This past week (June 4-8) I traveled to Washington and Annapolis to sign books at the Pentagon and do research for my next book. Initially, I was going alone. While talking to Gunny (Rosie) Noel the week before I left, I told her it would be nice to have her at the Pentagon signing. Next thing I knew she was spending the week with me. I couldn’t have been happier.
June 4—We signed for a few hours at the Pentagon. As usual, the staff in the clothing store were great hostesses, and Rosie and I met a lot of awesome service members. Then we got on the metro and rode it for one stop to Arlington National Cemetery. We were on our way to the Women’s Memorial. Before we got to the Memorial we stopped inside the building that houses the visitor’s area at Arlington Cemetery. While we were there, the sky opened up. The rain and wind were intense, and we were trapped, along with hundreds of teenagers. It was a fieldtrip gone bad, and we were right smack in the middle. By the time we left, Noel had a migraine from the teenagers talking loudly and fooling around. Exacerbating her headache was the lack of respect that the teenagers seemed to be showing for the deceased service members. The Gunny did her best to shut them down but was outnumbered. However, she and the guards were on the same page and the guards did their best to control the crowd. Fortunately, the storm let up and we high tailed it to the Women’s Memorial. At the Memorial, I especially liked looking at the photos of the American female service members throughout the years and the memorabilia from previous wars.
June 5—Noel and I went to Walter Reed. I had scheduled interviews with members of the medical staff who treated Major Tammy Duckworth’s war wounds. The staff spoke so highly of her. She sounds too good to be true. Most people know that Duckworth is a highly motivated individual. How else could she have gone through what she went through and serve as Director of Veteran’s Affairs for the State of Illinois? But what many may not know is how generous she is when it comes to motivating others, i.e., not only the wounded but also the staff of Walter Reed. So what motivates Duckworth? How did she get from the ICU at Walter Reed to her current role? What’s her passion? Stay tuned. Thank you to Pat C, Bunny, Kristi, Harvey, and Mike for all you do and for spending time with me. One other tidbit—I had the pleasure of meeting two peer volunteers who visit the wounded at WR. In order to visit an amputee, you have to be an amputee yourself. The gentleman who visited Tammy a day after she arrived in the ICU is 79 years old and lost both legs in Korea. God bless him and peer volunteers everywhere. You know when this man walks into the room of an amputee, he is a source of great inspiration.
While I was doing my interviews, Noel met Commander Necia Williams for the first time. Williams is the anesthesiologist who gave the order to anesthetize Noel after she was wounded at Al Asad by an indirect fire. They hadn’t seen each other in several years, since that day in triage in Iraq.
That evening, Noel and I went to dinner with Nancy and Virginia in Shirlington. Nancy and Virginia were both Marines who now work for the protocol office for the Commandant of the Marine Corps and in supply admin, respectively. Noel shared her story .., There I was riding my Bike. And Nancy and Virginia talked about their days in the Marine Corps.
June 6—Bethesda—I had another interview for my next book. This time I interviewed Ciara Cook, an E5 in the Navy. Any guesses as to her occupation? Culinary Services. Cook worked as a guard in a detention facility in Iraq.
Noel met up with Commander Williams again and was introduced for the first time to Lieutenant Commander J. Hernandez, a certified registered nurse anesthetist, and Captain William Liston (doc). Williams gave the order to anesthetize Noel. Hernandez actually gave her the juice. Liston is the doctor who removed the shrapnel from Noel’s face in Al Asad. Liston took a moment at Bethesda to examine Noel’s scar and was impressed with how it had healed. Williams, Hernandez, and Liston all recall the Gunny arguing with them because she just wanted them to stitch her up and send her back to her troops. They wanted to (and did) send her onto Balad. However, within 24 hours Noel was back with her troops. Liston recalled that even while she was on lying down on a bed in triage, Noel was worried about everyone else except for herself. It was moving to see all of these folks meeting for the first time back in the States. It’s not every day that a surgeon gets to see a patient he worked on in Iraq—nearly three years later.
June 7—Play day in downtown Annapolis. Gunny goes crazy buying gifts for everyone. She did get a very cool gift from me, though. It’s a T-shirt that reads—Scars are tattoos with better stories. She should know.
