thedrifter
08-27-07, 07:30 AM
Wounded soldiers gather to eat, comfort each other
Web Posted: 08/26/2007 11:14 PM CDT
John MacCormack
Express-News
The walls of the History Room at the Barn Door Restaurant are covered with mementos of past American warfare, from Pearl Harbor to Desert Storm, and with tributes to Marine valor.
They're little more than musty curiosities to most guests at wedding receptions or other celebrations in the special events room. But for the past 18 months, a group with a very different perspective has gathered here each Monday night.
Veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq arrive on a white military bus from Brooke Army Medical Center, straggling in like the survivors of a lost patrol.
Some come in wheelchairs with small orange flags. Others use canes. Some are missing limbs or are badly burned.
And while a few are paunchy old-timers with grown-up children of their own, most of the wounded are hardly more than kids — at least according to their birth certificates.
To the regular patrons of the popular North Side steakhouse, the vets are a sobering reminder, seldom seen outside military hospitals, of the terrible cost paid by those sent to fight the nation's battles.
For the veterans now writing the latest chapter of America's military history with their once ordinary lives, there is nothing abstract about any of it. And everyone has a story.
"I got shot in east Baghdad. June 7. I'll never forget. I was on patrol and got shot in the leg," began Nekia Whatley, 30, from Montgomery, Ala. "When I came to, they asked me if I could feel my leg. I could feel my nerves. That's the only reason they didn't cut it off."
Missing 4 inches of bone in his left leg, the Army staff sergeant now wears a painful, heavy brace anchored with pins. He sometimes wonders if he'd be better off without it.
"Is it worth saving or worth cutting off? That's where I am right now. Sometimes I'm in so much pain I want to cut it off," he said of his leg.
But, Whatley quickly added, don't waste pity on him. Back at BAMC there are others who are worse off and will never see a steak dinner at the Barn Door.
"I sit and cry sometimes looking at the burn victims. How will they ever be normal again? What can they do with their lives?" Whatley said. "I really think America ought to go to BAMC and see the real injuries. Show how badly these soldiers are hurt. Don't hide the truth."
The often-poignant Monday night get-togethers are the work of Janis Roznowski, an American Airlines flight attendant who founded "Operation Comfort" to help wounded vets after they return home.
Roznowski started the support group several years ago after visiting injured veterans at BAMC. The free steak and chicken is just part of the program, a first step toward returning them to the mainstream, she said.
"The families are at the hospital all the time. I always encourage them to come to the Barn Door. They'll come and then they go back and tell their son about it," she said.
There's another part of it: older veterans who survived decades-old wounds.
"If they start describing it, the wounded soldier in ICU will start building a picture in his mind: Red Barn. Memorabilia. World War II guys. Korean War guys. Food. Steak," Roznowski said. "And hopefully he'll start looking forward to the time he can come."
The long view
"War! Oahu Bombed by Japanese Planes," screams the yellowed front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, dated Dec. 7, 1941, from its frame on the History Room wall.
"Nazis Surrender Unconditionally," reads the 3-inch headline of May 7, 1945, on a San Antonio Light extra edition that cost 5 cents.
One small photo on the wall shows David Straus heading off to fight the Japanese in 1943, a private looking as youthful as any of today's guests.
Straus, a combat Marine in World War II and Korea, is now 83 and the Barn Door's owner. He agreed to host the dinners, getting promises of financial support from other area businessmen.
The gatherings draw 50 to 70 people each week.
"I saw a whole lot of people badly injured when I was in the Marine infantry in two wars, and we didn't have things like this for them. I just thought it was a wonderful program to speed up their recovery," Straus said.
"I guess I pretty well relate to them. They talk freely with me. I've walked the walk."
Another Monday night fixture is Ronnie Reininger, an old Marine gunnery sergeant who was badly wounded in Korea in December 1950 at the Chosin Reservoir.
Reininger, 78, lost all his fingers to frostbite and most of both legs to mortar fire while fighting the Chinese in 35-degrees-below-zero weather. He unfailingly makes light of his terrible injuries.
"There are advantages to fighting in that weather. If you get both legs blown off, you don't bleed to death, because the blood freezes," he deadpanned on a recent Monday.
A small, balding man with a hearing aid and a singsong voice, Reininger usually gives an inspirational speech on Monday nights, tossing in corny jokes and ancient war stories.
On unsteady prosthetic legs, he also hands out practical tips to the wounded soldiers on dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs, driving a car and even finding a wife, as he did 55 years ago.
"If you don't have a wife, go shopping. There's one out there for you," he said to amused laughter.
"Whatever you do for the rest of your life, don't sit on your bottom and let life go by. Join life," he said.
'I know how they feel'
For the Marines and soldiers and their families, the weekly visits to the Barn Door are an escape from mess hall food and hospital monotony, a chance to socialize with their own kind.
"It's a good meal. And you get to tell your story to the other soldiers," said Robert Engelbrecht, 24, from Magnolia.
The lanky Army corporal lost a leg and an eye and suffered a brain injury in an explosion while serving in Iraq.
"I don't regret anything. I went. I knew the risks," Engelbrecht said.
He now gets around in a wheelchair, but he has bigger plans.
Engelbrecht, who has only partial vision in his remaining eye, is scheming to get a driver's license upon his release from BAMC sometime next spring.
"The law in Texas says you can drive with one eye. But half an eye? It's a little fuzzy," he said.
Another regular, Merlin German, 21, of New York, was badly injured in a roadside explosion.
He says he feels lucky to be alive. Almost his entire body was burned, and he lost both hands in the fiery explosion more than two years ago.
"I got hit by a roadside IED (improvised explosive device). It was gasoline-fed. One guy was killed, and I was injured. It was 20 months before I could walk," he said in a wheezy voice.
German has been receiving treatment at BAMC since soon after he was injured. During visits to the Barn Door, his mother, Lourdes German, feeds him with a spoon, much as she did when he was a baby.
"I joined the Marines when I was 17. I wanted to do something that was respectable, to make a difference," he said.
Soon he will face yet another round of reconstructive surgery. Beyond that, the future is unclear.
"You can't complain. There's always someone worse off than you are. It's motivation to keep on going," he said.
German said he comes to the Barn Door in part to make things easier for the new guys arriving from the battleground, still coming to grips with the terrible changes in their lives.
"I know what they are going through. I know how they feel, not knowing anything. I try to encourage them," German said, his eyes moving behind a mask of scars.
jmaccormack@express-news.net
Ellie
Web Posted: 08/26/2007 11:14 PM CDT
John MacCormack
Express-News
The walls of the History Room at the Barn Door Restaurant are covered with mementos of past American warfare, from Pearl Harbor to Desert Storm, and with tributes to Marine valor.
They're little more than musty curiosities to most guests at wedding receptions or other celebrations in the special events room. But for the past 18 months, a group with a very different perspective has gathered here each Monday night.
Veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq arrive on a white military bus from Brooke Army Medical Center, straggling in like the survivors of a lost patrol.
Some come in wheelchairs with small orange flags. Others use canes. Some are missing limbs or are badly burned.
And while a few are paunchy old-timers with grown-up children of their own, most of the wounded are hardly more than kids — at least according to their birth certificates.
To the regular patrons of the popular North Side steakhouse, the vets are a sobering reminder, seldom seen outside military hospitals, of the terrible cost paid by those sent to fight the nation's battles.
For the veterans now writing the latest chapter of America's military history with their once ordinary lives, there is nothing abstract about any of it. And everyone has a story.
"I got shot in east Baghdad. June 7. I'll never forget. I was on patrol and got shot in the leg," began Nekia Whatley, 30, from Montgomery, Ala. "When I came to, they asked me if I could feel my leg. I could feel my nerves. That's the only reason they didn't cut it off."
Missing 4 inches of bone in his left leg, the Army staff sergeant now wears a painful, heavy brace anchored with pins. He sometimes wonders if he'd be better off without it.
"Is it worth saving or worth cutting off? That's where I am right now. Sometimes I'm in so much pain I want to cut it off," he said of his leg.
But, Whatley quickly added, don't waste pity on him. Back at BAMC there are others who are worse off and will never see a steak dinner at the Barn Door.
"I sit and cry sometimes looking at the burn victims. How will they ever be normal again? What can they do with their lives?" Whatley said. "I really think America ought to go to BAMC and see the real injuries. Show how badly these soldiers are hurt. Don't hide the truth."
The often-poignant Monday night get-togethers are the work of Janis Roznowski, an American Airlines flight attendant who founded "Operation Comfort" to help wounded vets after they return home.
Roznowski started the support group several years ago after visiting injured veterans at BAMC. The free steak and chicken is just part of the program, a first step toward returning them to the mainstream, she said.
"The families are at the hospital all the time. I always encourage them to come to the Barn Door. They'll come and then they go back and tell their son about it," she said.
There's another part of it: older veterans who survived decades-old wounds.
"If they start describing it, the wounded soldier in ICU will start building a picture in his mind: Red Barn. Memorabilia. World War II guys. Korean War guys. Food. Steak," Roznowski said. "And hopefully he'll start looking forward to the time he can come."
The long view
"War! Oahu Bombed by Japanese Planes," screams the yellowed front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, dated Dec. 7, 1941, from its frame on the History Room wall.
"Nazis Surrender Unconditionally," reads the 3-inch headline of May 7, 1945, on a San Antonio Light extra edition that cost 5 cents.
One small photo on the wall shows David Straus heading off to fight the Japanese in 1943, a private looking as youthful as any of today's guests.
Straus, a combat Marine in World War II and Korea, is now 83 and the Barn Door's owner. He agreed to host the dinners, getting promises of financial support from other area businessmen.
The gatherings draw 50 to 70 people each week.
"I saw a whole lot of people badly injured when I was in the Marine infantry in two wars, and we didn't have things like this for them. I just thought it was a wonderful program to speed up their recovery," Straus said.
"I guess I pretty well relate to them. They talk freely with me. I've walked the walk."
Another Monday night fixture is Ronnie Reininger, an old Marine gunnery sergeant who was badly wounded in Korea in December 1950 at the Chosin Reservoir.
Reininger, 78, lost all his fingers to frostbite and most of both legs to mortar fire while fighting the Chinese in 35-degrees-below-zero weather. He unfailingly makes light of his terrible injuries.
"There are advantages to fighting in that weather. If you get both legs blown off, you don't bleed to death, because the blood freezes," he deadpanned on a recent Monday.
A small, balding man with a hearing aid and a singsong voice, Reininger usually gives an inspirational speech on Monday nights, tossing in corny jokes and ancient war stories.
On unsteady prosthetic legs, he also hands out practical tips to the wounded soldiers on dealing with the Department of Veterans Affairs, driving a car and even finding a wife, as he did 55 years ago.
"If you don't have a wife, go shopping. There's one out there for you," he said to amused laughter.
"Whatever you do for the rest of your life, don't sit on your bottom and let life go by. Join life," he said.
'I know how they feel'
For the Marines and soldiers and their families, the weekly visits to the Barn Door are an escape from mess hall food and hospital monotony, a chance to socialize with their own kind.
"It's a good meal. And you get to tell your story to the other soldiers," said Robert Engelbrecht, 24, from Magnolia.
The lanky Army corporal lost a leg and an eye and suffered a brain injury in an explosion while serving in Iraq.
"I don't regret anything. I went. I knew the risks," Engelbrecht said.
He now gets around in a wheelchair, but he has bigger plans.
Engelbrecht, who has only partial vision in his remaining eye, is scheming to get a driver's license upon his release from BAMC sometime next spring.
"The law in Texas says you can drive with one eye. But half an eye? It's a little fuzzy," he said.
Another regular, Merlin German, 21, of New York, was badly injured in a roadside explosion.
He says he feels lucky to be alive. Almost his entire body was burned, and he lost both hands in the fiery explosion more than two years ago.
"I got hit by a roadside IED (improvised explosive device). It was gasoline-fed. One guy was killed, and I was injured. It was 20 months before I could walk," he said in a wheezy voice.
German has been receiving treatment at BAMC since soon after he was injured. During visits to the Barn Door, his mother, Lourdes German, feeds him with a spoon, much as she did when he was a baby.
"I joined the Marines when I was 17. I wanted to do something that was respectable, to make a difference," he said.
Soon he will face yet another round of reconstructive surgery. Beyond that, the future is unclear.
"You can't complain. There's always someone worse off than you are. It's motivation to keep on going," he said.
German said he comes to the Barn Door in part to make things easier for the new guys arriving from the battleground, still coming to grips with the terrible changes in their lives.
"I know what they are going through. I know how they feel, not knowing anything. I try to encourage them," German said, his eyes moving behind a mask of scars.
jmaccormack@express-news.net
Ellie