While at the AW2 Symposium, everyone was very interested in our brand new non-profit that we were starting: Tempered Steel, The Stories Behind the Scars.

We decided to co-found Tempered Steel after my son Scott was seriously wounded and disfigured in Iraq in November 2006. Our first hand experience in handling the responses to Scott’s injuries from civilians and military alike, compelled us to break down the barriers between wounded and disfigured Veterans and those who only see their scars. Tempered Steel’s goal is to exchange fear for enlightenment by exposing the very real human stories behind the wounds of war.

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I wanted to pass this link on concerning free laser surgery for wounded warriors, spouses or caregivers

Free Laser Surgery

KC veterans, familes feel conflicted as last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq

By LEE HILL KAVANAUGH
The Kansas City Star


The soldiers and Marines and others who left a part of themselves there, enduring horrific battle wounds and witnessing scenes that they pray to forget.

For those who didn’t come home, it’s their families who will speak, and remember.

All will forever be connected with Iraq, even if the United States’ combat mission there has ended.

• • •

Like every other veteran he knows, Scott Stephenson wants victory in Iraq. He follows the politics of it, trying to understand. Some things make him angry. He loses patience with civilians.

Including President Barack Obama.

“I am not going to watch the president’s speech,” Stephenson, of Atchison, Kan., said Tuesday afternoon before Obama addressed the nation to declare the end of combat operations in Iraq. “I don’t feel like he’s a friend to the soldier, nor does he have any military credibility. He only knows what (Gen. David) Petraeus tells him.”

Stephenson was 23 when he lost his left leg and his former life to Iraq. Now, at 26, he wakes up to some good days, but still some bad ones, too.

He had severe face and body burns, a damaged arm, a blown-off leg. Doctors gave him a 5 percent chance of surviving and he spent a year in the hospital. It’s been a grueling recovery.

But simple pleasures are coming back. He now has a prosthetic leg.

“I walked downstairs to the basement and the door was open and then I realized that I was above the doorknob instead of it being at eye level,” he said, breaking into a tense laugh. “I thought, ‘This is a victory. Yeah!’?”

He still talks with Army buddies who kept in constant contact with him as he worked to recover in the hospital. Most of them went on to Afghanistan, but are back in the U.S. now.

“Some of my guys told me that the Baghdad area now looks like downtown Miami, with all the businesses open, and people trying to go to work and carry on with their lives.”

But there’s a darker side to the country that stole so much from him.

“I think it’s good we’re finally pulling out. But without combat troops, the insurgents are just waiting to push back. And they will get in, and we’ll probably have to go back.”

• • •

A retired Marine and now a substitute teacher, Paul Petersen strikes fear in students who test their boundaries.

But, he said, the other teachers love him.

A veteran of three wars, he led foot patrols in Mosul. He was a master sergeant with a 10-Marine team working with 500 Iraqi soldiers.

He also is a father to two Marines who both served in Iraq. Just last week, his former Iraqi translator called him at home in Raytown. Iraq felt safe, the translator told him.

As far as combat troops pulling out, Petersen, 60, said it was time.

“Realistically, we had to pull out sooner or later. They don’t want combat troops over there. But there’ll be plenty of troops there.

“We’re really not leaving,” he said. “You just won’t call them combat units. We’ll have people there for another 20 years at least.”

He knows there’ll be hundreds of air support and air evacuation units, mess hall staff and radio techs, intelligence officers and communication specialists.

“I was with the Iraqi Special Forces, and they were good. Almost as good as Marines,” he said. “American troops would be on patrols with Iraqis, where neither could speak to each other. But instinctively, the teams were so well trained no one needed to speak.”

Those patrols will continue for a long time, he said.

Petersen didn’t listen to Obama Tuesday night. He said he’d rather clean gutters.

He and his wife planned to help a widow from their church with some odd jobs at her house. A more pleasant chore than listening to a politician.

“Besides, whenever I hear Obama speak, I feel sick to my stomach.”

And Petersen laughed, grateful that he has the freedom to say that.

• • •

For Lenexa mom Maureen Walsh, whose son gave his life while helping a young baby with a medical condition, Iraq represents a place where the light of human kindness flared.

Her son Chris Walsh was a 30-year-old Navy medic whose unit stumbled upon an Iraq family whose baby had a deformity that would kill her just as effectively as any bomb.

Walsh, a 1994 Bishop Miege High School grad and an Eagle Scout, had a history of doing the right thing, whether it was in the slums of St. Louis where he’d worked as a paramedic, or when he stopped to help wounded civilians in Iraq. When Walsh saw the baby, his mission changed. He put his weapon down and picked her up.

He made regular medical visits to the family, always after dark, always changing his route, making an impassioned plea to his platoon about saving the sweet baby girl named Mariam with the big brown eyes and thick brown hair.

A baby who seemed to embody all that was good and pure and untouched by the ugliness of a war.

Walsh was killed on one of those visits in Fallujah, in 2006. But his unit kept Walsh’s hope, and the baby was allowed to come to the United States for surgery. At least until last year, she was thriving, Maureen Walsh said.

But she hasn’t heard anything this year.

The 63-year-old mom has nurtured the dream to meet this child whose life is now especially precious to her because of her son’s love.

But her optimism about Iraq and its people’s future fades with each news report, and especially hearing that all combat troops left the country. She plans to try to reach some of Walsh’s friends to check on the little girl named Mariam.

“I’m not so sure now it’ll ever happen.?…I realize it’s costing a lot of money to keep troops there, but why is our president pushing this? I don’t think the people of Iraq are culturally ready to police their own. I think Iraq will go back to their same ways. They’re not equipped to handle it.”

She planned to watch Obama’s speech Tuesday evening. Alone.

“I want to hear what he says, but I’ll probably make a few bad comments to the TV.”

To reach Lee Hill Kavanaugh, call 816-234-4420 or e-mail at lkavanaugh@kcstar.com.

Posted on Tue, Aug. 31, 2010 10:15 PM


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