RED, WHITE AND BLUE
July 1, 2011“Mrs. Woodruff, what girl is ever going to go home with me from a bar?” He looked up at me with a lopsided grin that said he was partially joking but also dead serious. His voice was devoid of self pity.
I glanced at his thick reddish blonde hair, wide smile, his incredibly muscled shoulders and then my eyes strayed to his legs, or where his legs should have been. Darren was a private in the US Army, who’d been hit by a car bomb in Fallujah. He is a 24 year-old double amputee.
In these wild oats years, when he should have been kicking up his heels in every honky tonk bar in his native Tennessee, Darren had spent more than a year in a VA Hospital recovering from the physical and emotional injuries of war. Like so many veterans, real recovery is an ongoing journey. This is what life looks like, interrupted, but undeterred.
He’d been in middle school when Bin Laden and his band of terrorists slammed into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. It had made an impression as a boy. And when he was old enough, he told me, he’d signed up because he was an American and it was the right thing to do. Darren wanted some action. He wanted to defend his country from terrorists. He had assessed the danger, but the bad thing always happens to someone else.
The people I’ve met don’t see themselves as heroes. They were just doing their job, they’ll tell you. And their job was protecting us. Just ask the Navy Seals who took out Bin Laden or the medic who was able to put two tourniquets on his guys before he attended to his own blown off leg. This job is not for the faint of heart. And that job benefits you whether you feel it or not. Someone has to protect the castle. Someone has to pull the night watchman’s shift.
This Fourth of July, I hope you have a chance to gather with family and friends. And as you celebrate by a lake or an ocean, overlook the purple mountain’s majesty or the rolling plains, someone like Darren, someone young and proud and very brave, is on a foreign base or in a military vehicle in the desert, wearing far too much gear for a place so hot. They are there because their country asked them to go and they stood up and raised their hands.
This is about the fact that no matter what complaints we have about our country, no matter what we’d like to change or improve, every single one of us should take pride in being American. The same kind of resonant pride that bloomed after September 11th. Sure, there is corruption and abuse of power; there are pork barrel politics, racism and extremism. But we are a complex nation. We fought for the right to be independent, and we founded a nation on the principal that all were welcome, free from persecution and tyranny and we’ve done the best we could with the times we had. As a country we are continually a work in progress. We are a perfectly imperfect vast land of disparate, differing folks braided together. We are fallible, but ever hopeful, ever striving.
Reader Comments (7)
A Grunt for 21 years . . . Thank you!
If you post photos, I bet Darren will get some phone calls or emails. There are many women out there with big hearts and compassion and a taste for men who want more for their fellow citizens -- and who put it all on the line to make it happen! Happy Fourth!
What an inspiring and amazing video!
Thank you Lee for such an extraordinary and inspiring post. As a military spouse (my husband was active duty and is now a part time National Guardsman) I want to personally thank you for this post. I appreciate your writing, your perspective and your call to all of us to go beyond the politics to embrace being proud Americans, to remember our strengths and our uniqueness, our courage and our fortitude. Thank you. Simply, thank you.
Lee, every time I see your smiling face or Bob's wonderful reporting, it eases the hurt for all of the wounded. I want to comment on your story about Darren. When I was at Landstuhl in either '05 or '06, I had a similar situation. I was interviewing a young soldier with one leg amputated. It was a "good" day, because this young man in ICU was talking to me & not so seriously wounded that he was on a ventilaor. He had dark hair & blue eyes. He had what should have been a smiling mouth that would be gorgeous, and the heavily muscled upper body seen so often with our troops. I was interviewing him for movement back to CONUS when he asked me, "what girl will want to be with me with just one leg?" I looked at this gorgeous example of a man, who was unsmiling, but not being self pitying; just asking a simple question. After I laughed out loud, he looked at me with the question obvious on his face. So I told him that if he wasn't in pain and weak, besides it being tacky and unprofessional, that half of LRMC's females would be lined up to snuggle up next to him right now. He got a little half smile on his face, but this pudgy LTC old enough to be his grandma assured him that I wasn't kidding...with his smile and personality he was a shoo in for lots of female company. He thanked me as I left and gave me a real smile, leaving me wishing I was at least 30 years younger! Thank God for our service men and women and the people who love them.
Lee -- Just want to add my thanks to you for this story, for shining the light on the military community.
Lee -- Just want to add my thanks to you for this story, for shining the light on the military community.