Grateful American

by Gary Sinise

  When we finally pulled up at our destination, I did a double take. There stood the front gate of Saddam’s Al-Faw presidential palace, a grandiose concrete structure with columns and arches, domes, and courtyards, now occupied by US and coalition forces.

  The palace was cold and unwelcoming from the outside, although surrounded by calm artificial lakes. Inside, the main structure was huge with enormous chandeliers hanging everywhere and intricate, massive mosaic tiles on the ceiling and walls. Someone said the main structure was some 450,000 square feet, with sixty-two rooms and twenty-nine bathrooms. In its day, Saddam had kept a zoo on the grounds, as well as horse stables, a cinema, date groves, and more. But Saddam himself had rarely stayed here. He kept several different presidential palaces scattered throughout Iraq and preferred a different palace downtown.

  We visited US troops inside the compound, shook hands, and signed autographs. General Franks greeted them right along with us. I could see the service members held just as much admiration for General Franks as I did. It wasn’t every day he was able to shake hands with the troops, and they recognized it as a high honor. We must have each shaken two to three thousand hands and taken as many pictures. We also got to look around the palace and see a few things, and I took a picture of a giant mural on a wall. The painting depicted a massive missile that I was told was pointing in the direction of Israel. Saddam’s taste in fine art. I got to sit in a giant throne given to Saddam by Yasser Arafat. So surreal to be there. It was a long day, and the ride back to Kuwait on the C-130 was quieter than when we’d traveled to Baghdad. Tomorrow we would leave Iraq. But our trip was not over; there was more to come.

  From Camp Arifjan, the next day we boarded a C-130 and General Franks led us up to Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar, where Central Command for the whole region had been located. General Franks and I sat together on the plane, and we talked the whole time. At the camp, we visited more troops, and Kid Rock put on a big show that evening. They introduced me again as “Lieutenant Dan,” and again the crowd went nuts. I took the microphone and said a few words. When I stepped down, it was dawning on me more and more that the name “Lieutenant Dan” encouraged people far more than the name Gary Sinise, and I felt fine about that. This was about being here for the troops, and if meeting “Lieutenant Dan” would make their day, then that was all right by me. Country singer Neal McCoy took the stage, and he brought up General Franks to sing the old Roger Miller song “King of the Road.” I gathered General Franks didn’t sing onstage very often, but he belted out the tune heartily, while the crowd clapped and cheered.

  (After the trip was over, General Franks and I stayed in touch for a while. The following year he came to Chicago and surprised me with an award for supporting the troops.)

  Just like that, the trip was over. Six days total. Just a small taste of life in Iraq. I didn’t know it then, but within six months I would be back again, with several trips to come in the years ahead.

  On the flight home, I reflected on what I’d seen and experienced. I’d shaken countless hands, posed for thousands of pictures, and talked with so many service members. I’d seen a lot of smiles and felt a lot of spirits lifted. I stood behind the troops a thousand percent. If they were going to be there, fighting this war for us, helping to liberate that country, then I was going to do all I could to support them. The simple act of showing up seemed to carry much weight. I wanted our troops to know they were appreciated, and if going to where the troops were and shaking some hands could help, then that’s exactly what I wanted to keep doing.

  When I returned home on June 21, 2003, I called the USO immediately and asked where I could go next.

  Two weeks later, I was on another USO trip, this time to Italy, visiting US troops stationed there.

  Late August, early September 2003, I found myself in Germany with the USO, visiting troops at various bases around the country and also at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the main overseas hospital where soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan received medical care before being flown back to the States.

  When I came home from Germany, a week later I visited troops at Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, home of the Third Infantry Division, who’d done much of the work to take Saddam International Airport. My brother-in-law Jack had met my wife’s sister, Amy, while serving at Fort Stewart, so I asked Jack to come with me on that trip.

  Two days later, on September 11, 2003, two years after the terrorist attacks on our country, I walked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center and National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda for the first time, meeting wounded troops in both hospitals in one day. At Walter Reed, I met a soldier wheeling himself down the hallway whom I’d seen two weeks earlier at Landstuhl. Back in Germany he was fresh off the line, unable to get out of bed. Now in Washington, DC, he was able to get around in a wheelchair. It felt good to see progress.

  A few weeks after that, in October, I visited troops at the Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The USO set up a trip for me where I drove myself down and said hello to the troops at the base and boarded the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis and took pictures and signed autographs aboard ship. My wife and kids joined me on this trip, and they loved meeting the troops and seeing me at work supporting them.

  Then in early November 2003, I flew with the USO overseas again with Wayne Newton, Chris Isaak, Neal McCoy, and a couple of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, this time visiting troops at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, returning for a second time to Camp Doha, and visiting more troops in Kuwait and at Camp Anaconda / Balad Air Base in Iraq.

  All told, I’d taken six trips in six months.

  On each trip, I felt a new surge of adrenaline. I wanted to help the troops so badly. My goal was to spread out as far as I could, as fast as I could.

  I don’t think anyone back then could have possibly known what lay ahead for our military in the war against terror. How long the wars would last. How brutal they would become.

  As years went on and the wars continued in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fighting became harder for coalition forces. Before I’d left for my first USO trip, the president had already given his now-infamous speech under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished” on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. That happened on May 1, 2003, but clearly the mission was far from over. President Bush had never himself uttered the words “mission accomplished,” and he’d clearly stated during that speech that “our mission continues,” and “we have difficult work to do in Iraq,” but the damage had been done by that banner. Controversy swelled back home in America, and more of our troops were getting hurt overseas. I would continue to make trips to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to meet our fighting men and women in a variety of places and under many different circumstances. On one of my trips, I visited a small combat unit stationed at a forward operating base in Habbaniyah, Iraq. The day I arrived, there was sadness and tension and anger in the unit. The day before, a sniper had killed one of their buddies, and they were all eager to find the terrorist and bring justice to him. This was simply one day in Iraq for just one of our units living in a combat zone. They would live with this death, and surely many others, for the rest of their lives. Each time I heard this kind of news my heart broke. I felt for these warriors, and I so desperately didn’t want any controversy surrounding this current conflict to spill over and hurt our troops or their families. I didn’t want to see these wars turn into another Vietnam, where our defenders were forgotten. They would have a difficult enough time returning home with the scars and wounds of war. I wanted our servicemen and -women to know people still backed them up, and I wanted to do everything in my power to help them stay strong.

  News reports from the war in Iraq were seldom good, and I still feared for America, for my family, and for what the future held. In 2003, Sophie turned fifteen, Mac turned thirteen, and Ella turned eleven. I was spending a lot of time away from my family, but Moira and our kids told me how much they supported what I was doing. W
ith Vietnam vets in her family, Moira knew how important it was. I think my wife and children knew that by letting me go, they also helped in the effort. They wanted us as a family, as Americans, to do whatever we could.

  And then there were the hospitals.

  I did not have good feelings about hospitals.

  Back when I was nineteen years old, smoking finally caught up to my mom’s mom, Grandma Millie. I loved Grandma Millie; she was fun and loved that I acted in plays. She was diagnosed with emphysema and lung cancer and went into the hospital, where she quickly lost a lot of weight. With the exception of being born in one, and having my tonsils removed when I was five, I’d never spent any time in a hospital before, and I wanted to visit her. But I was scared. I’d seen death only once before, and I hated it.

  When I was about nine years old, my grandpa Les had contracted Buerger’s disease, where blockages occurred in the blood vessels of his feet and hands. Grandpa Les had lived with his mother then, a staunch Christian Science follower who didn’t believe in doctors. One of Grandpa’s toes literally fell off, and with a rubber band his mother tried to put it back on and hold it there so it would heal. He died slowly, wasting away bit by bit, a horrible death for anyone to endure.

  I wasn’t terribly close to Grandpa Les, but I still cared about him greatly. Grandma Millie and Grandpa Les had divorced when I was young. After their first divorce they remarried each other, then divorced again, a tug-of-war relationship where feelings for each other rose and fell.

  After the second divorce, we never saw Grandpa much, and his funeral was the first funeral I ever faced. I took a soldering gun and burned some lettering into a piece of wood. The message read, “I love you, Grandpa, love Gary,” and I showed it to Grandma Millie. When I arrived at the wake, the lid of the casket lay open. My grandmother had placed my message inside the lid. Grandpa Les was dressed in a suit, and with the embalming and makeup he looked okay. They buried him with the message from me inside his coffin.

  Years later, when Grandma Millie went into the hospital, I still had these memories of how Grandpa Les had died, and my gut roiled at the thought of visiting her. But I screwed up my courage and went anyway. She’d tried to fix herself up for us, because she knew we were visiting that day, but one glance told me she was not doing well. Her arms were as thin as sticks, her fingers bony and gaunt. She’d withered away to maybe forty pounds, almost to nothing. She smiled, and we talked a bit, and when I hugged her to say goodbye, I couldn’t believe how light she felt in my arms. I loved her and hated to see her looking like that. Sadness filled me, and when I walked out of her hospital room, I felt heavy and unnerved. I never saw her again.

  From that day onward, hospitals represented death to me. My belief was one-sided, I knew, faulty in its entirety, because hospitals can be places of healing and hope. But those beliefs weren’t part of me yet. If you showed me a hospital as a young man, I instantly started to sweat.

  In 2003, on the USO trip I took to Germany, the ride from the hotel to Landstuhl seemed to last forever. I fidgeted in my bus seat, my hands clammy, my heart racing. What would I do when I saw the troops in the hospital? Seeing a skinny grandma was one thing. But what if a patient was missing arms and legs? What if I was taken to the burn unit? I wanted to be on this tour, but I didn’t know if I had what it took. I’d met wounded vets earlier at the DAV convention in 1994, but those vets had been living with their injuries for a long time. The vets I was set to meet this day would be fresh off the battlefield, their injuries raw, many still fighting for their lives.

  Our bus stopped in front of Landstuhl, and I climbed down the steps. Right then, another bus pulled up, and we just stood and stared. A plane had just landed from Iraq. A dozen or more US Army and Navy medical personnel swarmed in and went to work. One by one, the service members were carried off the bus on stretchers. A battery of medical machinery came along with them, a bustle of hoses and tubes and IVs, and I could see each wounded service member’s face. Eyes closed. Mouths grim. Soon the bus was empty. I took a deep breath, looked at my USO escorts, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Through the doors in Landstuhl, we walked to a big, open room full of wounded service members. Maybe thirty guys total were standing or sitting in chairs around the room. A few burns or cuts, a few sprains and splints, but nothing too bad. These were soldiers whose wounds weren’t life-threatening. These guys would be patched up and sent back to the battlefield.

  All was quiet at first. Somber. I could smell the antiseptic. Feel the harshness of the fluorescent lights. A lot of these soldiers had thousand-yard stares. I wore a USO baseball cap and just stood there at first, not knowing how to get started. The silence felt uneasy, awkward. But I knew I needed to dive in. I needed to go to someone and introduce myself and say hello.

  Just then, one of the wounded soldiers looked up. He looked straight into my face, broke out in a big grin, and exclaimed, “Lieutenant Dan!”

  A dam broke. The other guys all looked at me and roused themselves. The ones who could walk crowded around me, and the whole mood in the room changed. Soldier after soldier introduced himself. They asked me questions about Forrest Gump, and I told them some funny stories. A USO rep had a Polaroid camera and started taking pictures of me with the guys, so I signed the backs of the Polaroids and handed them out.

  Maybe half an hour passed. Not long. But when I left that room, I couldn’t help but notice how the mood in the room felt different. Now there was laughter. Joy. And I knew a change had occurred in me too. This first room full of banged-up service members had forced me to get outside of myself. They’d helped me focus on who I was truly there for—them, not me. It was a reminder that this trip was about lifting them up and not about my own fears. So, on the walk to the next ward, I told myself to stop thinking about how I felt and focus instead on how the troops felt. My job was to help relieve their pain, to help give them something else to think about, to help them heal, to spread a bit of cheer.

  Other rooms proved more difficult. That day in Landstuhl I visited some severely wounded service members. One soldier was in a coma, not aware of my presence. Another soldier was so filled with painkillers he couldn’t lift his head off the pillow. I spoke with a man whose face had been burned. Another was missing an arm. Some of the wounded weren’t even soldiers, although they were casualties of war too.

  The United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad had been blown up a few days earlier. The UN special representative to Iraq had been killed. A civilian had been meeting with the representative at the time of the bombing. He lay in a bed in a coma, missing both legs, and his adult-aged daughter sat with him, waiting for him to wake up. When I first walked into the room, she looked so sad, so filled with grief and exhaustion. But after I said hello and introduced myself, she managed a smile, and I sat with her while she shared his story with me. She worried because he didn’t know yet his legs were gone. A real-life Lieutenant Dan. Not on the front lines, but definitely a casualty of war.

  Later, when I boarded the bus, I knew there was much healing still to be done. Not only for the civilian with the missing legs, but for all the service members. And for our country. My heart was still broken about 9/11, as it was for many of us, and I knew again that the wars weren’t over yet, that much more pain lay ahead. More troops would be wounded. More flag-draped coffins would be sent home.

  The gears of the bus downshifted as we crested a hill. Far in the distance lay the lights of the city we were returning to for the evening. I felt strangely grateful again. Grateful I could do something. Grateful for every wounded person inside that hospital—for the sacrifices they made and the bravery they displayed. Grateful for every family member who sat beside each bedside, waiting, hoping. Grateful for the doctors and nurses and hospital staff who’d devoted their lives to help the healing.

  That night I lay awake a long time. As I reflected on the day’s events, I knew something big was shifting inside of me. A transformation was now under way. I was no long
er primarily an actor, even though I would appear in roles for many years to come. I was becoming an advocate, and my job was to carry a nation’s gratitude to the troops. I wanted to let them know the country they loved hadn’t forgotten about them. We hadn’t forgotten the sacrifices of America’s defenders and their families. And we wouldn’t forget—not ever, at least not if I could help it.

  I didn’t fully know the totality of what my new role would hold. I knew I would never stop saying “thank you”—a good start—but maybe that wasn’t enough. A new generation of wounded veterans was growing, crying out for help, and maybe I could do a bit more. How? I didn’t know just yet. But I would start with the single steps that were in front of me. I would remember standing in our church on the National Day of Prayer just after 9/11, recall the feeling I had and the words of our priest that had great healing power. Perhaps God was calling me to do a little more.

  CHAPTER 12

  Honor. Gratitude. Rock and Roll.

  Jenny, I don’t know if Momma was right or if . . . if it’s Lieutenant Dan. I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I . . . I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.” Standing over the grave of his wife, as a gentle wind blows, Forrest Gump speaks these words to his departed wife, Jenny, after she’s been laid to rest under their special tree.