Posted on 06/19/2006 8:56:17 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
- Austinites to swim the Strait of Gibraltar to benefit disabled veterans -
Somewhere in the water, the man that David Broyles was, and had always been, disappeared forever. And in his place, a new man — an Air Force man, a pararescueman, a PJ — emerged.
The instructor would holler, and he would go — swim 50 yards underwater, come to the surface, recite the pararescueman's mission, 50 yards back underwater. Do it again.
Eighty-two airmen began pararescueman training, or PJU, with Broyles. Two years later, only one other finished with him. Over the next two years, Broyles completed three combat tours, one in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, two in Iraq, fulfilling the parajumper's motto: "That Others May Live."
But it was in training that his mettle was forged — not by fire, but by water — and in the water, it will be tested again.
Next month, Broyles and Army National Guardsman Rush Vann will attempt to become the 16th and 17th Americans to swim the Strait of Gibraltar, 12.5 miles from Spain to Morocco. They are attempting to raise $100,000 for the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes, a charity that helps severely wounded and disabled military veterans rebuild their lives. So far, nearly $35,000 has been raised. But for Austinites Broyles, who left the Air Force in November, and Vann, who will begin training in October to become an Army Special Forces officer, the swim is also about serving others while testing their own limits. It's a sense of fulfillment that Broyles said he felt nearly every day as a PJ but has struggled to find since.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Broyles was at his father's home in Austin, sleeping off a party from the night before. His dad shook him awake.
"You need to come down and see this," he said.
For much of his senior year at the University of Texas, Broyles was like many college students, struggling to find direction in a life he considered self-centered and trivial.
The military, he thought, might offer a chance to be part of something bigger than himself. Both of his grandfathers had served, and his father, screenwriter William Broyles Jr., had chronicled his time as a combat Marine in Vietnam in a memoir, "Brothers in Arms."
Watching the burning towers on television confirmed his decision.
"I think we kind of knew then because we had talked about it before," Broyles said. "Pretty much right afterwards, I said I wanted to sign up."
To date, 2,795 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the operations in and around Afghanistan and Iraq, according to U.S. Department of Defense statistics. Another 19,248 have been wounded, 8,963 of those so severely that they could not return to duty. Kenny Adams is one of them.
Adams was 21 when he joined the Army in 2002. His activities between graduation from Stratford High School in Houston and military enlistment consisted of a little bit of working and a whole lot of partying. He had never left the state of Texas.
But Adams wanted more — to see the world, earn money for college and mostly, he said, to "do something with myself, so I could be something."
The Army offered him that chance.
Adams trained at Fort Knox, Ky., to be a cavalry scout. He visited nearly every state in the nation, though he rarely saw anything but the airports. He was sent to Italy, Kurdistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan; he marveled at the mountains and deserts, and the culture of those who lived there.
As a private first class in Afghanistan operations after the Sept. 11 attacks, Adams, now 24, performed reconnaissance missions, rode as a gunner on a Humvee and squeezed through caves in search of al Qaeda fighters.
"I had to crawl through caves the size of a toilet bowl. I had a 9-millimeter, grenades, (an) M4 Carbine (assault rifle) and a Maglite flashlight," Adams said. "I was Rambo."
Broyles chose Air Force pararescue because of the difficulty of the unit's two-year training program and because of its mission to save lives as opposed to taking them.
He became trained in every manner of rescue, on any terrain.
"One day you might be jumping out of a plane," he said. "The next you might be hanging from the hoist cable of a helicopter, and the other you might be setting up a rope system on a high-angle rock face." Broyles, a senior airman, came under frequent attack but never lost a team member during a mission. During night operations, tracer fire would shear the darkness, and the team could often see blobs of light coming from anti-aircraft weapons. Once, after a mission, a friend in another helicopter stepped out of the chopper only to notice several bullet holes just above where his head had been.
But other times, when the land below was peaceful, its beauty emerged.
"You go from an absolute empty desert, desolate, to the rivers with beautiful, green, lush foliage and trees," Broyles said. "The desert was kind of a cleansing effect. Things were very clear. . . . All the B.S. of modern life, the ton of extra things that kind of piled up on you — when I was out there, it felt like that all kind of peeled away."
Adams doesn't remember anything about Jan. 17, 2004.
On that day in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after returning from an exhausting mission, he sat next to another soldier in his unit while the man was cleaning his gun. The magazine was still loaded in the weapon, and when his comrade pressed against the trigger, a bullet shattered Adams' face, entering through his left cheek and blowing out both eyes before exiting his skull through the right frontal lobe.
Few had any hope for his survival. While Adams lay in a coma for weeks, Army officials expedited his retirement so his wife, Katie, could immediately begin receiving widow's benefits.
When he finally woke up in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, Adams said, "I popped my head up and couldn't see nothing. That's when the doctor told me I was blind."
He also suffered a brain injury from the bullet's exit. He struggled to relearn basic life functions — walking (with a cane), eating and swallowing, going to the bathroom, "everything but curse. I still knew how to do that," he said.
Even as he improved, his wife said, he remained fearful of being alone in crowded places and wary of people he couldn't see but thought might be watching him. Caring for her husband became Katie's primary job.
Later that year, the Adamses were invited by the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes to attend a Road to Recovery conference at Disney World, a much needed respite for the couple, who had hastily married on New Year's Eve 2002, one month after he joined the Army. Soon after the conference, the coalition selected the Adamses to be among six families to receive a $200,000 grant for a disability accessible home. The Adamses' grant went toward a home in Katy with talking alarm systems, wheelchair-accessible hallways and doors, and guardrails along the stairs.
Last August, with donations from area wedding coordinators, the coalition threw Kenny and Katie a second wedding with friends, family, a Fort Hood honor guard and several other disabled soldiers in attendance.
"It was a recommitment to his injury and the new life we were leading," Katie said.
Being a pararescueman was more than a job, Broyles said. "It is an identity; it's a lifestyle."
After Broyles was discharged, the memories of his missions and fellow PJs still clung to him, like desert sand in his boots. Over four years, his team members had become his brothers, bonded by shared purpose. But those days are past, and back home, it is difficult for people to comprehend the depth of feeling he has for his experiences.
No longer in the military, he still doesn't feel like a civilian.
"It's like you grew up in a house for a long time, and you have certain ideas and memories about it. Then you leave. And when you come back, it doesn't really fit the ideas you had," Broyles said.
"I want to find a balance between the man I was before I was in the military and the man I was while I was in it," he said. "And that's the struggle."
In January, Broyles was in the waters of Australia's Sydney Harbour, swimming in the shadows of the Harbour Bridge and the famed Opera House, when he decided to make the benefit swim.
It is a challenge that reflects Broyles' life as a parajumper: a test of strength and will, combined with a mission of moral clarity.
The coalition charity has agreed to allocate 100 percent of all donations raised through the strait swim to direct service for severely wounded and disabled veterans.
The men will begin on one continent and end on another, swimming against currents so strong that at times it will seem as though they are swimming in place. They will swim for up to seven hours past large, fast-moving ships and through the shark-inhabited waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
Broyles called Vann, whom he had met at UT when both were training for the military. "It was like 3 in the morning" when he called, said Vann, a native of Fort Worth. "At first I thought he was halfway kidding."
But it didn't take long for Vann to join the new mission.
The wounded veterans "deserve more than a half-assed fundraiser and a bar tab," said Vann, who worked as a civil engineer in Austin before leaving in May to prepare full time for the swim.
"It takes more to wake people up and show why this is important and necessary. And the swim is very symbolic of the recovery these guys make."
Today, Adams spends much of his time at the Blind Rehabilitation Center in Waco, one of 10 such centers in the nation for veterans. He is one of the youngest veterans at the center and one of the first to arrive with injuries suffered in the Afghanistan or Iraq war.
The staff is teaching him to use a talking computer to send e-mail and access the Internet.
"People come here because they want to learn, so we get the best of the best," said Rose Zuniga, acting chief of the rehab center. When she first met the Adamses, "they were clinging to each other, because that's what they had. Now, they're learning to be more independent as well."
Adams is a different man now, his wife said. Her quiet and reserved husband has turned into a prankster.
"I'll stand there next to you and beat you with my cane for the hell of it," he said. "And you can't do anything about it. Because if you hit me, that's (messed) up because you hit a blind person."
His partying days are over; he can't drink beer because of the possibility of seizures. Some things still make him very tired. Other things still make him very scared.
Three weeks ago, he traveled to Arlington National Cemetery to bury a close friend who was killed by a roadside bomb outside of Baghdad, Iraq. At those moments, Adams said, he wishes he could have been there to protect his buddy.
Broyles and Adams have spoken several times, most recently this week, to share updates on the training for the strait swim and on Adams' rehabilitation. Vann and Broyles have each spoken to dozens of disabled veterans and accompanied them on group outings to the Texas Sports Expo and a Texas Rangers baseball game.
The Adamses regularly attend coalition meetings, helping plan fundraising events for other injured soldiers. For now, those activities are Kenny's best way of supporting those who are still on the front lines.
"I know even though I'm blind, I can still do something," he said. "Whatever I can do to help, I want to do it — even if have to dance like an Oompa-Loompa."
Or swim a sea.
The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes is a tax-exempt charity that since 2004 has helped nearly 1,500 severely wounded veterans and their families by providing emergency financial aid, homes accessible to those with disabilities and employment services. The group raised $4.3 million in 2004, 83 percent of which went directly to benefit clients. Officials say the portion of money that goes to serving clients rose to 91 percent in 2005.
The coalition was founded by activist Roger Chapin, who has created several nonprofit organizations to aid veterans. In the 1960s, Chapin led the effort to send gift packs to the front lines in Vietnam. In the 1970s, he founded Help for Hospitalized Veterans, which has supplied more than 20 million arts and crafts kits to hospitals. For more information or to donate, visit www.firstgiving.com/swimthestrait.
For more on the swim, see www.swimthestrait06.com.
pics and video link at the site
WOW, that's worth the read.
Is Ted Kennedy going to swim?
Unless you have tried to swim a distance in open water, you have no idea how difficult the challenge these men have taken on can be. God bless them for their dedication to an honorable cause.
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