March 29, 2024
Archive

On the healing waters Three wounded veterans experience the restorative power of nature in the Moosehead region

If the dangling, twitching lobster had mind enough to see it, it would have witnessed a personal bond quickly forged between the newly met Georgine Butman and James Stuck that it helped create.

Hanging upside down in Butman’s hand, a boiling pot of water in its future, the lobster and its role in the main course of a sumptuous meal were the subject of Stuck’s intense curiosity as Butman, a volunteer chef with American Legion Post 94 in Greenville, explained how her stroking the crustacean’s underside would help it meet its end peacefully.

“I’ve not seen a lobster up close like this,” Stuck said. “We go out and get tails and whatnot at restaurants, but not the whole lobster.”

Butman noticed the tattoos covering the soldier’s left forearm.

“I have a daughter who is in the Army, and she has five tattoos,” Butman said happily as she listed her daughter’s postings.

“I got this one in Hong Kong,” Stuck said, pointing to a large tattoo that undulated erratically under a flexed muscle.

Butman teasingly took the lobster and gently jabbed a claw at the buttocks of fellow Legion member Paul Tebo as Tebo prepared a gas burner for the lobster pot.

“He will be doing the actual cooking,” Butman said of Tebo.

“Then he’s the man!” Stuck said. “I knew I should stick close to him. As soon as you said that, I knew he was the man.”

Unspoken between Stuck and the others was the reason the 22-year-old Pittsburgh native had ventured from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to the Post 94 hall on Saturday.

The Airborne specialist was on convoy duty in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated under or near his Humvee on Dec. 20, 2005. The explosion blasted the vehicle’s 200-pound front bumper and a tire 150 yards and mangled Stuck’s right leg so badly doctors had to amputate it below the knee.

Stuck and two other wounded soldiers – Christopher Short, 24, of Little Rock, Ark., and Russell Martin, 26, of Dover, Del. – arrived at Bangor International Airport on Friday. They enjoyed a fly-fishing weekend on Moosehead Lake thanks to Project Healing Waters, a volunteer-run charity that helps service personnel recover from injuries by introducing or rebuilding their fly-fishing and fly-tying skills.

Butman, whose family’s military history dates from the Civil War, was proud the Legion could help the soldiers.

“They have given so much more,” she said, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears, “so much more than we have. They have given their lives to make sure that it’s taken care of, that the war and the fighting stops.

“And these guys are so young, so young, to have this happen,” Butman added. “It’s so unfair.”

The soothing waters

Fly-fishing and wounded soldiers might seem an odd combination, but the excursions arranged around the country by Project Healing Waters can have a profound effect on the men and women it serves, said Cleve J. Van Haasteren, a Healing Waters volunteer.

Co-sponsored by the National Capital Chapter of Trout Unlimited and the Mid-Atlantic Council Federation of Fly Fishers, Healing Waters helps veterans get out of the hospital after months of grueling occupational therapy and surgeries.

They get to see lovely parts of the country and experience the restorative power of nature while meeting people, such as the Legion members, who appreciate the sacrifices they have made, Van Haasteren said.

Learning the mechanics of fly-fishing helps them to realize and extend the limits their disabilities have imposed upon them while relieving them from some of the stress and uncertainty that comes with the healing process.

“This is a great way for them to get their minds on something else for awhile,” said Bob Sutton, another Healing Waters volunteer. “They get to see that there’s more to life than their injuries.”

Simple things, such as standing in a flowing river, are daunting challenges to people learning how to use prosthetic limbs, said Short, a sergeant and sniper who suffered extensive damage to his right elbow and lost his lower right leg to an IED and 107 mm rocket fire while serving in Afghanistan on March 29, 2005.

“It’s a big help to practice balance,” Short said. “It helps you to gain faith in your prosthetic. I do believe that people who suffer upper-body injuries get more out of it because fly-fishing is so intricate. It really helps them to learn to adapt.”

Several local guides took the three soldiers onto Moosehead Lake near the Kennebec River’s East Outlet for a day of fishing Saturday. Healing Waters provided the lodging, guides and materials they used, a $1,500 per person value over the three days, Sutton said.

“They did great,” Van Haasteren said. “They had a couple of bets going, too. Chris got the biggest fish and the most fish.”

“They picked it up very quickly,” Sutton said. “They seemed used to following instruction. They looked good out there.”

“We had a great time,” said Martin, an Army National Guard sergeant who suffered a severe injury to his left arm when a bus he was riding in overturned in an accident in Kuwait.

“It was sweet,” Stuck said. “Everything was great. The guides were great. Everybody has been so nice to us.”

The deep wounds

Tim Trafford watched the three soldiers carefully from across the Legion hall. As a constituent service representative for U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, his job involves working with veterans like Short, Martin and Stuck to ensure they get the government services they require.

As a Vietnam War veteran who served as an Army helicopter pilot in 1968-69 and eventually retired as a lieutenant colonel after 24 years of service, Trafford was glad the soldiers received such a warm welcome.

“The vets from Vietnam did not have the support that these guys have had,” Trafford said, “so when the vets were forced to make that choice whether to go on with their lives or give up, they had no support system whatsoever. So they gave up.”

That feeling helped fuel the warm greeting the soldiers met in Greenville, Trafford said. “All of us don’t want them to go through what we went through,” he said.

“Every veteran has a choice. They can feel sorry for themselves or they can go on with their lives, and the more support we show them, the easier it is for them to go on with their lives. That’s why events like this are so important.”

Still, even today, combat-scarred veterans can be their own worst enemies, Trafford said.

“They have been taught by the Army, by its culture, that they don’t want to admit that they have problems,” Trafford said. “When they lose a limb, they have to come to grips with the fact that they are vulnerable. That’s difficult.”

Trafford dealt with an Iraq war veteran from Maine who suffered 40 percent disability from combat wounds and post-traumatic stress disorder, but his doctors were prepared to discharge him with a 10 percent disability, which would have been disastrous.

Trafford argued until he realized the doctors didn’t know of the soldier’s problems because the soldier didn’t tell them. A heart-to-heart talk with the soldier eventually led him to seek proper treatment and to get the disability rating he deserved, Trafford said.

“The issue is,” Trafford said, “at what point are they willing to accept treatment. Some kids with PTSD won’t admit that they have it and won’t seek treatment.

“You have to look at their eyes,” he added. “Their eyes will tell you a lot about what’s going on in their heads. Always look at the eyes.”

Easy rapport

Sitting in bar after the Legion dinner, the three soldiers seemed at ease with their disabilities and, once the beer started to flow, told stories of soldiers at Walter Reed holding jousting matches with their prosthetics.

The soldiers were deeply appreciative of the kindness bestowed upon them and, effortlessly polite, chatted easily with strangers who approached them. They have known one another for less than two years, having met at Walter Reed, but their friendship seems decades old, well-worn, particularly between Short and Stuck.

Their rapport is especially surprising considering their regional and physical differences. Stuck, who is 6-feet, 6-inches tall, has the quick conversational rhythms and ironies of a Northeasterner, while Short is, well, shorter, with the slower burning sarcasm of a Southerner.

Stuck teased Short that while Short might have won $40 in the fishing contest for catching eight fish, Stuck was the better lobster-eater. He devoured six lobsters and seemed proud of the accomplishment until Short reminded him of a miscue that the Legion crowd howled at.

“This dumbass lifted one to his face and bit right into the shell and everything,” Short said.

“I didn’t know how to eat one! I am surprised I didn’t get cut,” Stuck said, sounding defensive.

“You did, actually,” Short said, “on your face.”

“They were sweet,” Stuck said.

Short smiled and shook his head.

“He’s a dumbass.”

The sudden detonations

The soldiers’ rapport masks the torturous nature of their injuries and surgeries. The numbers tell the tale most quickly: Short endured 16 blood transfusions and was declared killed in action in the immediate aftermath of his wounding, as medics were slow to discover that shrapnel had nicked a femoral artery.

“My leg was filled with blood,” Short said, “but with the boot I was wearing they couldn’t tell. At first, the medics thought the worst injury I had was with my elbow.”

Martin endured eight surgeries to his left hand and has partial movement of his fingers and thumb. He will have several more before his time on the operating table is through, he said.

“I have the tendons to close my hand, but not to open it,” Martin said. “You don’t realize how much you use your left hand until you can’t use it.”

Stuck underwent four surgeries on his left foot to relieve pressure caused by swelling that, if left unattended, eventually would have forced the foot’s amputation, he said.

Short remembers waking up surrounded by his family at Walter Reed and, in a post-surgical haze, thinking he was still in Afghanistan with his buddies. He cursed, he said, until he realized that the “soldier” kissing him was actually his kid sister.

“I thought it was one of my joes,” he said.

The three do not, they said, second-guess their actions leading up to the detonations. They say their positive attitudes stem less from toughness than from acceptance of their new reality.

“What else can we do? We’re alive,” Short said. “When it happens, you’re like, what am I going to do now? You get over it very quickly. You have to go on.”

“The only question I ask is why did I enlist. But I don’t regret it,” Stuck said. “It happens. It comes with the job.”

Martin admitted to some frustration.

“I wish my injury could have happened a different way,” Martin said, anger apparent in his eyes. “I went through all this training and I got taken out by a bus accident. That’s what makes me angry.”

The healing

The three began their war experience believing that the U.S. was doing the right thing, and they still feel that way. They also have faith in their eventual recoveries. Stuck said he thinks of his injuries as almost a blessing in disguise.

“I do more things now since I lost my leg,” he said. “I learned to fly-fish, and I ski, I snowboard, I kayak. I am adventurous, and I have always been that way.”

Short hopes to go to college and continue to work with wounded veterans. Stuck said he plans to participate in the Paralympics. His injury, he said, does not impede him. He still plays soccer, runs an eight-minute mile and jumps rope.

“If you can have fun,” Stuck said, “why not do it? Why not push your body while you still can without waking up sore in the morning?

“Life goes on. You gotta keep going.”


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like