thedrifter
07-26-05, 08:16 AM
Posted on Sun, Jul. 24, 2005
'A war of recovery'
A Marine combat correspondent battles back from injuries
By DAVID CASSTEVENS
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
A cleaning woman nicknamed the young patient shortly after he arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center. » When she slipped into his room in the intensive care ward and began her chores, emptying trash, mopping the floor, she could feel him, in his wakeful moments, following her with his blue eyes. » "Good morning, Blue," Wanda Young said in greeting.
The patient, breathing on a ventilator, couldn't speak.
But as weeks passed, the housekeeper learned to sense when he was experiencing a good day ... or a bad one.
She could measure the level of suffering in those striking, watchful eyes.
Deeply troubled by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Aaron Mankin joined the Marine Corps two years ago. In March, he went to Iraq, his M16A2 rifle on one shoulder and a camera slung over the other.
A member of the II Marine Expeditionary Force assigned to the public affairs office at Camp Fallujah, the 23-year-old from Rogers, Ark., felt especially proud to serve a dual role: infantryman and combat correspondent.
In early May, he typed an e-mail to loved ones:
Dear Family
Overall things are safe where I am. There is always a threat and we as Marines are diligent to deny complacency and remain ever ready. . .Old Glory flies strong in the Middle Eastern winds above our Motor Pool here. . .
Everyone knows their role. I'm here to tell the stories of the men and women serving their nation. . .
Mankin took photos and filed news and feature stories, dozens of them. He met smiling Iraqi children, kids the same age as the youngsters he had taught in Vacation Bible School at his church back home.
In his note, Mankin said he was extending his tour in Iraq from seven months to one year.
I want to be here. I need to be here. . . Love you all and can't wait to see you again.
'This is it'
A few days later, the gung-ho Marine who wrote war stories became one.
On May 11, a roadside bomb exploded during a Marine operation in a desert region in northern Iraq near the Syrian border. The blast tossed a 26-ton assault vehicle filled with troops into the air like a toy and turned it into a pyre. Six Marines died. Eleven were wounded.
Mankin had been standing in the transporter, shooting video of the terrain. He inhaled fire and debris, searing his lungs. His face, arms and hands were badly burned.
Disoriented and in shock, he somehow escaped through a back hatch.
He remembers everything.
The horrific heat. The sound of exploding ammunition.
He recalls staring at the flames, licking his hands.
Rolling across the ground.
The frantic cry of another Marine. "Put him out! Put him out!"
Lifting off in the Black Hawk medevac helicopter.
Looking at the white, puffy clouds.
"I thought, 'I'm gonna die here. This is it,' " the Marine said last week, his voice a raw whisper.
A milepost day
The patient had finished dinner. Only recently he learned to feed himself.
Now, as he sat in bed, he turned his eyes toward the window in Room 415, a room filled with hope and courage and good cheer. Through the glass on the building's fourth floor -- where burn and amputee patients are treated -- he could see the American flag outside the entrance of the 450-bed hospital.
This was a milepost day on his long road to recovery.
Mankin was leaving the hospital at Fort Sam Houston.
The outpatient's new home is a nearby guesthouse on the base, where his mother will care for him and shuttle him to the hospital twice a day for treatment and physical therapy.
Mankin swung his feet onto the linoleum floor and rose, by degrees.
Steve Mankin placed a protective hat on his son's shaved head.
Aaron, who is 6-foot-1 and 135 pounds after losing 30 pounds, rode an elevator to the lobby and walked outside.
At 5:30 p.m., an Army color guard marched in step toward a towering silver pole for the ceremonial lowering of the flag.
When the bugle's first note sounded, the young warrior who wants more than anything to return to Iraq and share the Marines' story in words and pictures squared his shoulders.
Mankin raised his bandaged left arm as high as he could, in an effort to salute, and proudly turned his face -- the face of war -- toward the Stars and Stripes, rippling in the golden light of a westering sun.
'Bubba got hurt'
The telephone rang at the Mankin home in Arkansas at 10:10 p.m.
Steve Mankin answered, and a female voice identified itself as a major at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Instantly, the Marine's father knew -- he just knew.
"Is he alive?" Mankin asked, demanded, as he stood in the kitchen.
His wife, Tonya, was in their bedroom. When she heard the phone she knew, too, and hurried downstairs.
"Yes, sir. But he is critically injured. ... Let me read from the casualty report."
Mankin's son, who had been hurt six hours earlier in some place called Karabilah, would be arriving in a few days in Texas at Brooke Army Medical Center, the military's premier burn center.
The major briefed Mankin as well as she could. Before the conversation ended, the father had one more question.
"How do you do this?" he asked the officer assigned to make family notifications.
The reply was solemn, businesslike. "It has to be done."
Mankin telephoned his ex-wife -- Diana Phelps, Aaron's mother -- who lives in Oklahoma.
Tonya began sending e-mails to members of their Sunday school class, asking for their prayers. After an anguishing, sleepless night, Steve gathered their children, 8-year-old Jake and 7-year-old Maggie.
"Bubba got hurt," he told them, "doing the Marine stuff he does."
Words of comfort
Aaron's mother was the first to see him.
"Mama's here," she assured.
What Steve and Tonya Mankin witnessed when they tiptoed into the hospital isolation unit was off the scale of their experience. A bandaged swollen form lay motionless, attached to a respirator and tubes. So many tubes.
Burns are complex wounds. Burned skin cannot control body heat, so the room temperature for patients is elevated. A victim's heart rate increases. The body becomes more vulnerable to infection and arthritis. Multiple surgeries are common. Outpatient rehab can take months, sometimes years.
Aaron had undergone the first round of skin grafts, the transfer of healthy tissue to damaged areas.
Steve Mankin saw his son's life, in snapshots, like a timeline of memories pasted into a photo album. Aaron on his 13th birthday, when his father gave him a camera. Aaron the high school honors graduate and state debate champion. Aaron, phone pressed to his ear a moment after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
The youth couldn't fathom the wholesale murder of innocent life.
"It's not right," the teen said, shaken. "It's just not right."
The father saw his smiling son, so happy, so proud, in San Diego at Marine boot camp graduation.
"When you getting your dress blues?" Steve asked.
Aaron said he didn't know.
"I'll give you the money."
"It's not the money," he told his dad. "I'm not ready. Not yet. I haven't earned them."
"When does that happen?" Steve Mankin asked.
"You just know," the Marine said. "You just know."
Like Aaron's mother, Steve and his wife voiced words of comfort and support as Mankin, heavily sedated, lay in that sterile room, the heat so stifling that Tonya almost fainted. Aaron's dad produced a pocket recorder and pushed the play button. On the tape were the small silvery voices of Jake and Maggie, telling their big brother that they love him.
Mankin moved one leg, then the other.
The story of war
When the Marine awakened, his blue eyes -- spared by the goggles he had worn that hellish day -- focused on a stranger standing at the foot of his bed.
Don O'Neal, 65, is a retired Marine master gunnery sergeant and former combat correspondent in Vietnam. The San Antonio resident serves as national chairman of the United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association, a group of active duty and former Marine reporters and photographers.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps recognized the need to have more news and photography coming from combat zones. The Corps began recruiting reporters. More than 40 lost their lives in combat in World War II and subsequent actions.
continued....
'A war of recovery'
A Marine combat correspondent battles back from injuries
By DAVID CASSTEVENS
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
A cleaning woman nicknamed the young patient shortly after he arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center. » When she slipped into his room in the intensive care ward and began her chores, emptying trash, mopping the floor, she could feel him, in his wakeful moments, following her with his blue eyes. » "Good morning, Blue," Wanda Young said in greeting.
The patient, breathing on a ventilator, couldn't speak.
But as weeks passed, the housekeeper learned to sense when he was experiencing a good day ... or a bad one.
She could measure the level of suffering in those striking, watchful eyes.
Deeply troubled by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Aaron Mankin joined the Marine Corps two years ago. In March, he went to Iraq, his M16A2 rifle on one shoulder and a camera slung over the other.
A member of the II Marine Expeditionary Force assigned to the public affairs office at Camp Fallujah, the 23-year-old from Rogers, Ark., felt especially proud to serve a dual role: infantryman and combat correspondent.
In early May, he typed an e-mail to loved ones:
Dear Family
Overall things are safe where I am. There is always a threat and we as Marines are diligent to deny complacency and remain ever ready. . .Old Glory flies strong in the Middle Eastern winds above our Motor Pool here. . .
Everyone knows their role. I'm here to tell the stories of the men and women serving their nation. . .
Mankin took photos and filed news and feature stories, dozens of them. He met smiling Iraqi children, kids the same age as the youngsters he had taught in Vacation Bible School at his church back home.
In his note, Mankin said he was extending his tour in Iraq from seven months to one year.
I want to be here. I need to be here. . . Love you all and can't wait to see you again.
'This is it'
A few days later, the gung-ho Marine who wrote war stories became one.
On May 11, a roadside bomb exploded during a Marine operation in a desert region in northern Iraq near the Syrian border. The blast tossed a 26-ton assault vehicle filled with troops into the air like a toy and turned it into a pyre. Six Marines died. Eleven were wounded.
Mankin had been standing in the transporter, shooting video of the terrain. He inhaled fire and debris, searing his lungs. His face, arms and hands were badly burned.
Disoriented and in shock, he somehow escaped through a back hatch.
He remembers everything.
The horrific heat. The sound of exploding ammunition.
He recalls staring at the flames, licking his hands.
Rolling across the ground.
The frantic cry of another Marine. "Put him out! Put him out!"
Lifting off in the Black Hawk medevac helicopter.
Looking at the white, puffy clouds.
"I thought, 'I'm gonna die here. This is it,' " the Marine said last week, his voice a raw whisper.
A milepost day
The patient had finished dinner. Only recently he learned to feed himself.
Now, as he sat in bed, he turned his eyes toward the window in Room 415, a room filled with hope and courage and good cheer. Through the glass on the building's fourth floor -- where burn and amputee patients are treated -- he could see the American flag outside the entrance of the 450-bed hospital.
This was a milepost day on his long road to recovery.
Mankin was leaving the hospital at Fort Sam Houston.
The outpatient's new home is a nearby guesthouse on the base, where his mother will care for him and shuttle him to the hospital twice a day for treatment and physical therapy.
Mankin swung his feet onto the linoleum floor and rose, by degrees.
Steve Mankin placed a protective hat on his son's shaved head.
Aaron, who is 6-foot-1 and 135 pounds after losing 30 pounds, rode an elevator to the lobby and walked outside.
At 5:30 p.m., an Army color guard marched in step toward a towering silver pole for the ceremonial lowering of the flag.
When the bugle's first note sounded, the young warrior who wants more than anything to return to Iraq and share the Marines' story in words and pictures squared his shoulders.
Mankin raised his bandaged left arm as high as he could, in an effort to salute, and proudly turned his face -- the face of war -- toward the Stars and Stripes, rippling in the golden light of a westering sun.
'Bubba got hurt'
The telephone rang at the Mankin home in Arkansas at 10:10 p.m.
Steve Mankin answered, and a female voice identified itself as a major at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Instantly, the Marine's father knew -- he just knew.
"Is he alive?" Mankin asked, demanded, as he stood in the kitchen.
His wife, Tonya, was in their bedroom. When she heard the phone she knew, too, and hurried downstairs.
"Yes, sir. But he is critically injured. ... Let me read from the casualty report."
Mankin's son, who had been hurt six hours earlier in some place called Karabilah, would be arriving in a few days in Texas at Brooke Army Medical Center, the military's premier burn center.
The major briefed Mankin as well as she could. Before the conversation ended, the father had one more question.
"How do you do this?" he asked the officer assigned to make family notifications.
The reply was solemn, businesslike. "It has to be done."
Mankin telephoned his ex-wife -- Diana Phelps, Aaron's mother -- who lives in Oklahoma.
Tonya began sending e-mails to members of their Sunday school class, asking for their prayers. After an anguishing, sleepless night, Steve gathered their children, 8-year-old Jake and 7-year-old Maggie.
"Bubba got hurt," he told them, "doing the Marine stuff he does."
Words of comfort
Aaron's mother was the first to see him.
"Mama's here," she assured.
What Steve and Tonya Mankin witnessed when they tiptoed into the hospital isolation unit was off the scale of their experience. A bandaged swollen form lay motionless, attached to a respirator and tubes. So many tubes.
Burns are complex wounds. Burned skin cannot control body heat, so the room temperature for patients is elevated. A victim's heart rate increases. The body becomes more vulnerable to infection and arthritis. Multiple surgeries are common. Outpatient rehab can take months, sometimes years.
Aaron had undergone the first round of skin grafts, the transfer of healthy tissue to damaged areas.
Steve Mankin saw his son's life, in snapshots, like a timeline of memories pasted into a photo album. Aaron on his 13th birthday, when his father gave him a camera. Aaron the high school honors graduate and state debate champion. Aaron, phone pressed to his ear a moment after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
The youth couldn't fathom the wholesale murder of innocent life.
"It's not right," the teen said, shaken. "It's just not right."
The father saw his smiling son, so happy, so proud, in San Diego at Marine boot camp graduation.
"When you getting your dress blues?" Steve asked.
Aaron said he didn't know.
"I'll give you the money."
"It's not the money," he told his dad. "I'm not ready. Not yet. I haven't earned them."
"When does that happen?" Steve Mankin asked.
"You just know," the Marine said. "You just know."
Like Aaron's mother, Steve and his wife voiced words of comfort and support as Mankin, heavily sedated, lay in that sterile room, the heat so stifling that Tonya almost fainted. Aaron's dad produced a pocket recorder and pushed the play button. On the tape were the small silvery voices of Jake and Maggie, telling their big brother that they love him.
Mankin moved one leg, then the other.
The story of war
When the Marine awakened, his blue eyes -- spared by the goggles he had worn that hellish day -- focused on a stranger standing at the foot of his bed.
Don O'Neal, 65, is a retired Marine master gunnery sergeant and former combat correspondent in Vietnam. The San Antonio resident serves as national chairman of the United States Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association, a group of active duty and former Marine reporters and photographers.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps recognized the need to have more news and photography coming from combat zones. The Corps began recruiting reporters. More than 40 lost their lives in combat in World War II and subsequent actions.
continued....