by Oliver North
One day we did a live interview with a U.S. Navy SEAL. Because of the classified nature of his business, we weren't allowed to show his face on camera, so we positioned it to show only the back of his head.
Before we went live on FOX, I handed the Special Operator my satellite phone so he could call home and tell his wife to turn on the tube. She was excited to be able to see her husband, safe and sound half a world away.
After the interview, he called her back to see what she thought of the interview, only to find her livid. "What's wrong with those stupid FOX people?" she asked. "Don't they know how to set up a camera? All we could see was the back of your head!"
Fan Mail Advice
When we're doing live broadcasts over our satellite uplink, we can also get instant feedback via e-mail. During a live "hit" on the Hannity & Colmes show one night, Alan Colmes, my favorite liberal, made a comment about an attack that had allegedly killed Iraqi civilians. In reply I made the observation that "those who haven't experienced ground combat have no idea how terrible it is. Combat is the most horrific experience a human can endure." Within minutes we received this e-mail from a concerned viewer: "Subject: Correction, please: 'Colonel North, on tonight's Hannity & Colmes you said, "Ground combat is the worst experience any human can have." This is not true. The worst experience any human can have is spending time with my mother-in-law. My best friend has served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He lost his right hand in Fallujah and has met my mother-in-law. I just called him. He agrees with me and says it is not even a close call. — Jim, San Diego"
Won't Be Home for Christmas
It was the 22nd of December, and I was just finishing up another embed in Iraq. We were on a rooftop doing a live interview with a Marine. At the end of it I said to him, "You're not going to be home for Christmas. Is there anyone you'd like to say hello to?" The Marine grinned as he sent well wishes to his family, asking them to keep him in their prayers.
Fifteen seconds after the live shot ended, my satellite phone rang. It was my wife, Betsy. Apparently she'd turned on the television right at the end of the interview. "Did I just hear you say you won't be home for Christmas?"
I've missed more than my share of Christmases and other holidays, and I'd promised her that I would be there this time, no matter what.
"Of course not, honey," I replied, getting that sinking feeling that a man gets when his husband points are disappearing down a black hole. "I said I'd be there and I will," I assured her.
"You'd better be," she growled. "If you leave me here alone with eight grandchildren, you might as well stay in Iraq. You'll be safer there than in this kitchen."
I made it home for Christmas.
If I don't get home by Christmas, these will be my only friends
14
WOUNDED WARRIORS
Military medicine routinely gets a bad rap. In February 2007, the Washington Post published an article headlined "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility." The piece prompted a media circus, Congressional hearings, the sacking of two generals and the Secretary of the Army, firings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and wholesale accusations that the care our wounded warriors receive just isn't up to par. But as usual, there's another side to the story.
For the record, I admit to being biased. I probably wouldn't be alive today but for military medical care. A U.S. Navy medical corpsman saved my life when I was wounded in Vietnam. Navy surgeons have operated on me at aid stations, in field hospitals, and on hospital ships. I've been a patient at Walter Reed and the U.S. National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland. And all that was before I started work at FOX News, documenting American heroes fighting radical Islamic terrorism.
Since the War on Terror began in October 2001, nearly thirty thousand young Americans have been wounded in action. Thanks to improvements in armored vehicles, body armor, rapid casualty-evacuation, and advanced medical treatment, better than half of them have been able to return to duty within three days of being hurt.
Put differently, if a wounded soldier, sailor, airman, Guardsman, or Marine makes it to a casualty-evacuation helicopter alive, there is a better than 96 percent chance that he or she is alive today. That's better odds than surviving a serious car crash on a U.S. highway.
In countless engagements I have heard the call "Corpsman up!" or the shout, "Medic!" Almost invariably, no matter how dangerous the situation, a bright, brave, highly trained U.S. Navy medical corpsman or Army medic, skilled in treating shock and equipped to treat blood loss, is "on" the casualty in seconds. Within minutes, most casualties are on a casualty-evacuation helicopter headed for a field hospital equipped and staffed for advanced life support. If the wounds are severe enough, within hours the patient is en route to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany aboard a USAF C-17 Nightingale.
U.S. military personnel requiring multiple surgeries, continued treatment, or protracted recovery are transported back to the United States for further care. Each time I return from being "embedded" in Iraq or Afghanistan, I try to visit the "wounded warriors" from that unit. Their stories provide a somewhat different perspective than that offered by the mainstream media.
A C-17 Nightingale transporting wounded from Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany
SGT LUKE CASSIDY
"I was right outside a school that we'd just restored, telling our commander of the progress we'd made. We had driven about three hundred yards from the school when the IED exploded and shot through my engine block. I tried to keep the vehicle under control the best I could, because we were so close to a ravine. Everybody was able to jump out of the vehicle, so nobody was seriously injured."
Nobody, that is, except Luke.
Marine Sgt Luke Cassidy was seated on the edge of an examining table at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as he recalled the day terrorists tried to kill him. I had been with his Civil Affairs team in Ramadi. Not long before he was wounded, I had ridden with him in that same Humvee to the school. Years before, Luke's dad was a colonel at the Pentagon when I was on the National Security Council staff at the White House. Luke grew up in Virginia. After graduating from George Mason University, he became a Fairfax County police officer. He also enlisted in the Marine Reserves.
When Luke's Civil Affairs unit was activated in 2004, he volunteered for service in Iraq. Six months later, after fifteen surgeries, he was being fitted for a prosthetic limb to replace his left leg that had been traumatically amputated below the knee by a roadside bomb. "I also lost a toe, fractured my heel, had several shrapnel wounds in my right leg, shrapnel wounds in my hand and lost most of my hearing in my right ear," he added with a shrug.
As our FOX News cameras rolled, a prosthetic limb specialist adjusted the length of the new metal limb and fine-tuned the tension on the "foot." Then, with two Army medics and a nurse standing by just in case, he said to the wounded Marine, "Let's try it."
Luke pulled himself up between the parallel bars—identical to those used in gymnastics—and took his first tentative steps since the explosion five months earlier. As he walked, a great smile appeared on his face and tears flowed down his cheeks. "I promised my kids that we'd be able to play again," he explained. "You know, that's the most important part, being able to be there for my children."
It was a powerful moment, and Luke wasn't the only one in the room with tears in his eyes. The prosthetics specialist smiled and said, "That's why I come to work every day."
Marine Sgt Luke Cassidy, moments after taking his first steps on his new prosthetic leg
SGT GREGORY EDWARDS
"Stay strong. Stay with me, Sgt Ed!" the Navy corpsman shouted. Then, as though giving an order, the "Doc" yelled at the shattered Marine on the litter, "You're not going to die on me."
The jarring of the Humvee ambulance sent stabs of white-hot pain through what was left of Sgt Gregory Edwards's br
oken body as the vehicle sped through Ramadi on the cratered highway that the Marines called "Route Michigan." Moments earlier Sgt Edwards had been leading his rifle squad from "A" Company, 1st Bn, 6th Marines, on a house-to-house search for an Al Qaeda bomb factory. They had done this countless times. They were good at it. But on 21 October 2006, they found what they were looking for—the hard way.
The explosion of a carefully planted IED mangled Sgt Edwards below his body armor. The first person to him was U.S. Navy Medical Corpsman Christopher Anderson. The man they called "Doc" Anderson immediately applied tourniquets to Edwards's shattered limbs and started an IV to ward off shock.
As they raced for the LZ to meet an inbound casualty-evacuation helicopter, Edwards looked up at the man who was checking his pulse and said, "Take care of my babies, Doc."
Anderson shouted back, "You're going to take care of your babies. You're going to be OK!"
Edwards lapsed into unconsciousness before the helicopter landed. His next recollection is awakening in a hospital bed in Washington, D.C. It was strangely familiar. When he realized that it was Walter Reed Army Medical Center, it was because he had been there before.
Sgt Edwards was on his third deployment to Iraq when new wounds sent him back to Walter Reed. In 2003 he had been part of the initial assault on Baghdad and saw the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled. He'd been wounded on his second deployment and spent time recovering at Bethesda and Walter Reed. When 1st Bn, 6th Marines, was slated for a third deployment, he insisted on going along.
This time, however, Gregory Edwards's road to recovery would never end. Though the doctors operated on him more than thirty times, they couldn't save his shattered legs. When all the surgery was done, he had one stump above the knee, a stump below the other knee, and only one functioning hand.
When I came home from my "embed" with 1st Bn, 6th Marines, in late December 2006, I went to see Sgt Edwards at Walter Reed. His only complaint about the medical care he was receiving was about the length of the prosthetic limbs for which he was being fitted. "Tell the sergeant major," he said, "when I put these things on I want to be two inches taller than I used to be."
As he recovered, Walter Reed arranged for his wife, Christina, and his daughters—five-year-old Caitlin and three-year-old Paige—to move into temporary housing near the hospital. Freedom Alliance, the Disabled American Veterans, and other charities provided financial support for the family.
Despite his horrendous injuries, multiple operations, and painful therapy, Sgt Edwards put himself on a punishing physical regimen, intent on learning to walk with prosthetic limbs by the time 1st Bn, 6th Marines, returned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in April of 2007. He wanted to be there to greet them all, and "Doc" Anderson in particular. "If it wasn't for Doc, I wouldn't be here," he said. "I wouldn't be able to hold my daughters on my lap."
But Doc Anderson didn't make it home alive. On 4 December 2006 he was killed during a mortar attack in bloody Ramadi. When Hospital Corpsman Christopher "Doc" Anderson, fourth-generation sailor and son of a former Navy SEAL, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Sgt Edwards was there—though he described it as one of the most painful experiences of his life.
As his body continues to mend, Greg Edwards is putting the pieces of his life back together as well. He's learned to scuba dive through a program at Walter Reed. A nonprofit organization called "Homes for Our Troops" built a specially adapted home for his family in his home state of Alabama. When people thank him for sacrificing for his country, he says it makes him uncomfortable. He sent his Purple Heart medal to the family of the man who saved his life—his friend, Doc Anderson.
In the foyer of the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, there is a life-sized statue of a U.S. Navy medical corpsman holding a wounded Marine. The plaque at its base reads: "The Unspoken Bond." For Greg Edwards, those three words say it all.
"I lost my legs for the people of Iraq, so their children will be able to run around, just like mine. If time was turned back, I'd do it all over again."
—Marine Sgt Gregory Edwards, father of two
2ND LT. ANDREW KINARD
The highway bridge over the Euphrates River at Rawah, Iraq, makes the place strategically important. Perched on the banks of the river in western Al Anbar province, the town had been a safe haven for Al Qaeda terrorists coming down the waterway from Syria. Al Qaeda of Iraq used the bridge and highway to move car bombs north to Mosul and east to Tikrit—a route that allowed them to bypass Ramadi and Fallujah. Second Lt. Andrew Kinard's 1st platoon of Company "A," 2nd LAR Bn, was in Rawah to make sure they couldn't do that anymore. That's why, on 29 October 2006, the terrorists tried to kill him.
Six weeks into a seven-month long deployment, 2nd Lt. Kinard was leading seven of his Marines on a morning foot patrol searching for a terrorist bomb factory when an IED exploded directly next to his left leg. The blast blew him into the air—and he landed almost twenty feet from the crater. Three other Marines were wounded.
According to those who were there, before the grievously injured officer passed out from loss of blood, he ordered them to set up security, get a head count, and start treating the other injured Marines. The platoon corpsman rushed to stop the flow of blood but couldn't find enough undamaged tissue to apply the tourniquets. It didn't look good. The lieutenant was losing blood from almost every part of his body.
A cas-evac helicopter airlifted him to the Marine Air Base at Al Asad, then to the Army trauma hospital at Balad, north of Baghdad. Sixty-seven pints of whole blood—more than five times the amount in a healthy adult—were pumped into the failing officer's veins in a twenty-four-hour period.
By the time he could be flown to Landstuhl, Germany, he had gone into cardiac arrest—and been resuscitated—twice. Emergency surgeries went on nearly nonstop to plug the seemingly innumerable holes punched in his body by shrapnel from the bomb. The family was alerted, and a prayer vigil was held. Hundreds of people half a world away went to their knees and begged God for a miracle.
Some miracles happen immediately. This one took a while.
Four days after being blasted to pieces, Andrew Kinard was in the intensive care unit at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, with his family around his bedside, still praying. By the time I got back from Iraq, just before Christmas 2006, "Drew" as his Marine friends call him, had already endured more than two dozen surgeries. He was also the talk of the hospital. Every nurse in the place knew his name and had been by to see him many times.
His doctor told me that the twenty-four-year-old lieutenant was "getting better" even though he had pneumonia, a blood infection, and perforations of his intestines from innumerable pieces of shrapnel. They had just done one of the many skin grafts necessary to prepare his stumps for prosthetic limbs.
When I walked into his room, his mother and his sister Katherine were with him. His dad—a doctor in Spartanburg, South Carolina—and two younger siblings, Courtney and Will, were all en route to spend Christmas with their badly battered Marine.
Without all the cards, posters, banners, Christmas stockings, lights, photos, and flags spread around the room, the space would have looked like a scene from a Hollywood science fiction movie. Monitors, electronic devices, compressors, pumps and assorted tubes, wires, and bags of various colored fluids surrounded the bed—all connected to Andrew Kinard. Tiny flecks of shrapnel were still visible in the left side of his face. He had no legs. His abdomen was an open hole. And he was smiling. "God is good," he said in greeting.
CNO Adm. Mike Mullen speaks with Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Andrew Kinard, United States Naval Academy (USNA), Class of '05. Adm. Mullen was present for the commencement and commissioning ceremony for the Class of 2007 at Navy/Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.
Over the next eleven months of hospitalization, Andrew Kinard was living proof of that statement. When I asked him or hi
s family "How can I help you?" the inevitable response was, "Just pray for recovery." And so he also became evidence of the power of prayer.
In April 2007 he flew to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for the 2nd LAR Battalion's return from Iraq. Wearing his Marine utility field uniform for the first time since he was wounded, he arrived to greet his comrades in a special "all-terrain" wheelchair.
Kinard was asked by a reporter on the scene to describe his recollections of the day he was wounded. He acknowledged that his memory of the moments after his injury had been dulled by shock and pain, then said, "A man asks himself, if something happens to me when I go into the face of battle, how will I react? Will I be brave?"
As they arrived home, the members of "Alpha" Company made it clear: Lt. Andrew Kinard was, without a doubt, their hero.
Then, one year to the day since he was wounded, the young officer came home. On 29 October 2007, dignitaries and thousands of well-wishers were on hand to welcome Andrew at First Baptist Church, Spartanburg. The following Sunday he spoke at all three services—thanking all for their unfailing prayers.
His recovery will continue for months or years to come. But on one of my visits to him in the hospital the man who had once played rugby at the Naval Academy said, "I don't need legs. I have my arms. I learned discipline at the Naval Academy. I have my faith—and a desire to serve. Maybe I'll go to law school."