.
By Steve Vogel, Washington Post Staff Writer
An hour before the C-17 touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Capt. Norman Ellis briefed his crew on who would be arriving on the transport plane.
The patients included a 25-year-old male suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury; a 22-year-old male who overdosed on heroin; a 24-year-old male whose face was peppered by a rocket-propelled grenade; a 24-year-old male with a gunshot wound to his left arm.
The afternoon briefing was the first step in an elaborate process set in motion three times a week at Andrews, the first stop in the United States for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Best known as the home to the president's Air Force One, Andrews is also the busiest military aeromedical staging center in the nation.
Every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, medical staff members and volunteers carry litters off the plane after the transatlantic flight; doctors examine patients; buses arrive to cart the most seriously wounded to the region's military hospitals; and volunteers greet those staying briefly at Andrews before heading to a hospital closer to home.
Nearly 6,000 patients went through Andrews last year, including those wounded in battle, suffering physical or mental illnesses or injured in accidents. Iraqi children and a military dog injured by a bomb have also arrived at the base in Prince George's County.
No end to the mission is in sight. The Air Force is in the midst of a $4.8 million renovation of patient rooms and a clinic at the base's Malcolm Grow Medical Center that will enable Andrews to continue as the hub for returning wounded soldiers for years to come. There has been a marked improvement since the first 1 1/2 years of the Iraq war, when the base gymnasium was used as a staging area for many arriving patients.
On this Tuesday afternoon, four litter bearers carried Army Sgt. 1st Class Perry Meeks down the cargo plane's ramp and placed him gingerly in an awaiting ambulance bus, already loaded with soldiers on stretchers.
A week earlier, Meeks, 37, a platoon sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, was on patrol near Tikrit, Iraq, when a 100-pound explosive blew his armored vehicle 25 yards through the air. Meeks suffered fractures in his face, ribs and collar bone, a damaged spleen, a collapsed lung and an injured eye. But he considered himself lucky. Two soldiers in his heavy weapons platoon were killed in the blast, and another was wounded more severely than he was.
Meeks's journey had taken him through Balad Air Base in Iraq and Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. "I'm eager to get back to the States," Meeks said from his stretcher, "but not this way."
Before each flight arrives, the flight surgeon, nurses and other medical staff members gather for a mission brief.
For Ellis, a nurse who joined the Air Force after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the mission is personal. His father lost his left arm in combat with the Army in Korea. "I like to think someone like me helped him," said Ellis, a Detroit native. "Taking care of the guys who are taking fire is the most important thing I can do."
Volunteers, most of them airmen working at Andrews in other jobs, arrived to help the medical staff carry the litters off the plane as quickly as possible. The volunteers practiced under the watchful eye of Army Master Sgt. Luella M. VanArsdale, who has spent much of the war dealing with casualties.
She oversaw funeral preparations for the Indiana Army National Guard, a tougher job emotionally than assisting the wounded arriving at Andrews. "This is way more comforting for me to know these kids are coming home," she said.
At 3:30, as the plane prepared to land, the medical staff and volunteers boarded three ambulance buses before convoying out to the tarmac.
Once on the ground, the C-17 taxied into position near the buses. After a U.S. customs agent boarded the plane and checked paperwork, a team emerged from the buses and walked onto the tarmac.
Maj. Eneya Mulagha, the flight surgeon, boarded the plane and assessed patients. Mulagha, an Air Force reservist, was taking time from his internal medical practice in Fredericksburg to work at the staging facility.
"It's easily been the highlight of my medical and Air Force career, just being able to help these guys out," he said. "Some of the injuries I've seen here -- the amputations, the trauma -- are unbelievable, but these guys will smile and shake your hand."
At a signal, the three buses drove to the rear of the plane. The bus bound for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington was the first loaded. About a third of the patients, generally the worst wounded, would go to Walter Reed. On another day, some of those patients would have gone to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
The remaining patients took the short ride to the Andrews staging facility. Most of them left the next morning for hospitals closer to their home bases.
Meeks, the wounded airborne sergeant, left the next morning for Fort Campbell, Ky., where his wife and three children awaited.
The flight co-pilot, Capt. Katie Lord, wearing a desert tan flight suit and unwinding after the nine-hour flight from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, watched from the tarmac as the wounded were carried off her plane.
Lord, with the Mississippi Air National Guard, has been flying the mission for three years. She used to talk to the patients during the flights, but she doesn't as much anymore, particularly after realizing that some of the grievously injured soldiers she was carrying home were not even 20 years old.
"I found I was carrying work home with me too much," she said. "Separating work from emotion is very hard."
A few minutes later, the buses loaded with patients who would be staying at Andrews rumbled down base roads with their lights flashing and then backed into the staging facility. The patients emerged: some walking, some carried on litters.
Red Cross volunteers lined up to greet them as they passed. "Welcome home, we're glad to have you," one called out. "We've got a hot meal waiting for you."
Meeks was carried off the bus with a tube coming out of his chest to keep his lung inflated. Once Meeks arrived in his room, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Eric Londres checked his vital signs. He found Meeks was running a fever of more than 100 degrees. It is not uncommon for wounded patients to show signs of wear and tear after the pressurization, vibration and temperature changes of the long flights.
A few minutes later, Mulagha, the flight surgeon, popped in to give Meeks a quick look-over and ordered a chest X-ray to make sure his damaged lung was still inflated.
"I'll come back and bother you later," Mulagha told him.
"I'm not going anywhere," Meeks replied.
Londres helped Meeks into a wheelchair and took him on a tour, showing him the nurses' station and pointing out the food cart, which would be serving filet mignon that night.
"And now, the highlight of our tour," Londres announced.
He rolled Meeks into the Maryland Room, a lounge built with contributions from the Greater Prince George's Business Roundtable and staffed by Red Cross volunteers.
Meeks looked over the offerings, including a 60-inch television screen with surround sound, oversize recliners, plasma monitor video game terminals, Internet terminals and a full kitchen with donated snack foods.
Elsie and Ed Smolarsky, retirees from Upper Marlboro, were among a half-dozen Red Cross volunteers waiting there. As logistical chief, Ed Smolarsky was responsible for keeping the lounge's "magic refrigerator" perpetually stocked with cold sodas and juices.
Elsie Smolarsky began greeting flights of wounded during the Vietnam War, when her husband was stationed at Andrews.
"It was a lot different then," she said.
In those days, there was no advance notice of arriving flights, and she would listen for the distinctive whir of the C-141 Starlifter cargo planes.
The wounded troops arriving from Vietnam, she said, "were in a little rougher shape" than those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, given the advances in military medicine on the battlefield and during the transit home.
But the fundamental principle of providing a friendly face and the comforts of home has not changed. "As my husband says, it's like having a bunch of new sons and daughters coming in every day," she said.
Meeks sat back in his wheelchair. One foot was in a cast, the other adorned in a flashy silver running shoe that looked incongruous on the tough airborne sergeant. He asked an attendant to take it off. It had been issued to him by a worker at Landstuhl.
"What a knucklehead," Meeks groused.
It was his only beef. "I can't complain about any of the medical treatment," he said. "Even my wife doesn't treat me that good."