Our heroes’ service and sacrifice [wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, on Veterans Day]

Boston Herald ^ | Nov 11, 2004 | Jules Crittenden

[Mike Fieschko]

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Marine Corporal Peter Bagarella.

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Our heroes’ service and sacrifice
By Jules Crittenden
Thursday, November 11, 2004 WASHINGTON D.C. - It could be an upscale gym anywhere, full of purposeful activity. The good-natured but harsh ribbing among the men working out is relentless.

     ``Hey, how long has that guy been here?'' says one kid, who is practicing with his new titanium alloy leg. He is talking about a man who is working his stump on a leg-press machine.
     ``About five months,'' another man tells him.
     ``He's been here three months longer than me, and he can't walk yet? I can walk already!'' the first amputee gloats.
     ``Hey! He's above-the-knee! You're below-the-knee!''
     A cellphone rings, and someone says, ``I think that's yours,'' to a man who is working his stomach muscles.
     ``Yeah, let it ring. I don't feel like getting up right now,'' says the man, who is missing both legs.
     This is Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the human cost of America's war in Iraq is seen in naked stumps and scars. The 46 soldiers hospitalized here are among the more than 8,000 war wounded.
     What does it mean to be a Marine when you are one of the maimed at Walter Reed on Veterans Day?
     ``Everything,'' Cpl. Peter Bagarella, 21, of Falmouth said simply.
     Theirs is the story of service and sacrifice behind the statistics.
     ``This place is awesome. They gave me my eyes back,'' said Bagarella. A remotely detonated bomb blinded him and vaporized his left leg in a palm grove in Haditha on Aug. 12. As the Iraqi ambushers opened up with machine guns and the Marines returned fire, Bagarella screamed, ``Oh God! Oh God!'' and used his thumbs to count his fingers. He asked the medics, ``What's gone? What's gone on my body?''
     Army PFC Paul Skarinka's shattered left leg is caged in a cumbersome brace, with metal pins screwed through the flesh into his calf bone.
     ``I'm one of those people who likes to be in the middle of things,'' said Skarinka, 24, of Whitman. ``I knew I could end up being deployed. I had no problem with that.''
     He has fond memories of Baghdad - visits with local elders, giving kids candy and being asked to stay for dinner at wedding parties.

     Then in late August, they moved into Sadr City against rogue cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
     ``After evening prayers is when they would come out,'' Skarinka said. In the early morning hours of Sept. 13, the night's business was mostly done when an RPG came screaming up the alley.
     ``It looked like an oversized bottle rocket flying at us,'' he said. It hit as he dove for cover. ``There was debris around me. My ears were ringing. I thought, `This is OK.' It was kind of normal. It was when I tried to get up that I realized something was wrong.'' He couldn't move his left leg or arm. He felt the blood pouring out of his side.
     ``I was thinking, `I've got to get out of here. I'm still in the kill zone. I'm not dying in this crappy alley in Sadr City.''
     Someone dragged him out by his flak vest and threw him on the back of a Humvee. As a former medic, he knew the dryness in his mouth was a sign of massive blood loss. He wondered whether he was going to make it.
     Skarinka probably always will walk with a limp and never have full use of his left hand.
     ``I don't regret it one bit, what happened to me in Sadr City,'' he said. ``I signed up for this. I knew the risk. Luck wasn't on my side.''
     For Cpl. Matthew Boisvert, 21, of Tyngsboro, his missing right leg and damaged right arm are obstacles he must conquer to convince a Marine Corps Medical Board to let him go back for a third time.
     ``I loved it,'' Boisvert said.
     He described the transcendental experience of battle, of becoming almost mentally detached from one's body, watching oneself and one's friends do unimaginable things. ``There is nothing in civilian life like the camaraderie you experience over there. I played sports all my life. You get an adrenaline rush playing sports, but it's nothing like the rush you get in combat.''
     His platoon fought in the initial invasion of March 2003, and went back into the bitter streetfighting of Fallujah a year later.
     ``It didn't have that warm and fuzzy feeling the second time,'' Boisvert said. But the war-hardened Marines went into battle with the spirit of athletes, a practiced team eager to perform again. They ribbed each other mercilessly when a flesh wound forced one or another temporarily out of the fight. The loss of friends killed in action solidified their already intense bond. Then a bomb placed in an orange traffic cone ripped Boisvert's body apart on Aug. 17. He admits a sense of guilt that he is here, with his friends once again fiercely engaged in Fallujah.
     There is another kind of camaraderie here at Walter Reed, he said.
      ``It helps to have people with the same injuries around,'' Boisvert said. ``You'll be all pissed off because you lost your leg. Then, you see a guy who's lost two legs. That guy's worse off than me. I have no right to be pissed off.''
     Boisvert's grandfather, a Marine veteran of Vietnam, used to take him to Veterans Day events when he was a kid.
     ``I saw how much it meant to them, but I didn't understand it,'' Boisvert said.

[Mike Fieschko]

I know it's late, but these guys' injuries don't take days off, and neither should our gratitude.

[wildwood]

God bless...

[LauraleeBraswell]

Had one of these guys taken the first shot in cautious self-defense, before he had gotten his leg or arm blown off, he would have been condemned for committing a so-called “war crime.” I think in this situation we can say with great relief, that at least that Iraqi Extremist wasn't injured, whew.

[Askel5]

Excellent post, Fieschko.

Since I was a kid, my Dad instilled in us his own habit of trying to pay a visit to Arlington any time we were in the city. When last I was there in September, there were three funeral parties visible from the knoll on which I sat with my dog to overlook the cemetery.

It occurs to me that, so long as this War on Terror continues--likely for the rest of my natural life, a visit to Walter Reed to thank those soldiers who may not have given the Ultimate Sacrifice but who surely shall carry their cross of selfless service the rest of their lives is in order.

Thanks again. May God grant these men peace of heart and Hope, above all.

[Little Bill]

Cpl. Matthew Boisvert, have to find out if his Grandad is a Lynn, Homey, Semper Fie Mass Marines, from a Mass Doggie.

[Prost1]

Years ago, I had a friend, (he is still a friend, just has his own life) who was a Marine at the DMZ. He was Recon. His company was overrun after being out for months, the longest since maybe WWII. Poor food. Poor everything. He and a black guy survived. He temporarily lost his sight from (fear) nutrition and his partner fed the machine gun and told him where to shoot.
He returned to the States. The cops were going to arrest him for deliquent parking tickets. He threatened to kill the cops and about anyone else over such stupidity.
The Navy came and took him to the hospital. Put him in the psychiatric ward.
That was past the amputee ward. Had to pass guards at the door. Several days a week, I went and visited. Past the amputee ward.
Guys who should have been left dead in Nam. No face, no arms or legs. Ribs gone. Yet they were alive. Guys who should have died, but didn't.
What became of them? The Govt was not prepared to take care of them. The nurse told me they were to be sent home as soon as possible to free up the beds.
What became of their families? What untold stories of Hell remain to be told.
My friend got out of the Psycho ward (with help). If what I saw was but a portion of what he lived thru...
We can help the injured, but how soon we forget, until another war comes along.
I have not forgotten. I would have left many behind. It would have been out of kindness...