A father answering his phone, with caller ID showing US Government-Honolulu, hears his son's voice,
"Dad, I've been hit. I've lost both my legs."
"Where are you? Where are you?" the father asks.
"I'm in Afghanistan," his son said. "I can't talk.
They're taking me to Germany. I can contact you in 24 hours."
Then the line went dead.
The father screamed his son's name, and started to cry.
I was sitting in a coffee shop last night, reading an article about this local Marine in Afghanistan, in the St. Pete Times, written by a staff writer named Drew Harwell. His writing had a way of bringing the horrors of war to people here at home in such a chilling way that you find tears welling in your eyes.
An unbelievable horror, so chilling when I read it. And thinking, just thinking the depth of my grief if that had been my son. And being so thankful and relieved that it wasn't. But still feeling an overwhelming sorrow, that our sons and daughters, our loved ones, so far from home, are fighting in this war now going on 10 years, and seems to be endless.
The father then called his wife to come home from work.
An hour later, two marines knocked on their door. The mother then collapsed, thinking they had come to tell her that her son was dead.
Instead the Marines had come to tell them that he would be flying out of Germany to Walter Reed hospital in Maryland.
As the parents were waiting to hear when they could see their son, they read the facebook page of a friend of their son's who was in his unit in Afghanistan:
"I GOT BACK TO THE TENT LAST NIGHT
I SAT IN FRONT OF UR RACK N I CRIED FOR ABOUT AN HOUR.
TO SEE U HURT LIKE THAT, MY OTHER HALF GONE."
The Marine's name is Lance Corporal Justin Gaertner, and he is only 21 years old. He not only lost his legs, but his arm was shredded by shrapnel.
He had been on a sweeping mission in Afghanistan to "detect and defuse improvised explosives rigged to blow," on Friday in an eight truck convoy, and he was the pointman. As they were out on patrol, suddenly the third truck in the convoy exploded and several marines including Gaertner, got out to assess the damage, and then a second bomb, which had been triggered remotely, blew.
Gaertner's legs, and those of another Marine from Camp Pendelton were blown to bits. A third marine was killed.
(note: no information on the Marine killed or the other Marine injured was disclosed).
Lance Corporal Gaertner is facing 6 months of surgeries, a long rehabilation, and being fitted with artifical legs.
He asked that his hospital visitors abide by 2 rules, no crying and no loud noises.
He will be learning how to walk with his artifical legs, he may well be dealing with nightmares for many years to come. He is such a young man, a boy really, who will be giving up all his hopes and dreams. A boy who will be trying to build a new life as best he can. He won't be going back to war.
And then I put the newspaper away and I cried, for all that is lost in wars, the minds, the limbs, the deaths, the destruction.
when a soldier makes it home......