thedrifter
04-26-06, 06:27 AM
Beamer in Iraq: Notes on Two Homecomings
LAST UPDATE: 4/25/2006 9:25:07 PM
Posted By: Randy Beamer
This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.woai.com.
As we put together stories to air on News 4 WOAI-TV, I just wanted to share some notes on the stories of two homecomings.
Two buddies. Marines in Iraq. Both in the same "fire team." Both caught up in the same tough week in a tough area of Iraq.
Two different homecomings.
I met Lance Corporal Josh Rynders in the Emergency Department at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Iraq. I had just hopped off a night flight to Baghdad with an Army "dust-off" medical helicopter crew. I was shooting video in the E.R. when noticed him in tears as he lay on a gurney.
"Dad, please go outside," he pleaded into a walkie-talkie like radio-telephone hook-up. "Go outside so I can talk to you, Dad!"
Rynders later told me he wanted to tell the news first to his dad back in Illinois.
That way dad could help mom if she couldn't handle it.
"Dad, I got hit by a mortar... got hit in both my legs, the left arm."
The Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, north of Baghdad, is run by San Antonians from Wilford Hall. With little else going on in the E.R. right then, staffers watched awkwardly from a distance, allowing the young marine some privacy.
"Dad, you realize I'm in Iraq. You can't come to Iraq."
Lance Corporal Rynders was breaking the news he'd been hit by shrapnel from a mortar blast. And that he'd soon be on his way back to the U.S. for more treatment.
When we talked later, he said his dad had a little trouble with the news. His mom worries, too. He told me he'd been on a security detail while workers built a new facility for Iraqi police west of Baghdad.
He didn't hear any sound of the mortar being fired, or it flying in, as they sometimes do. It just blew and left him and a number of friends bleeding and waiting for help.
After two helicopter flights he was in Balad, the last stop in Iraq for all the wounded Americans who will leave the country for more treatment.
About 12 hours later, we were flying out of Iraq on a C-17 converted to a flying hospital.
They were loaded on the plane on racks, three stretchers or "litters" high. Medical Evacuation teams and Critical Care Air Transport (C-CAT) Teams worked through the flight, making sure the two dozen or so patients were stable on their way to a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
I spotted Rynders hooked up to medications laying under a flag-covered quilt.
Somehow it connected that I was from San Antonio.
He said his buddy was from San Antonio.
Lance Corporal Stephen Perez.
Perez wasn't on the plane. He was killed in Iraq, along with another of Rynder's friends.
Rynders talked about what a tough week it had been for his team. There had been a big firefight. An I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device), and then the mortar. As he put it, "then we got blown up."
He was matter-of-fact when I asked him about Perez.
"He was a good marine. A good friend. I'm gonna miss him."
In San Antonio, a crowd packed the chapel at St. Anthony, Perez' high school. An unusual honor guard of 200 or so bikers roared through the streets.
I had spoken with his father earlier in the week. "I wish you had known him. He was a great guy." Stephen Perez wanted to be a teacher. He had gone to St. Mary's University after St. Anthony High, but a friend told me Perez was changed by 9-11 and wanted to do something.
He wound up in the Marine Corps.
The mayor came to his funeral. And hundreds from across the area, some even from outside Texas who didn't know him. His grandfather told me he was proud and grateful so many turned out to pay respects.
Then the miles-long procession roared down Hildebrand, against the backdrop of the San Antonio skyline.
Another moving ceremony at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Another hometown boy laid to rest.
Rynders thinks about going back to Iraq to make sure his buddies, his surviving buddies, are OK.
And back in Iraq, all those San Antonians running the Air Force Hospital are living more of these stories. Watching more soldiers call home before coming home. Hearing of buddies killed.
Those San Antonians call it "groundhog day" as they wake up to the same days over and over.
Col. Gary Ari****a is a surgeon, who's also the Vice Commander of the Air Force Theater Hospital in Iraq. We talked briefly as Josh Rynders made the call home.
I asked Ari****a why he and the others do it.
He paused and choked up. "I think for the people that are here... the troops that are here. They just deserve the very best."
Ari****a says the staffers are often moved by what they see. By stories like the two buddies going home.
"But at the same time we all have to keep plugging away. There's kind of a time to get reflective and a little weepy sometimes. But for the most part people need us pushing on, taking care of business."
Stay tuned to News 4 WOAI-TV and check this website for more stories from San Antonio's Outpost in Iraq.
Beamer
Ellie
LAST UPDATE: 4/25/2006 9:25:07 PM
Posted By: Randy Beamer
This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.woai.com.
As we put together stories to air on News 4 WOAI-TV, I just wanted to share some notes on the stories of two homecomings.
Two buddies. Marines in Iraq. Both in the same "fire team." Both caught up in the same tough week in a tough area of Iraq.
Two different homecomings.
I met Lance Corporal Josh Rynders in the Emergency Department at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Iraq. I had just hopped off a night flight to Baghdad with an Army "dust-off" medical helicopter crew. I was shooting video in the E.R. when noticed him in tears as he lay on a gurney.
"Dad, please go outside," he pleaded into a walkie-talkie like radio-telephone hook-up. "Go outside so I can talk to you, Dad!"
Rynders later told me he wanted to tell the news first to his dad back in Illinois.
That way dad could help mom if she couldn't handle it.
"Dad, I got hit by a mortar... got hit in both my legs, the left arm."
The Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, north of Baghdad, is run by San Antonians from Wilford Hall. With little else going on in the E.R. right then, staffers watched awkwardly from a distance, allowing the young marine some privacy.
"Dad, you realize I'm in Iraq. You can't come to Iraq."
Lance Corporal Rynders was breaking the news he'd been hit by shrapnel from a mortar blast. And that he'd soon be on his way back to the U.S. for more treatment.
When we talked later, he said his dad had a little trouble with the news. His mom worries, too. He told me he'd been on a security detail while workers built a new facility for Iraqi police west of Baghdad.
He didn't hear any sound of the mortar being fired, or it flying in, as they sometimes do. It just blew and left him and a number of friends bleeding and waiting for help.
After two helicopter flights he was in Balad, the last stop in Iraq for all the wounded Americans who will leave the country for more treatment.
About 12 hours later, we were flying out of Iraq on a C-17 converted to a flying hospital.
They were loaded on the plane on racks, three stretchers or "litters" high. Medical Evacuation teams and Critical Care Air Transport (C-CAT) Teams worked through the flight, making sure the two dozen or so patients were stable on their way to a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
I spotted Rynders hooked up to medications laying under a flag-covered quilt.
Somehow it connected that I was from San Antonio.
He said his buddy was from San Antonio.
Lance Corporal Stephen Perez.
Perez wasn't on the plane. He was killed in Iraq, along with another of Rynder's friends.
Rynders talked about what a tough week it had been for his team. There had been a big firefight. An I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device), and then the mortar. As he put it, "then we got blown up."
He was matter-of-fact when I asked him about Perez.
"He was a good marine. A good friend. I'm gonna miss him."
In San Antonio, a crowd packed the chapel at St. Anthony, Perez' high school. An unusual honor guard of 200 or so bikers roared through the streets.
I had spoken with his father earlier in the week. "I wish you had known him. He was a great guy." Stephen Perez wanted to be a teacher. He had gone to St. Mary's University after St. Anthony High, but a friend told me Perez was changed by 9-11 and wanted to do something.
He wound up in the Marine Corps.
The mayor came to his funeral. And hundreds from across the area, some even from outside Texas who didn't know him. His grandfather told me he was proud and grateful so many turned out to pay respects.
Then the miles-long procession roared down Hildebrand, against the backdrop of the San Antonio skyline.
Another moving ceremony at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Another hometown boy laid to rest.
Rynders thinks about going back to Iraq to make sure his buddies, his surviving buddies, are OK.
And back in Iraq, all those San Antonians running the Air Force Hospital are living more of these stories. Watching more soldiers call home before coming home. Hearing of buddies killed.
Those San Antonians call it "groundhog day" as they wake up to the same days over and over.
Col. Gary Ari****a is a surgeon, who's also the Vice Commander of the Air Force Theater Hospital in Iraq. We talked briefly as Josh Rynders made the call home.
I asked Ari****a why he and the others do it.
He paused and choked up. "I think for the people that are here... the troops that are here. They just deserve the very best."
Ari****a says the staffers are often moved by what they see. By stories like the two buddies going home.
"But at the same time we all have to keep plugging away. There's kind of a time to get reflective and a little weepy sometimes. But for the most part people need us pushing on, taking care of business."
Stay tuned to News 4 WOAI-TV and check this website for more stories from San Antonio's Outpost in Iraq.
Beamer
Ellie