Charlene Feldbusch had just returned to her home on the outskirts of Blairsville after an afternoon out with a friend. She picked up the phone to check for messages, and noted there had been a call from Fort Benning, Ga. There was no message, but Charlene had caller ID. She called the number.
"Oh [expletive]! Caller ID," muttered the surprised voice at the other end. There was a pause, then a careful choosing of words. The commander of the rear detachment for 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment told Charlene that her son, Jeremy, had been badly wounded in Iraq.
"He's stable, but serious."
"Does that mean he's going to live, or he's going to die?" the distraught mother asked.
"He's stable but serious. That's all I can tell you," the officer said.
"After that, I walked out to the garage, handed my husband the phone...and then my girlfriend picked me up off the deck," Charlene Feldbusch recalled. She had passed out.
It was April 4, 2003. The day before, Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, 25, a mortar gunner, had been wounded when a howitzer shell exploded near his position on the Haditha Dam. His skull was filled with shell fragments.
Feldbusch and his fellow Rangers were performing a critical mission. The Haditha Dam on the Euphrates River in western Iraq is nearly two miles long. It holds back 2.2 trillion gallons of water. It had been rigged to blow up. If Saddam Hussein's men destroyed the dam, Baghdad and other cities down river would have been flooded. Thousands would have died, and the U.S. invasion would have been set back for months.
Rangers from Feldbusch's battalion had seized the dam and were holding it against Iraqi counterattacks. Feldbusch manned his mortar for 36 hours straight. According to the citation for his Bronze Star, Feldbusch had killed 45 of Saddam's troops and had destroyed an anti-aircraft missile battery before the artillery shell took him out.
Feldbusch was evacuated to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where doctors were able to save his life, but not his sight. He lost his right eye and the vision in his left. He was in a coma for two months.
"The base of my cranium is titanium mesh, plates and screws," Feldbusch said.
 |
|
|
|
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jeremy Feldbusch holds his dog "Misty" in his room in Torrance last week. His uniform, decked with medals and awards, hangs in the background. |
|
|
"We actually got to San Antonio a few hours before he did," recalled his father, Brace Feldbusch. After he'd used up all his vacation, his employer -- the Wilbert Vault mortuary in Blairsville -- gave him all the extra time he needed to be with his son.
The strong support Feldbusch has received from his family, and his own intestinal fortitude, is the main reason he is making a strong recovery from such a devastating injury, said Ron Shroyer, a counselor for the Veterans Administration who has been working with Feldbusch since he got out of the hospital.
Modern medicine is saving the lives of young soldiers who would have died of their wounds in earlier wars, but in addition to their wounded bodies, it is necessary to treat their wounded psyches, said Shroyer, a retired Navy master chief petty officer.
Adjustment to the loss of sight or a limb or disfigurement is difficult enough, he said, and is compounded by post-traumatic stress.
"Friendship and family support is the key to the rehabilitation process," Shroyer said. "If you don't have a loving family to go back to, the rehabilitation process is more difficult."
Reclaiming their lives
Family support for Jeremy Feldbusch began in the Spring of 2001, as he was completing his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh.
"He was getting his degree in biology. His grades were good. I was hoping he'd go on to graduate school, maybe become a doctor," his mother recalled.
But when Feldbusch told them he wanted to pursue a childhood dream of becoming an Army Ranger, his parents readily accepted his decision.
Shroyer, for his part, claims to hold "the best job in the world," because he gets to work with impressive young people like Feldbusch and William D. Reckner, 26, of Uniontown.
Lance Cpl. Reckner, a Marine fire team leader, was shot in the knee in Baghdad on Aug. 10, 2003. He was treated at an aid station, but refused evacuation. He wanted to remain with his unit, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, until it rotated out of Iraq.
"I had to hobble around, but I could still shoot," Reckner said. "I didn't want to leave my buddies."
Reckner has his own family support network -- wife Jennifer, 24, and little girls aged 5, 3, 2 and 1.
Because he was only 60 percent disabled, Reckner is further along in the rehabilitation process than Feldbusch, Shroyer said. Reckner will begin training soon as an auto mechanic at Wyotech in Blairsville.
The mental adjustments have been tougher for her husband to make than the physical ones, Jennifer Reckner said.
"Whenever there was something on the news about Iraq or the Marines, he'd say he should be back over there," she said. "I told him sometimes he was moodier than a pregnant woman."
William Reckner is settling in to civilian life now, his wife said. "But Nov. 10 was the Marine Corps birthday, and he was on the phone all day with his Marine buddies."
It will be longer before Feldbusch, who is classified by the VA as 100 percent disabled with special circumstances, will be cleared to live on his own, Shroyer said.
But Feldbusch already is reclaiming his life, citing one blinded vet who became an auto mechanic and another who, all by himself, built an addition on his house.
"This isn't going to stop me from doing what I want to do," he said. "I'm going to go back to school, maybe get a masters degree. Something in the sciences, something where the mind is more important than seeing."
Shroyer said he hoped Feldbusch would join him as a counselor.
"Jeremy would make an outstanding counseling psychologist," Shroyer said. "He even motivates me when I come to see him. He would be ideal for this kind of thing."
Feldbusch is getting practice as a counselor with his work for the "Wounded Warrior" program, which provides health and comfort items, encouragement and sometimes financial assistance to badly wounded veterans.
Brace and Charlene Feldbusch have taken their son to visit vets at Brooke Medical Center, and at the military hospitals in Washington, D.C.
Feldbusch was recruited for the Wounded Warrior program when its founder, former Marine John Melia, asked him if there was anything the organization could do for him.
Jeremy said he didn't need help. He could make it on his own.
"I knew then that I had to have this guy working with me," said Melia, who was severely injured in a helicopter crash in 1992. "He's a special person. He wants to do this type of work until the last [soldier] comes home."
Feldbusch also does motivational speaking. He gave a Veterans Day address on Thursday to students at Hemphill High School.
"Every time you see a soldier, pat them on the back and thank them for everything they did," Feldbusch advised the students.
Because of what happened to their son, Veterans Day now has special meaning for Brace and Charlene Feldbusch.
"The prettiest colors out here are red, white and blue," Brace said. "Too often people forget what our young people are going through to protect us."
As for Jeremy, he has "no regrets whatsoever. If I had one good eye left, I'd be banging on the Army's door asking them to let me back in."
Reckner feels the same way.
"I'm proud of what I did," he said. "I was sent to protect freedom. That's what I wanted to do."
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Jack Kelly can be reached a jkelly@post-gazette.com or 412 263-1476.)
No comments:
Post a Comment