Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(78)

I got to help in a few unique situations. A convoy of US troops was headed down the road and Iraqi kids ran out to greet them when suddenly all hell broke loose. An insurgent’s rocket hit the convoy and blew up. One of the boys, about thirteen, was tragically caught in the cross fire and severely wounded in one arm. The US troops gave him emergency medical attention on the spot, then rushed him to a base hospital. He lived, but his arm couldn’t be saved. Later, a soldier who’d met the boy connected him with a doctor in San Francisco who’d offered to arrange for the boy to get a prosthetic arm. Out of the blue, I received an email from this soldier, asking me if there was some way we could help get the boy to San Francisco.

This request really caused me to choke up. Immediately, I arranged to pay for plane tickets for the boy and his father to come to the States. I just didn’t want to wait for any red tape or anything. But getting the boy and his father out of Iraq proved trickier. I called a friend at the state department, Susan Phalen, who’d spent time in Iraq. She arranged for the boy and his father to drive from Iraq to Jordan first, where she personally met them and accompanied them from Jordan to San Francisco. The boy received his new prosthetic, and he and his father flew home. It was a tough story in many ways, but for me, it felt important to have this personal touch and engage with real people, not just numbers or theories.

Somebody I met thanked me for my work in support of the troops. He told me he had a friend serving at a military hospital in eastern Afghanistan, Major Catherine Crespo, a nurse. I reached out to her, asking if she needed any school supplies for the local children. She worked at the 349th Combat Support Hospital at Forward Operating Base Salerno and said she didn’t need any school supplies, but described how the medical staff saw many injuries from IEDs. These weapons can cause real devastation to the human body and leave behind dirty wounds that must be left open to heal. One tool of modern medicine that helps phenomenally with open wounds is a device called a wound VAC. The hospital used them so much they burned through the machines quickly, and it was slow going to get replacements from the Department of Defense. She asked if we could help.

I had no idea what a wound VAC looked like or how much it cost. I called a buddy, a surgeon, who put me in touch with the manufacturer, a company called KCI. The devices cost $25,000 each, certainly more than pencils and shoes. But the company CEO’s father was a marine, so when the CEO learned what we were doing, he promptly donated three wound VACs, sent them to our OIC warehouse, and we quickly shipped them to Afghanistan. Catherine wrote, “These wound VACs most assuredly saved hundreds of lives, maybe more. They continued to be used by the medical units that followed us after we left.”

Our focus, however, stayed mainly on school supplies and shoes. Throughout the years, we heard many positive stories from troops who were able to help children and parents. Troops would go into a village in the cold winter and see kids running around barefoot. They’d describe seeing children put on a new pair of shoes for the first time. The kids’ faces lit up with joy. Or the troops would just carry items along out on patrol and see a group of kids or mothers and donate shoes right on the spot. Troops described conversations with parents of Iraqi children who said what a big difference a simple gift of new school supplies made.

Seldom was I able to distribute supplies myself, but once in a while I was offered the rare and wonderful experience of being part of a distribution team. In 2009, on my second trip to Afghanistan, my band came along, as well as my industry pals Kristy Swanson, Kevin Farley (Chris Farley’s brother), Leeann Tweeden, and Mykelti Williamson. It had been three years since my first trip to Afghanistan with the USO. Then, I’d taken along my brother-in-law Jack, and after a stop in the United Arab Emirates we arrived in Afghanistan where we roughed it a bit, sleeping in makeshift barracks, plywood rooms with rickety cots and wooden bunks. A C-130 had taken us to Bagram Air Base, where I visited with hundreds of troops before setting off for several small forward operating bases (FOBs) via Blackhawk helicopters. There I shook more hands and took just as many pictures, it seemed. Now, after three years, I was back, only this time with both school supplies and my band. This was a morale-boosting concert trip for the troops, and we were set to play three shows: one at Bagram Air Base, one at Camp Leatherneck for the marines (our stage was two flatbed trucks backed up into each other), and one at Kandahar Air Base, where I’d serve turkey, gravy, and all the fixings to our troops on Thanksgiving Day.

We flew on American Airlines to Frankfurt, where we spent the night, then boarded a C-17 for the flight to Afghanistan. The plane was filled with pallets of ammunition and supplies, and we found room wherever we could fit. Upon landing at Bagram Air Base, I was met by Major General Mike Scaparrotti, and while the rest of the people on the trip stowed their stuff and rested up, Mike flew with me by Blackhawk helicopter to a small Afghan school near Forward Operating Base Garcia, near the Pakistan border.

OIC staffers had preshipped five hundred backpacks filled with school supplies to the small FOB. A soldier at the FOB had emailed me earlier, asking me if it might be possible to get them some school supplies. We already had the trip and the Thanksgiving dinner planned, so I thought it would be great to surprise the soldier by going out to the FOB in person to help hand out the supplies to the children. To say that this soldier was shocked to see me is an understatement.

We landed in the Blackhawk right at the Afghan school. Soldiers were already there with several trucks filled with supplies. Security was tight. A couple of hundred children were already lined up, and the atmosphere was charged with excitement. An interpreter explained what OIC was all about and who I was, then we went to work. It took about two hours to hand out all the backpacks. The children were amazing. Although some did not have shoes on their feet, and clearly all were very poor, they were wide-eyed and grateful and some of the most beautiful kids I’d ever seen. I took photos with them, gave high fives, and tried to take it all in. We didn’t have long at the school, so when the backpacks were all gone, we jumped back on the Blackhawk and flew back to FOB Garcia where I visited with some one hundred fifty troops stationed there. The entire area near the Pakistan border was considered dangerous, laced with Taliban insurgents.