thedrifter
04-19-08, 06:16 AM
A year had passed when Tim Jeffers finally caught up with his old platoon. He had spent the time rehabilitating and rebuilding his life. His friends were training to go back to Iraq.
OKUMA, OKINAWA, Japan —Out of Iraq …
“I just remember screaming and swearing a lot.”
That’s how Tim Jeffers recalls May 18, 2006 – the day an improvised explosive device claimed both his legs, one eye, nearly half his skull and his right ring finger.
Everything is dark for about a month after that – the frozen time when his world was eclipsed by coma – before he woke up at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.
“I just remember waking up with my dad’s ugly face looking over me,” Jeffers says in his usual jocular tone. Bethesda was the third or fourth stop on his trip from that roadside in Anbar. There was the first stop at the field hospital at Al Asad, where, a lieutenant from his company tells him, he “got a little mouthy.”
He probably spent some time at the largest American hospital in Iraq at Balad Air Base before he left the country four days after he was hit, but Jeffers can’t be sure.
He was flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany – the standard go-between for wounded service members from Iraq to the U.S. – where Cpl. Chris Jeffers, a motor transport operator stationed on Camp Kinser at the time, was sent to be with his brother and take him home. Chris was dispatched there, Tim says, by order of then Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee.
“General Hagee asked if there was anything he could do,” Tim said. “And my dad said, ‘Send Chris to be with him.’” After Tim awoke at Bethesda, he was there for about two weeks before he moved to the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the country’s premiere providers of the Polytrauma care required by people like Tim who have suffered multiple traumatic injuries.
He spent eight months in Palo Alto undergoing full-time rehabilitation. Every Monday through Friday, his days were packed. He underwent speech therapy and worked with a neuropsychologist to reacquire some of the cognitive skills he lost from his traumatic brain injury. He worked with occupational therapists to overcome the moderate paralysis he suffered in his right arm. He went through blind rehabilitation to adjust to the loss of depth perception that comes with having only one eye. And then there was the physical therapy and prosthetics training, which Tim did twice daily.
“I was the one in the worst condition at Palo Alto,” Tim said. “It was kind of depressing to see other patients coming in the door and then having to watch them go right back out a few weeks later. It sucked because I was there forever.”
But forever at Palo Alto came to end, and Tim was transferred to the Marines’ Wounded Warrior Battalion West at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego, one of the top prosthetics training facilities in southern California. Tim was happy to be with a Marine unit again. There were formations and field days and cammies – not that he necessarily missed those things. It was the Marines he missed, the people.
Tim was exempted from most of the regimentation and formalities at Balboa, which were aimed primarily at the Marines who would return to duty.
“It’s not the same as the fleet because the primary mission is rehab,” Tim said, describing life at Balboa. “But a lot of Marines there aren’t getting out; they’re going back to the fleet. The environment is intended to set everyone up for success.”
Tim was on his way to a medical retirement, and he assumed a quiet, comfortable role in his new unit.
“If you’re a (noncommissioned officer), you act like an NCO out there. I was just Cpl. Jeffers, the funny crippled corporal,” he quipped. While Tim was adjusting to life with his new unit at Balboa and preparing to leave active duty, his old unit was starting another deployment training cycle and preparing to leave for Iraq.
One Year Later
It was Iraq that fractured 2nd Platoon’s family, and it was Iraq that brought them back together.
Okinawa units deploying to Iraq have to travel to California or Arizona for desert training. That’s how Combat Logistics Battalion 4 came to be in the Mojave Desert almost one year from the day Jeffers was wounded. The unit deployed to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twenty-nine Palms, about a three-hour drive north from Balboa.
Tim’s 2nd Platoon brothers saw an opportunity to reunite with their friend. They piled in a van and made the trip to San Diego. It had been a yearlong fight for Tim – the wounds, the pain and suffering, the emotional turmoil, the struggle to retake control of his life. The Marines were nervous. What would Tim be like? How would he act? Would he still be Tim?
Cpl. Carl Drexler remembers waiting anxiously at the medical center to meet his friend. Tim saw Drexler first and called to him from a distance. For a moment, Drexler didn’t recognize the Marine he described as his “smoke break buddy” in Iraq.
“It was kind of hard to see him in that condition,” Drexler said. “It kind of took me back to the day it happened for a second. The last time I saw him, we were just smoking like it’s cool before a convoy.”
Drexler stood frozen as the other Marines flocked to Tim, exchanging handshakes and hugs. It was a moment before Drexler could see the friend he remembered.
“Once I saw he was the same old Jeffers, I was just glad he was still the great person I remembered,” Drexler said.
All the Marines had shared the same human hope in those anxious moments – that the way things were might still be within reach. As if anyone remains unchanged by a year’s passing. As if anyone is unchanged by the brutal lessons of combat.
“We were all remembering what he was like and thinking, ‘I hope he’s the same person,’” said Cpl. Jason O’Hearn. “I wanted to cry when I first saw him. I’d never seen anybody who’d been wounded like that before.”
But on the other side of the Marines’ anxiety and nervousness was a glowing Tim. The man who had been through hell and back had emerged with all the virtues and warmth of character that made his friends love him. Tim was still Tim.
“He’s still a wisecracker, the same joker as before,” O’Hearn said. “He’s still the same old Tim – my brother – just a little bit smaller.”
Without saying anything, Tim taught his friends a lesson that day – about looking forward, about being thankful for friends, for family, for life. And Tim felt, at the same time, the healing power of getting back some of that which was lost. The friends and memories, the handshakes and hugs, the smiles and laughter – those things had emerged unscathed from that violent flash in Anbar.
Those things were still untouchable.
OKUMA, OKINAWA, Japan —Out of Iraq …
“I just remember screaming and swearing a lot.”
That’s how Tim Jeffers recalls May 18, 2006 – the day an improvised explosive device claimed both his legs, one eye, nearly half his skull and his right ring finger.
Everything is dark for about a month after that – the frozen time when his world was eclipsed by coma – before he woke up at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland.
“I just remember waking up with my dad’s ugly face looking over me,” Jeffers says in his usual jocular tone. Bethesda was the third or fourth stop on his trip from that roadside in Anbar. There was the first stop at the field hospital at Al Asad, where, a lieutenant from his company tells him, he “got a little mouthy.”
He probably spent some time at the largest American hospital in Iraq at Balad Air Base before he left the country four days after he was hit, but Jeffers can’t be sure.
He was flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany – the standard go-between for wounded service members from Iraq to the U.S. – where Cpl. Chris Jeffers, a motor transport operator stationed on Camp Kinser at the time, was sent to be with his brother and take him home. Chris was dispatched there, Tim says, by order of then Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Michael W. Hagee.
“General Hagee asked if there was anything he could do,” Tim said. “And my dad said, ‘Send Chris to be with him.’” After Tim awoke at Bethesda, he was there for about two weeks before he moved to the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., one of the country’s premiere providers of the Polytrauma care required by people like Tim who have suffered multiple traumatic injuries.
He spent eight months in Palo Alto undergoing full-time rehabilitation. Every Monday through Friday, his days were packed. He underwent speech therapy and worked with a neuropsychologist to reacquire some of the cognitive skills he lost from his traumatic brain injury. He worked with occupational therapists to overcome the moderate paralysis he suffered in his right arm. He went through blind rehabilitation to adjust to the loss of depth perception that comes with having only one eye. And then there was the physical therapy and prosthetics training, which Tim did twice daily.
“I was the one in the worst condition at Palo Alto,” Tim said. “It was kind of depressing to see other patients coming in the door and then having to watch them go right back out a few weeks later. It sucked because I was there forever.”
But forever at Palo Alto came to end, and Tim was transferred to the Marines’ Wounded Warrior Battalion West at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego, one of the top prosthetics training facilities in southern California. Tim was happy to be with a Marine unit again. There were formations and field days and cammies – not that he necessarily missed those things. It was the Marines he missed, the people.
Tim was exempted from most of the regimentation and formalities at Balboa, which were aimed primarily at the Marines who would return to duty.
“It’s not the same as the fleet because the primary mission is rehab,” Tim said, describing life at Balboa. “But a lot of Marines there aren’t getting out; they’re going back to the fleet. The environment is intended to set everyone up for success.”
Tim was on his way to a medical retirement, and he assumed a quiet, comfortable role in his new unit.
“If you’re a (noncommissioned officer), you act like an NCO out there. I was just Cpl. Jeffers, the funny crippled corporal,” he quipped. While Tim was adjusting to life with his new unit at Balboa and preparing to leave active duty, his old unit was starting another deployment training cycle and preparing to leave for Iraq.
One Year Later
It was Iraq that fractured 2nd Platoon’s family, and it was Iraq that brought them back together.
Okinawa units deploying to Iraq have to travel to California or Arizona for desert training. That’s how Combat Logistics Battalion 4 came to be in the Mojave Desert almost one year from the day Jeffers was wounded. The unit deployed to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twenty-nine Palms, about a three-hour drive north from Balboa.
Tim’s 2nd Platoon brothers saw an opportunity to reunite with their friend. They piled in a van and made the trip to San Diego. It had been a yearlong fight for Tim – the wounds, the pain and suffering, the emotional turmoil, the struggle to retake control of his life. The Marines were nervous. What would Tim be like? How would he act? Would he still be Tim?
Cpl. Carl Drexler remembers waiting anxiously at the medical center to meet his friend. Tim saw Drexler first and called to him from a distance. For a moment, Drexler didn’t recognize the Marine he described as his “smoke break buddy” in Iraq.
“It was kind of hard to see him in that condition,” Drexler said. “It kind of took me back to the day it happened for a second. The last time I saw him, we were just smoking like it’s cool before a convoy.”
Drexler stood frozen as the other Marines flocked to Tim, exchanging handshakes and hugs. It was a moment before Drexler could see the friend he remembered.
“Once I saw he was the same old Jeffers, I was just glad he was still the great person I remembered,” Drexler said.
All the Marines had shared the same human hope in those anxious moments – that the way things were might still be within reach. As if anyone remains unchanged by a year’s passing. As if anyone is unchanged by the brutal lessons of combat.
“We were all remembering what he was like and thinking, ‘I hope he’s the same person,’” said Cpl. Jason O’Hearn. “I wanted to cry when I first saw him. I’d never seen anybody who’d been wounded like that before.”
But on the other side of the Marines’ anxiety and nervousness was a glowing Tim. The man who had been through hell and back had emerged with all the virtues and warmth of character that made his friends love him. Tim was still Tim.
“He’s still a wisecracker, the same joker as before,” O’Hearn said. “He’s still the same old Tim – my brother – just a little bit smaller.”
Without saying anything, Tim taught his friends a lesson that day – about looking forward, about being thankful for friends, for family, for life. And Tim felt, at the same time, the healing power of getting back some of that which was lost. The friends and memories, the handshakes and hugs, the smiles and laughter – those things had emerged unscathed from that violent flash in Anbar.
Those things were still untouchable.