A SOLDIER'S ADVOCATE - HIS WIFE

This posting is a continuation of yesterday's posting - "The Other Side of Veteran's Day." It is also a true story.

This past August I traveled from Eddington, Maine, to Bethesda, Maryland, for a writers' workshop. To get to Bethesda, I flew from Portland, Maine, to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.

Transportation from the airport to my hotel in Bethesda was easily arranged before I ever left home using the Internet. There is this wonderful system called The Blue Van (www.bluevan.com). An individual can reserve their one-way or round-trip transportation with door-to-door pick-up and delivery at a better rate than it would cost using a taxi. While there are personal chauffeur-driven cars available, there are also vans which transport several individuals that involve multiple stops along the way. (Each trip is one-way; a trip is not a pick-up and drop-off sort of affair which speeds up the process.) Van transports are less expensive than the chauffeur-driven cars.

Needless to say, I was a "Van" person.

There were about five or six people, including me, on the van as we left Dulles around noon. I chose a seat on the rear bench next to a young woman who was looking out the window.

She looked tired. I could understand that. My plane out of Portland had been a 6AM flight, which meant leaving the hotel at 4:15AM.

In the course of time I came to learn her name was Rosie. She looked to be in her thirties. Rosie was on her way to Walter Reed military Hospital to see her husband, Jose, for the first time since he had been returned home after being injured in Afghanistan. They had only been married six months.

Rosie worked as a civilian at the military base from which Jose had been deployed. Rosie said there was a policy (maybe the military's maybe the base's, I wasn't clear)that they were responsible for providing a voucher (a check) to pay for the spouse's travel within 48-72 hours of notification of the injured soldier's arrival at Walter Reed.

Rosie advised her military employer as soon as she received that notification because she would need to leave her job on base. No problem. And yet weeks passed with no voucher.

By the time I met Rosie, Jose had been at Walter Reed for several weeks. Both she and her military boss had inquired about the voucher but it had still not arrived. In frustration Rosie had taken personal funds to buy her plane ticket. Jose's mother had no ability to travel to Walter Reed.

Fortunately, there are housing facilities for family members available on or near the hospital grounds where Rosie was going to be able to stay. That was where the Blue Van was going to drop her off because she had to check in there first to get her clearance to Walter Reed before she could see her husband.

During the time Rosie was at home waiting for the voucher, she had been able to talk with Jose on the phone. He said he wasn't able to tell her very much about his injuries. She didn't know if that was because the doctors weren't telling Jose very much - or if Jose was trying to spare her. What she did know is that the lack of information only added to her anxiety.

What he was able to tell her was that his dressings were supposed to be changed twice a day. But, because of staffing shortages at Walter Reed, his dressings were only being changed once a day. And his wounds were weeping onto the bed linens. Unfortunately, his bed linens were only changed once a day as well. So he was lying in the seepage of his wounds.

Rosie was angry. I was angry for her as well.

As she said to me, "My husband is a career soldier. He wants to get well and go back. He can't say anything. But I can. I don't have a chain of command. I have my husband. If they don't have the staff to change his dressings, then I can learn and do it myself. If they can't take proper care of him, I will. I will be my husband's advocate. Because I will speak up, even if he can't."

I had no doubt she would.

But I had to wonder what happened. It was a couple of years ago that Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense fired the General who was in charge of Walter Reed. Mr. Gates ordered the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Hospital be corrected. Apparently they haven't been - for all of the good artificial limbs that are being developed for our military men and women.

There was one good thing Rosie had to look forward to. "At least we'll be celebrating our first wedding anniversary together," she said. True. It was only a few months away. Chances were it would be there at Walter Reed Hospital.

I have thought or Rosie and Jose several times since last August. I am thinking of them today. I am thinking of all the men and women at Walter Reed Hospital - and all the military hospitals and VA hospitals across this country and in places abroad. We still have work to do for our veterans beyond parades and flag waving.