LilMtnCbn
06-18-2004, 06:39 AM
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~115~2219825,00.html
Ex-GI found a miracle amid terror
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist
Leon Rodriguez is haunted by ghosts. If he closes his eyes, they appear as
vividly as when he first saw them unloaded from the helicopters at the 24th
Evacuation Hospital in Vietnam. He clenches his fists and tries to will them
gone, but they never go away.
It's why he chooses to focus instead on the miracles.
At his southwest Denver home, a flag is hung by the front door and a
Kerry-for-president sign is in the yard. On the walls everywhere are photos of
his children. They're smiling, happy, each one a miracle.
But especially Barbara. Barbara cheated a long, brutal war of one more death.
For years, Rodriguez has kept the story of Barbara to himself. But now, he
said, people need to hear it.
It began about 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 1967. Sgt. Rodriguez was in charge of
surgery at the 24th Evac. Barbara's parents and her 6-year-old brother were
brought into the hospital after Cambodian insurgents attacked their village on
the edge of a rice paddy. Green Berets had rescued them. Barbara's mother was
"gut-shot," Rodriguez said, and rushed into surgery.
But before the surgeons could save her life, they delivered her tiny twin
girls, several weeks premature but hardy and undeniably beautiful.
The army nurses scavenged the Quonset hut for two boxes, some blankets, hot
water bottles and makeshift clothing. They placed the babies in the closest
thing to incubators to be found that near to the front and put the boxes on
either side of the mother's bed in the recovery room. Her husband and son
curled up and slept on the floor beneath the bed with a small bag containing
everything they owned between them.
The next day, the larger of the two babies died. Her immature lungs had failed
her. The other baby survived by accident. During the night, the blanket
protecting her from the hot water bottle had slipped. She touched the bottle
and burned her arm. The pain kept her crying - and breathing - all night.
In his scrapbook, under the picture of the preemie in the cardboard box,
Rodriguez wrote about the miracle: "This sweet baby brought joy and hope to
members and patients of the 24th Evacuation Hospital."
The family stayed in the hospital until the mother had recovered. Then the GIs
took them to a refugee camp near Saigon. They left the baby behind.
"I have no idea why they abandoned Barbara," Rodriguez said. They were
Montagnards, Vietnam's indigenous people. They were known to be superstitious.
They had no home. She was so small. Maybe they couldn't take care of her.
Rodriguez said nurses, doctors, even patients at the 24th doted on the baby
he'd named Barbara. The engineers built her a crib and a highchair. In the
midst of mayhem, where the average number of craniotomies - only one of the
many surgical procedures done at the MASH unit - was 180 a month, everyone
watched out for her.
By December, the fighting was becoming more intense and casualties were
mounting. Rodriguez said orders came down to save every available bed for
wounded soldiers. So during inspections, Barbara had to disappear.
Nurses and patients would slip her from ward to ward, keeping her quiet and
away from the eyes of officers.
She was growing more and more healthy and beautiful. Rodriguez had fallen in
love with her.
Finally, one night he got on the radio to his wife, Else.
"She's a baby who needs parents. Over," he said. "We're parents who need a
baby. Over." Else's response was immediate. "She would make our family
complete. Over."
With that, the Byzantine process of adopting a baby at the height of the war
began.
Rodriguez hired an interpreter and combed the refugee camps searching for the
Montagnard family. Unable to find them, he entered negotiations with the South
Vietnamese government to get the adoption approved without the parents'
permission.
By spring, Barbara had her very own Vietnamese passport, a small green,
hardcover document with a black-and-white photo of a black-haired, brown-eyed
baby girl, and a visa, signed by a U.S. State Department official while the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon was under attack.
At last in June, after a year at Long Binh, Rodriguez caught an embassy flight
back to the world. He held his baby girl in his arms the whole way.
Later, when they all were back in the states, Virginia Devine, one of the Army
nurses who cared for Barbara, and her husband, Col. Robert Leaver, an army
neurosurgeon, were godparents at her baptism.
Now, 36 years after celebrating his first Father's Day, Rodriguez is telling
the story as if it were yesterday. He remembers the names of the fellow
soldiers, the feeling of the sweat running down his back in the operating room,
the overwhelming fatigue after weeks on end of 16-hour days spent fighting for
life in the theater of death.
"A couple of my friends in Vietnam wanted me to write about all this," he said.
"It's highly personal. It's never been written."
Twelve years ago, the 24th had a reunion at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
More than 400 people - surgeons, nurses, corpsmen, even former patients - came
to share old stories. They invited Barbara to speak.
"It was wonderful," Rodriguez said. They remembered her and what she meant to
the unit. She thanked them. "It was such a thrill for her, for everyone.
"War is a constant catastrophe," Rodriguez said. "Most of the time we were
overwhelmed, triaging as fast as we could. There was a constant threat. It was
hot. We were sweating. Sometimes we'd have to hold the nurses back when a child
would arrive on a litter to make sure the patient wasn't rigged to a bomb.
"Those are things the chicken hawks have never seen."
Rodriguez served 20 years in the Army, two tours in Vietnam. At 66, he still
works as a physician's assistant in the operating room. He's still married to
Else, still capable of getting all mushy about his kids, still an unabashed
patriot.
"Maybe now you can see why I'm talking about this after all these years.
"I want to do something to protect my kids, something for the future," he said.
"People need to understand. No one should be coloring the facts to justify
going to war. No one should go to war on superficial evidence. We need to know
the truth."
The truth, Rodriguez said, is that with all its suffering, its casualties, the
deaths, the ghosts and even the occasional blessed miracle, war is not
glorious.
"It's not a game," he said, his hands clenched into tight fists to keep the
ghosts at bay.
"It's madness."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Ex-GI found a miracle amid terror
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist
Leon Rodriguez is haunted by ghosts. If he closes his eyes, they appear as
vividly as when he first saw them unloaded from the helicopters at the 24th
Evacuation Hospital in Vietnam. He clenches his fists and tries to will them
gone, but they never go away.
It's why he chooses to focus instead on the miracles.
At his southwest Denver home, a flag is hung by the front door and a
Kerry-for-president sign is in the yard. On the walls everywhere are photos of
his children. They're smiling, happy, each one a miracle.
But especially Barbara. Barbara cheated a long, brutal war of one more death.
For years, Rodriguez has kept the story of Barbara to himself. But now, he
said, people need to hear it.
It began about 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 26, 1967. Sgt. Rodriguez was in charge of
surgery at the 24th Evac. Barbara's parents and her 6-year-old brother were
brought into the hospital after Cambodian insurgents attacked their village on
the edge of a rice paddy. Green Berets had rescued them. Barbara's mother was
"gut-shot," Rodriguez said, and rushed into surgery.
But before the surgeons could save her life, they delivered her tiny twin
girls, several weeks premature but hardy and undeniably beautiful.
The army nurses scavenged the Quonset hut for two boxes, some blankets, hot
water bottles and makeshift clothing. They placed the babies in the closest
thing to incubators to be found that near to the front and put the boxes on
either side of the mother's bed in the recovery room. Her husband and son
curled up and slept on the floor beneath the bed with a small bag containing
everything they owned between them.
The next day, the larger of the two babies died. Her immature lungs had failed
her. The other baby survived by accident. During the night, the blanket
protecting her from the hot water bottle had slipped. She touched the bottle
and burned her arm. The pain kept her crying - and breathing - all night.
In his scrapbook, under the picture of the preemie in the cardboard box,
Rodriguez wrote about the miracle: "This sweet baby brought joy and hope to
members and patients of the 24th Evacuation Hospital."
The family stayed in the hospital until the mother had recovered. Then the GIs
took them to a refugee camp near Saigon. They left the baby behind.
"I have no idea why they abandoned Barbara," Rodriguez said. They were
Montagnards, Vietnam's indigenous people. They were known to be superstitious.
They had no home. She was so small. Maybe they couldn't take care of her.
Rodriguez said nurses, doctors, even patients at the 24th doted on the baby
he'd named Barbara. The engineers built her a crib and a highchair. In the
midst of mayhem, where the average number of craniotomies - only one of the
many surgical procedures done at the MASH unit - was 180 a month, everyone
watched out for her.
By December, the fighting was becoming more intense and casualties were
mounting. Rodriguez said orders came down to save every available bed for
wounded soldiers. So during inspections, Barbara had to disappear.
Nurses and patients would slip her from ward to ward, keeping her quiet and
away from the eyes of officers.
She was growing more and more healthy and beautiful. Rodriguez had fallen in
love with her.
Finally, one night he got on the radio to his wife, Else.
"She's a baby who needs parents. Over," he said. "We're parents who need a
baby. Over." Else's response was immediate. "She would make our family
complete. Over."
With that, the Byzantine process of adopting a baby at the height of the war
began.
Rodriguez hired an interpreter and combed the refugee camps searching for the
Montagnard family. Unable to find them, he entered negotiations with the South
Vietnamese government to get the adoption approved without the parents'
permission.
By spring, Barbara had her very own Vietnamese passport, a small green,
hardcover document with a black-and-white photo of a black-haired, brown-eyed
baby girl, and a visa, signed by a U.S. State Department official while the
U.S. Embassy in Saigon was under attack.
At last in June, after a year at Long Binh, Rodriguez caught an embassy flight
back to the world. He held his baby girl in his arms the whole way.
Later, when they all were back in the states, Virginia Devine, one of the Army
nurses who cared for Barbara, and her husband, Col. Robert Leaver, an army
neurosurgeon, were godparents at her baptism.
Now, 36 years after celebrating his first Father's Day, Rodriguez is telling
the story as if it were yesterday. He remembers the names of the fellow
soldiers, the feeling of the sweat running down his back in the operating room,
the overwhelming fatigue after weeks on end of 16-hour days spent fighting for
life in the theater of death.
"A couple of my friends in Vietnam wanted me to write about all this," he said.
"It's highly personal. It's never been written."
Twelve years ago, the 24th had a reunion at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
More than 400 people - surgeons, nurses, corpsmen, even former patients - came
to share old stories. They invited Barbara to speak.
"It was wonderful," Rodriguez said. They remembered her and what she meant to
the unit. She thanked them. "It was such a thrill for her, for everyone.
"War is a constant catastrophe," Rodriguez said. "Most of the time we were
overwhelmed, triaging as fast as we could. There was a constant threat. It was
hot. We were sweating. Sometimes we'd have to hold the nurses back when a child
would arrive on a litter to make sure the patient wasn't rigged to a bomb.
"Those are things the chicken hawks have never seen."
Rodriguez served 20 years in the Army, two tours in Vietnam. At 66, he still
works as a physician's assistant in the operating room. He's still married to
Else, still capable of getting all mushy about his kids, still an unabashed
patriot.
"Maybe now you can see why I'm talking about this after all these years.
"I want to do something to protect my kids, something for the future," he said.
"People need to understand. No one should be coloring the facts to justify
going to war. No one should go to war on superficial evidence. We need to know
the truth."
The truth, Rodriguez said, is that with all its suffering, its casualties, the
deaths, the ghosts and even the occasional blessed miracle, war is not
glorious.
"It's not a game," he said, his hands clenched into tight fists to keep the
ghosts at bay.
"It's madness."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
