A couple of Sunday’s ago the CBS news magazine Sixty Minutes featured a segment on wounded soldiers returning back to Iraq. The soldiers had left the battlefield on stretchers with missing limbs and wounded minds. That is not the way a soldier leaves battle, he or she needs to stand and walk away. Recognition of the need for our wounded heroes to return to the place where their lives were forever changed, their comrades were forever lost and their dreams forever darkened was not a military realization but an initiative of a private citizen. His name was Richard Kell and he called the soldier’s journey back to the battlefield “Operation Proper Exit”.
Richard Kell is a former advertising executive and former volunteer at the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the nation’s capital. He does not take the credit for the origin of “Operation Proper Exit” he says wounded soldiers felt the need and gave birth to the concept of the program. The idea was first rejected by officials and later a General at the Pentagon whose son had been injured in the war gave Kell the go ahead to begin the program for our soldiers.
The 60 Minutes segment evoked a range of emotions in me. I was stirred by the human toll of the sacrifice of our young men and women and angered by the way that our treated like a disposable commodity by our government. The emotional impact left in the footprints of the lives of thousands of boys and girls who go to war and grow up fast. Young soldiers that witness war events that maim and kill their comrades; horrors that; some adults will never see in a lifetime. Most of these young warriors witnessed these horrors often only weeks after they are old enough to drink and vote; hundreds die before they get the chance to do either.
At the date of the airing of the piece 68 soldiers had made the journey back to Iraq. Among them was Steven Cornford a Silver Star recipient who carried his wounded lieutenant on his back for more than a mile to an army medical unit so that he could be treated. Conford himself was wounded; his lieutenant (Phillip Neel) died from the bleed out of the artery in his leg. Neel was hit by enemy fire when he rescued Conford who was under attack by enemy fire. In death Neel was peaceful; he had died defending his America, in life Comford was tormented by Neel’s sacrifice in saving his life. He could not lay to rest the memories of that Easter Sunday 2007, the memories were a wound that rode with him on the gurney that day, they had followed him home; his physical wounds were healed by medicine and God’s grace but the memory wound did not go away. Steven Conford needed to return to expel the wound and make a proper exit.
Conford and the other young men that made the journey were reflective of the composition of today’s army. Many of them signed up to defend our country after the attacks on the twin towers, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. They gave limb, mind and lives to defend America that seems to forget them when they are no longer able to carry the weapon that seems to forget their families while they serve and that seems to forget them and their need to be embraced when they return home.
The mistreatment of our soldiers is not only reflective in the way we respect them when they are alive and/or wounded but also the way we respect their remains. Recent news reports revealed that body parts of dead soldiers were cremated and disposed of in mass graves. Those charged with preparing our heroes to be returned from the battlefield to their families had so little regard for one soldier that they sawed off his arms so that they could accommodate the size of his casket. A few years ago an investigative report revealed that the remains of dead soldiers were just lying around in a pile like garbage to be discarded and the names on the graves did not always match the body in the grave. How would you feel to such insensitivity to your loved ones, how would you feel it could not visit their final resting place?
We must hold our military men and women in high esteem; we owe them our freedom and our lives. We must individually respect them and as a country collectively honor them in life and death. We should remember their sacrifice not just only on Veterans and Memorial Day but on each and every day we are free. Thank you Mr. Kell for doing something our government seems unwilling to do, thank you for allowing our soldiers to stand tall, salute and make a proper exit.
Post Note
A follow-up visit with Steven Conrad showed a calmer, peaceful young man. He said the memory of that day would never go away but the high definition in which it had been playing in his waking moments and his dreams was a little less sharp and a lot less painful to the eyes and heart.