Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Record an article published in the Washington Post of April 18, 2006 ``Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality'' and to offer my heartfelt gratitude and good wishes on Mother's Day to the…
Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Record an article published in the Washington Post of April 18, 2006 ``Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality'' and to offer my heartfelt gratitude and good wishes on Mother's Day to the women serving in the United States Armed Forces who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and come home with life-changing physical or mental injuries. Some of these women might not be mothers themselves yet; some may
never enjoy the precious gift of motherhood because of their injuries, but they all have mothers. I send the mothers of injured female troops a wish for the speedy recovery of your child and for a healing of your heart.
For the mothers of women who have died in combat I offer my humble apology and heartfelt sorrow. Your grief as a mother is more than I can ever understand but I grieve with you and for this Nation. The loss of your child, a brave woman and a blessing you delivered to this country is a loss to us all.
I wished to enter the particular article I cite above about women amputees because it is not widely enough known that the Iraq war is the first to make amputees of women in combat. The story in the Washington Post is subtitled ``Women After War: The amputees.''
The Post features the story of Dawn Halfaker, a 26-year-old retired Army Captain, whose right arm and shoulder were ravaged by a rocket propelled grenade that exploded in her Humvee in 2004. According to the Post, she was one of the newest soldiers ``To start down a path almost unknown in the United States: woman as combat amputee.''
Retired Captain Halfaker underwent multiple surgeries, learned to eat on her own and write with her left hand. ``She was part of a new generation of women who have lost pieces of themselves in war, experiencing the same physical trauma and psychological anguish as their male counterparts.''
But there is a difference from male amputees for these women who have lost limbs in combat. They do not know how society will view them as society has never experienced female amputees. They do not know how they will view themselves. Body image is an important part of every female child, teenager and woman in this country, more so and differently than it is for men. Society knows women will starve themselves to be ``thin'' because a thin body is important. They undergo implants, botox injections, and plastic surgery to make sure they look like society's favorite model or celebrity. Girls in their teens are susceptible to life threatening bulimia and anorexia for fear of ``getting fat.''
On April 18, 2006, when the Washington Post published the story about women amputees, the numbers were ``small.'' In 3 years of war there were only 11 female amputees. On that same date there were 350 male amputees.
Dawn Halfaker was on night patrol in Baqubah, Iraq on June 19, 2004, when her vehicle was hit. Another soldier's arm was sheared off in the same accident and went flying past her head. As the medics worked to stabilize her, she warned them not to cut off her arm. She had been a strong athlete, a basketball standout at West Point, a starting guard through 4 years of college. When she was at Walter Reed, she did not want to know what she looked like. She asked her mother to cover the mirror in her room with a towel.
One of the more shocking aspects reported by this article in the Washington Post is the following information from historian Judy Bellafaire of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, which researches such issues. Ms. Bellafaire is quoted as saying: ``We're unaware of any female amputees from previous wars.'' More shocking still is the report from the Post that follows: ``Surprising many political observers, the fact of female casualties has produced little public reaction. Before Iraq, many assumed that the sight of women in body bags or with missing limbs would provoke a wave of public revulsion.'' Yet the Post quotes Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist: According to Moskos, ``The country has not been concerned about female casualties.'' Moskos goes on to say, politically the issues of female casualties ``are a no-win political issue. Conservatives fear it will undermine support for the war if they speak out about wounded women, and liberals worry they will jeopardize support for women serving in combat roles by raising the subject.''
In a section of the article entitled Motherhood Redefined, the Post article tells the story of Juanita Wilson, a mother of a 6-year-old girl. Ms. Wilson returned from Iraq with her left arm in bandages and her hand gone. At first she did not want to see her daughter but would only talk to her by telephone. It was 4 weeks before Ms. Wilson would allow her husband and daughter to visit her. For this visit, she insisted the nurse help her with makeup and stow her IV in a backpack for an outing to Chuck E. Cheese. When she finally was home, she was disturbed to learn she could not make her daughter a sandwich.
My Mother's Day wish for our female troops is that you come home soon, safe and to the life you dreamed of and if you are changed, you find the political will of your country has made your return as comfortable and satisfying as possible. You deserve no less.
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2006]
Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality
(By Donna St. George)
Her body had been maimed by war. Dawn Halfaker lay
unconscious at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, her parents
at her bedside and her future suddenly unsure. A rocket-
propelled grenade had exploded in her Humvee, ravaging her
arm and shoulder.
In June 2004, she became the newest soldier to start down a
path almost unknown in the United States: woman as combat
amputee.
It was a distinction she did not dwell on during days of
intense pain and repeated surgeries or even as she struggled
to eat on her own, write left-handed and use an artificial
limb. But scattered among her experiences were moments when
she was aware that few women before her had rethought their
lives, their bodies, their choices, in this particular way.
She was part of a new generation of women who have lost
pieces of themselves in war, experiencing the same physical
trauma and psychological anguish as their male counterparts.
But for female combat amputees has come something else: a
quiet sense of wonder about how the public views them and how
they will reconcile themselves.
Their numbers are small, 11 in 3 years of war, compared
with more than 350 men. They are not quite a band of sisters,
but more a chain of women linked by history and experience
and fate--one extending herself to another who then might
offer something for the next.
They have discovered, at various points of their recovery,
that gender has made a difference--``not better or worse,''
as Halfaker put it, ``just different.''
For Halfaker, an athlete with a strong sense of her
physical self, the world was transformed June 19, 2004, on a
night patrol through Baqubah, Iraq. Out of nowhere had come
the rocket-propelled grenade, exploding behind her head.
Another soldier's arm was sheared off. Blood was
everywhere.
``Get us out of the kill zone!'' she yelled to the Humvee
driver. She was a 24-year-old first lieutenant, a platoon
leader who two months earlier had led her unit in repulsing a
six-hour attack on a police station in Diyala province. As
medics worked to stabilize her, she warned: ``You bastards
better not cut my arm off.''
In the hospital, there had been no other way to save her
life.
At first, in the early days, she tried to ignore the burns
on her face, her wounded right shoulder, the fact of her
missing arm. She had been a basketball standout at West
Point, a starting guard through four years of college. She
was fit, young, energetic.
Suddenly, she was a disabled veteran of war.
``I didn't want to know what I looked like,'' she recalled
recently. She asked her mother to get a towel and cover the
mirror in her hospital room.
new terrain, new perils
The Iraq war is the first in which so many women have had
so much exposure to combat--working in a wide array of jobs,
with long deployments, in a place where hostile fire has no
bounds. In all, more than 370 women have been wounded in
action and 34 have been killed by hostile fire.
The war has created what experts believe is the nation's
first group of female combat amputees. ``We're unaware of any
female amputees from previous wars,'' said historian Judy
Bellafaire of the Women in Military Service for America
Memorial Foundation, which researches such issues.
Surprising many political observers, the fact of female
casualties has produced little public reaction. Before Iraq,
many assumed that the sight of women in body bags or with
missing limbs would provoke a wave of public revulsion.
``On the whole, the country has not been concerned about
female casualties,'' said Charles Moskos of Northwestern
University, a leading military sociologist. Politically,
Moskos said, it is a no-win issue. Conservatives fear they
will undermine support for the war if they speak out about
wounded women, and liberals worry they will jeopardize
support for women serving in combat roles by raising the
subject, he said.
In the hospital, female combat amputees face all the
challenges men do--with a few possible differences. Women,
for example, seem to care more about appearance and be more
expressive about their experiences, hospital staff members
said. Among the women, there also was ``a unique
understanding or bond,'' said Capt. Katie Yancosek, an
occupational therapist at Walter Reed.
The advent of female combat amputees has left an enduring
impression on many hospital staff members. ``We have learned
not to underestimate or be overly skeptical about how these
women will do,'' said Amanda Magee, a physician's assistant
in the amputee care program. ``Sometimes they arrive in
really bad shape, and people are really worried. . . . But
we've learned they can move
on from a devastating injury as well as any man.''
motherhood redefined
Two months after Dawn Halfaker was wounded, Juanita Wilson
arrived on a stretcher at Walter Reed, her left arm in
bandages, her hand gone. It was August 25, 2004, just days
after a roadside bomb went off under Wilson's Humvee. She
came to the hospital as the Iraq war's fourth female combat
amputee--the first who was a mother.
From the beginning, Wilson decided she did not want her
only child to see her so wounded. She talked to the 6-year-
old by phone. ``Mommy's okay,'' she assured the girl.
``What are you doing at school now?''
It was only after four weeks that Wilson allowed her
husband and child to travel from Hawaii, where the family had
been stationed, for a visit. By then, Wilson was more mobile.
She asked a nurse put makeup on her face, stowed her IV
medications into a backpack she could wear and planned an
outing to Chuck E. Cheese's.
``Mommy, I'm sorry you got hurt,'' her daughter, Kenyah,
said when she arrived, hugging her. And then: ``Mommy, I
thought you died.''
The sort of mother who mailed her daughter penmanship
exercises and math problems from the war zone, Wilson wanted
Kenyah to stay focused on school and the ordinary concerns of
being 6. ``I wanted it to be like I was going to be okay when
she saw me,'' said Wilson, 32.
Changes revealed themselves one at a time.
Wilson remembered that her daughter eyed a plate of
croissants in the hotel-like room where the family stayed at
Walter Reed that first time they were together again. The
child asked her mother for a sandwich.
``I realized, `Oh, I can't even make a sandwich,' '' she
said. ``It was a hurting feeling, your kid asking you to make
her a sandwich and you're saying, `You'll have to make your
own sandwich' to a 6-year-old.''
In November 2004, she heard that a female pilot had just
been shot down in her Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. Within
days, Tammy Duckworth arrived at the hospital missing both
legs, her right arm in jeopardy. She lay in a coma, her
husband and parents at her bedside. ``You care about
everybody, but somehow amputees connect to amputees,'' Wilson
said, especially if they are women. ``It was a big deal to
me,'' she said.
Wilson headed to the pilot's room to sit with her family.
She found herself returning to Duckworth's bedside again and
again--arranging her get-well cards, decorating her room,
kissing the top of her head. One day, when Duckworth, now 37,
was conscious, Wilson rolled up her sleeve to reveal her own
amputated arm.
In a soft voice, Wilson said, she reassured her that
another soldier was with her now. Wilson told her she could
not imagine exactly how she felt but that she cared deeply.
She could not hold the pilot's hand because Duckworth was
too injured.
Instead, Wilson stroked her hair.
the sky is the limit
By mid-2005, Juanita Wilson was back to the rhythms of
daily life with her husband and daughter. The couple bought a
house in the suburbs of Baltimore. She took a new job with
the Army, is a staff sergeant and is up for a promotion.
At 6:30 one winter morning, Wilson was cooking Cream of
Wheat on her stovetop--taking great care to pour with her
prosthetic and stir with her other arm. In her life as a
woman, a mother and a wife, there are limits she once didn't
face and could not even imagine.
``Kenyah,'' Wilson called.
When the child came down the stairs in bright pink pajamas,
she saw her mother's trouble: Wilson was in uniform, almost
ready for work, but she needed help with her hair.
Wilson sat on a chair as Kenyah brushed gently, and then
brought her mother's hair up in a bun. She is ``a happy
helper,'' Wilson said.
The girl, now 7, tells all her friends about ``handie,'' as
she has nicknamed Wilson's artificial limb. ``My daughter is
definitely not bashful about telling anybody,'' Wilson said.
``She tells other kids at school. Kids don't judge you. They
think it's the coolest thing that I have a robotic arm.''
But Wilson continues to shield her daughter from the
discomfort and anguish of her injury. ``I didn't want to take
her childhood away. That's my focus--that she is happy and
enjoying life and not thinking about me. She'll ask me
questions, and I'll say, `Oh that's not for children to worry
about' ''
On that winter morning, Wilson had already tied her combat
boots, her right hand doing most of the work and her
prosthetic holding the loop before it is tied. ``I want it to
be known that just because you're a female injured in combat,
you don't have to give up your career and you don't have to
look at yourself as disabled,'' she said.
She added: ``I haven't met any female soldier yet who feels
she shouldn't have been there.''
How the world sees war-wounded women like her, she said, is
a little harder to pinpoint.
``When you're in Walter Reed, you're in a bubble. I could
walk around with my arm off. It's acceptable. Everyone there
knows. . . . But when you walk out that gate, it's a whole
different world. No one knows what I've been through, no one
probably cares, and to avoid all of that, I never come
outside without my [prosthetic] arm. Never.''
Wilson added, ``I have noticed that when you're a female
walking around as an amputee, everybody's mouth drops.''
Lately, she has set new career goals, aiming high, perhaps
even for the Army's top enlisted job. She listened with glee
to the news that Tammy Duckworth--at whose bedside she had
prayed--had decided to run for Congress in Illinois.
Soon after she learned about her friend's new political
life, she called Duckworth, joked that she would serve as her
assistant in Congress, and then reflected: ``It definitely
says the sky is the limit.''
scars farther from the surface
Long out of Walter Reed, Dawn Halfaker is also deeply into
a life remade. It has been 17 months since she was wounded,
and her favorite yoga tape is playing on a small VCR in an
apartment in Adams Morgan. Halfaker barely seems to notice
her image, which once was difficult to bear and is now
reflected back at her from a large mirror: red hair and trim,
athletic build, one arm extended perfectly above her head.
In place of her missing limb is a T-shirt sleeve, empty,
hanging. Following along with the yoga tape, Halfaker
visualizes that she still has a right arm; it helps her
balance.
She retired from the Army as a captain--a tough choice only
four years out of West Point, but one she made as she tried
to imagine fitting back into military culture. Without her
arm, she could no longer do push-ups, tie her combat boots,
tuck her hair neatly under a beret.
She still has friends in Iraq, although one was killed in
December. But the Bronze Star that she was awarded last year
for her role at the Diyala police station is tucked away in a
box. That day, she was in charge of 32 soldiers during the
sustained firefight, taking a position on the roof with a
grenade launcher, then quelling a jail riot.
Lately, she works at an office in Arlington, mostly as a
consultant to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
She has applied to graduate school in security studies,
bought a condo in Adams Morgan and co-wrote a book proposal
about postwar recovery.
To get to this new place, Halfaker has made all sorts of
adjustments. She types on a computer one-handed. Drive a car
with a push-button ignition. Uses her knees to hold steady a
peanut butter jar she wants to open. To write a note or a
letter, she learned to use her left hand, practicing nightly
at Walter Reed as she penned her thoughts in a journal.
``You don't think about how many times you have a lot of
things in your hands, like for me just carrying my coffee
from cafe downstairs up to my office on the seventh floor is
a total battle every day,'' she said. She has to hold the
coffee cup, scan her identification badge, open doors, press
elevator buttons. Sometimes she spills. Sometimes the coffee
burns her.
In her apartment, Halfaker bends and stretches into yoga
poses, her artificial arm lying beside the mirror. More
functional prosthetics did little good for her type of
injury, she found. So she persuaded prosthetic artists at
Walter Reed to make this one--lightweight and natural-
looking, easier on her body, allowing her to blend in with
the outside world.
Halfaker goes without a prosthetic when she is exercising,
jogging through the streets of Washington or snowboarding in
Colorado or lobbing tennis balls around a court.
``I never really wanted to hide the fact that I was an
amputee,'' she said, ``but I never wanted it to be the
central focus of my life.'' For some men, she said, it seems
a badge of honor that they do not mind showing. ``For a
woman, at least for me, it's not at all. . . . The fact that
I only have one arm, I'm okay with that, but I want to be
able to walk around and look like everyone else and not
attract attention to myself. ``
Last year, a guy she met on the Metro asked her out, saying
that he thought she was pretty. She agreed to meet him for
lunch but felt nervous about mentioning her missing limb. It
turned out that he was no less interested, she said. In the
fall, she started dating an Army anesthesiologist, to whom
she has become close. He is deployed in Iraq.
As a woman in her twenties, ``I want to look as good as I
can look,'' she acknowledged. ``I think that's very much a
female perspective, based on the roles that society has put
men and women in.''
Even more, she said, ``I don't want to be known for being
one-armed. I want to be known for whatever it is I do in my
life.''