Submitted by John Francis Lee (not registered) on September 10, 2006 - 4:43am.
A Father Recounting A Fallen Marine’s Last Days
September 5, 2006 By JOHN FENTON, OPINION, The RECORD [New Jersey]
On April 26, Matthew, 24, was the gunner on a Humvee protecting a Marine convoy on the outskirts of Fallujah. A suicide car bomber attempted to ram his Humvee, and he got off a few shots at the vehicle. From what I have been told it is common practice for these bombers to detonate their bomb if they come under fire. Matthew was the only Marine injured in the attack. Later that same day I received a phone call telling me that Matt was seriously wounded and that it was a head injury.
Diane and I flew to Washington the next day and were met by a uniformed Marine and driven to Bethesda.
What awaited us there is still shocking to me now. We met with two doctors who laid everything out for us. Matthew’s injury was a devastating one. Shrapnel had entered his head just above his left eye and traveled diagonally through his brain and exited the right rear.
Surgeons in Baghdad had removed two plates from his skull to help relieve the pressure from the swelling of his brain. The frontal lobe was destroyed, so they had removed it. It was explained that the frontal lobe is the center of personality and the place where someone is aware of themselves. The Matthew that we knew and loved was gone and would never come back.
As we struggled with that staggering news there was more to come. The shrapnel had done severe damage to both sides of Matt’s brain because of the angle that it traveled through. The brain can figure a way to control functions when one side is damaged, like in a stroke. But this was devastating news.
His head was completely swollen, like some cartoon character. There were maybe hundreds of metal staples in his head. There were of course tubes coming and going everywhere. There were drains running from the site of the surgery. And there was the ventilator.
For days we made that walk down that long hallway. It took some time but I finally was able to look at some of the other Marines on the ward with Matthew. I wish to this moment that I hadn’t. Kids with horrible injuries.
One had been in the ward for 11 months, after seven different brain surgeries. His wife refused to let him go. She was praying for a miracle. He had parts of his skull removed also, but all the swelling was gone now and his head had sunken in where they had been removed. He did not move at all.
Across the ward another Marine was in his third month, and his head was all sunken in. This is what lay ahead for Matthew also.
On May 3, the Marine Corps commandant presented Matthew with his Purple Heart. On May 4, I noticed that the swelling of Matthew’s head was going down. By the end of the day the indentations where pieces of his skull were missing were becoming noticeable. The next morning I was dreading what he might be looking like. And, yes, there was his head becoming very odd shaped.
Sometime around noon on May 5, Matthew was moved from the ward to a private room. Behind some curtains they removed the ventilator and most of the tubes. He was kept on the morphine, and we were assured he would not feel any pain. Now he was breathing all on his own. Diane got into the hospital bed with her son, and I held his hand and we all waited and watched for Matthew to pass.
But he would not go easily.
After three hours of labored breathing, I asked the nurse if there was anything that she could do. No. I asked God to take him now. No. His mother told him to go. I asked him to go. Go to some peace. A half-hour later, he finally took his last breath.
This is the real story of the war in Iraq. We all know the numbers, and we all know the reasons that are claimed that we have to be there. But this is the reality: young, brave, patriotic men losing their lives for a cause that keeps shifting.
Every politician who supports the war should go to Bethesda or Walter Reed and see just what their support is costing in human life and suffering.
And to everyone who opposes the war, don’t just sit back any longer.
She is a disgrace to the democratic party everywhere and she will not get my vote this 2008.