A Welcome Mat For the Wounded

An hour before the C-17 touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Capt. Norman Ellis briefed his crew on who would be arriving on the transport plane.

The patients included a 25-year-old male suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury; a 22-year-old male who overdosed on heroin; a 24-year-old male whose face was peppered by a rocket-propelled grenade; a 24-year-old male with a gunshot wound to his left arm.

The afternoon briefing was the first step in an elaborate process set in motion three times a week at Andrews, the first stop in the United States for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Best known as the home to the president's Air Force One, Andrews is also the busiest military aeromedical staging center in the nation.

Every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, medical staff members and volunteers carry litters off the plane after the transatlantic flight; doctors examine patients; buses arrive to cart the most seriously wounded to the region's military hospitals; and volunteers greet those staying briefly at Andrews before heading to a hospital closer to home.

Nearly 6,000 patients went through Andrews last year, including those wounded in battle, suffering physical or mental illnesses or injured in accidents. Iraqi children and a military dog injured by a bomb have also arrived at the base in Prince George's County.

No end to the mission is in sight. The Air Force is in the midst of a $4.8 million renovation of patient rooms and a clinic at the base's Malcolm Grow Medical Center that will enable Andrews to continue as the hub for returning wounded soldiers for years to come. There has been a marked improvement since the first 1 1/2 years of the Iraq war, when the base gymnasium was used as a staging area for many arriving patients.

On this Tuesday afternoon, four litter bearers carried Army Sgt. 1st Class Perry Meeks down the cargo plane's ramp and placed him gingerly in an awaiting ambulance bus, already loaded with soldiers on stretchers.

A week earlier, Meeks, 37, a platoon sergeant with the 101st Airborne Division, was on patrol near Tikrit, Iraq, when a 100-pound explosive blew his armored vehicle 25 yards through the air. Meeks suffered fractures in his face, ribs and collar bone; a damaged spleen; a collapsed lung; and an injured eye. But he considered himself lucky. Two soldiers in his heavy weapons platoon were killed in the blast, and another was wounded more severely than he was.

Meeks's journey had taken him through Balad Air Base in Iraq and Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. "I'm eager to get back to the States," Meeks said from his stretcher, "but not this way."

Before each flight arrives, the flight surgeon, nurses and other medical staff members gather for a mission brief.

For Ellis, a nurse who joined the Air Force after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the mission is personal. His father lost his left arm in combat with the Army in Korea. "I like to think someone like me helped him," said Ellis, a Detroit native. "Taking care of the guys who are taking fire is the most important thing I can do."

Volunteers, most of them airmen working at Andrews in other jobs, arrived to help the medical staff carry the litters off the plane as quickly as possible. The volunteers practiced under the watchful eye of Army Master Sgt. Luella M. VanArsdale, who has spent much of the war dealing with casualties.