August 21, 2006

The comfort of home
Marines heal both body and soul at new Wounded Warrior Center

By Gidget Fuentes
Staff writer


CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — With some bags still packed, Cpl. Jackson Luna surveyed his new home: A spacious, carpeted room in a renovated building just for combat-wounded Marines and sailors.

Just one day earlier, Luna, shot June 10 by a sniper in Iraq, returned to Camp Pendleton after a month convalescing with his family in New York City.

But rather than returning to his battalion’s barracks in San Mateo, Calif., home to 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, he’ll be one of the first “plank owners” of the Wounded Warrior Center, a renovated single-story building that’s eyed as a transitional home for as many as 26 Marines and sailors recovering from combat injuries.


Designed by I Marine Expeditionary Force’s Injury Support Unit, the center is the West Coast’s take on the Wounded Warrior Barracks established last year at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

The center’s location near Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital puts residents closer to their doctors, counselors and therapy or rehabilitation programs. Vans from the center, which has served as an enlisted club and a drug abuse rehab center, will take them to other places, such as Naval Medical Center San Diego.

All that will help Luna, 23, a combat engineer whose young career was interrupted in Habbaniyah when an insurgent sniper’s bullet ripped into his lower back. The round just missed the thick ceramic plate of his body armor, cutting a swath through his torso and intestines before it exited an inch below his navel.

After three weeks at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and recuperating in New York, he wasn’t sure where he’d stay. He knew nothing about the center.

His new home, Room 1002, has more space than the barracks he’d shared in San Mateo. A handmade quilt covered his full-size bed in a room with fresh blue-and-gray carpet, a silver flat-screen TV on a wooden dresser and a large armoire next to the private bath with shower.

Luna plans to decorate the bare walls, painted in the neutral beige that blankets the center, with posters and personal pictures “to make it like my room back home.”

“I’m going to feel pretty much like home,” he said.

But he’s not planning on a permanent stay. Another surgery looms. He’s unsure how long healing will take, but “I’m hoping for six weeks,” he said, “and then I’ll be glad to go back to my unit.”

Until then, Luna said, he hopes to talk with other Marines who, like him, were thrown a curveball and now face the unexpected.

It “definitely helps” living with other wounded warriors, he said. “We can talk about all the same stuff.”

A supporting network

And that’s just the kind of support network — tapping into the brotherhood of the Corps — that officials and volunteer organizers believe will better help wounded warriors recover.

“The Marine Corps is finding that wounded guys are still a great value and can still contribute,” said Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman Scott Mason, the Injury Support Unit’s senior enlisted leader. “By bringing them here, it will take weight off the command to do the day-to-day support of their wounded warriors. We try to take some of the pressure off of them.”

Lt. Gen. John Sattler, I MEF’s commander, said the center will help the wounded heal and rehabilitate while still being a part of the Corps.

“They’re not looking for luck. All they are looking for is the opportunity. They’ll provide the hard work, and they’ll be back on their feet,” Sattler said Aug. 10 at the center’s groundbreaking. “Their number one goal is to get back — not just back in uniform, but to get back forward and contribute one more time.”

The center, he said, “says we care. We give a damn about you and your family.”

For many, time here is just the start of a long healing process.

“Some of these Marines, they’re going to be recovering for the rest of their lives,” said Col. James Seaton, Camp Pendleton’s commander. “I hope they leave here with their heads up high ... and more able to make that transition.”

Wounded single Marines and sailors might return to their unit’s barracks, although some are medically separated or leave when their enlistment ends. These troops often feel like an outsider when their unit returns and they can’t do the same things.

The center “removes them from an environment where there might be a stigma, maybe their own self-esteem is lowered because they’re not doing what everybody else is doing,” said Gunnery Sgt. Fabian Casillas, a Marine4Life injured support program liaison in San Diego. “Everybody is doing the same thing — rehab — so they’re more motivated to do that, and they don’t have to constantly have reminders of what they’re not capable of doing.”

Often, “they get out there and they feel like they’re forgotten,” said Command Master Chief Wendy Fisher, the naval hospital’s top sailor. Bringing them together “serves their minds, bodies and soul. It brings them closer to home, closer to their parent command.”

“As a group, they all have a common denominator: They’ve all been in combat,” Fisher said.

Several corpsmen recently wounded in Iraq will soon land at the center. “This can speed up their time here and help in their healing,” Fisher added.

A softer landing

Lance Cpl. Joshua Rynders’ new home means a peaceful night’s sleep and rest needed to heal.

On April 13, a mortar exploded 10 feet from Rynders during a mission near Kharma. Shrapnel tore into his thighs, decimating muscle and sensory nerves but, miraculously, missing bones and his femoral artery. The explosion knocked him unconscious, but he remembers almost everything before it. He’s since endured nine surgeries, including six at Bethesda, but 30 pieces of shrapnel remain in his wrists, legs and thighs.

After 45 days’ rest with his family in McHenry, Ill., Rynders, assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, returned June 20. Since 1/1 was in Iraq, he shared a second-deck room of the regimental barracks at Camp Horno with another wounded Marine.

It wasn’t the best situation for a 20-year-old who needs a cane to walk. He had physical therapy sessions and medical checkups but also trash duty and other jobs around the camp. It’s been hard since he left his family but, with about 18 months left on a four-year enlistment, he’s unsure if he’ll be medically separated or redeployed.

Rynders thinks of friends killed in the war and his wounded buddies while he awaits his battalion’s return. “It’s just hard going from being a leader of some of them to being, ‘Hey, I’m wounded and I can’t do anything,’” he said.

But he will live and rest at the Wounded Warrior Center, where a soft bed and cozy comforter let him sleep away from the loud booms of artillery and mortar training near Horno. He knows living with others like him — those in similar situations with similar uncertainty, questions and doubt — will help him heal.

“There’s a big difference between being wounded and not being wounded. There’s just a world of difference,” he said. “You can just solely focus on getting yourself better and getting the guy next to you better.”

A leader like them

They won’t have to look far for support. The Marine in charge of them has been in their shoes.

Gunnery Sgt. Mel Greer has endured 10 surgeries and taken countless medications since he took two AK47 rounds in his upper thigh while operating in Ramadi on Oct. 10, 2004. It was the start of a long recovery for the Weapons Company platoon sergeant with 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, who was reassigned to the academic management section at the School of Infantry-West here.

This month, he was tapped by Mason, the senior chief corpsman, to be the staff noncommissioned officer-in-charge of the center, where he can continue to be a Marine and lead Marines.

“The barracks itself has always been a missing entity we’ve needed to bring these guys back together and put them in that brotherhood that they’re used to,” Greer said.

It didn’t take long for wounded guys visiting the center to gather and talk.

“Even that little bit of bonding itself took two pounds of weight off their shoulders, and that is the first incident of the healing process,” Greer said. “They are talking openly ... about what they’ve experienced.”

Ellie