Posted on 05/12/2008 4:10:14 PM PDT by radar101
Shahad Abbas, 11, lost her legs to a roadside bomb blast
Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas. The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair
Falcon stopped to talk. He came back the next day and the day after that, then every day for six months, bringing her toys, gauze for her legs, a new wheelchair.
Anything she asked for, he would bring.
Shahad became his mission. So when she asked for legs, that became his mission, too.
On Friday, his dream and hers came true, just three weeks before he's scheduled to leave Iraq. Shahad was fitted with prosthetic limbs .
"We created a bond, and I didn't need a translator to interpret the bond we had," Falcon said.
With no little girls of his own, he thought of Shahad as his daughter and carried a picture of her smiling in the shoulder pocket of his uniform.
Iraq has one of the largest populations of amputees in the world, though a precise count isn't available. There are the tens of thousands of people who lost their limbs in the 1980s, during the eight-year war with Iran.
Shahad lost her legs as she was walking to school when a roadside bomb exploded nearby. Two pieces of shrapnel are still lodged in her back. Her little brother, Ali, was killed.
"I'll get you anything you want," he recalled saying.
"I want legs so I can walk to school," she told him. One day she planned to be a doctor. School was important to her.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Monitor got all blurry.
/johnny
Must be system wide.
tet.
America is so blessed with such incredible men and women in the US military. God bless them all.
We should all have a mission.
Our resources aren’t endless, but it sure seems like we ought to be able to be able to fit many, many, of those thousands with limbs.
Your's too?
Whenever I hear of a suicide bomb or whatever, I am always very thoughtful of the many more wounded than killed, and how difficult the wounded will have it, and try to say an extran prayer for them.
Hero.
/johnny
Same here... monitor got a little blurry...
But I read the rest of the story. He is one of those who isn’t sure about the war (from N.Y.)... but at least he went, and had a very positive effect. I teach elementary school here in Japan (for about 8 years now)..and the emotional effect of the kids is immense. I am glad that he was able to pull off a positive life changing event for that young girl. I hope that she will be able to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.. and I think that her life situation will make her realize the importance of good care. :)
Thanks for posting this.
It brings tears to my eyes.
To Sgt. Falcon: You are a true hero, and an inspiration to all of us.
"So our Country is the cause for both her legs being blown off and now artificially put back on. What a sick world we live in and pray for PEACE!"
Gotta love this town :P
It's media spin. I heard about this last week. Notice the media mentions his "not being sure about the war" a couple of times.
They build it all around this quote: "Sometimes I couldn't figure out what made sense about being here. … Are we making a difference or are we not?" he said. "But I looked at her, right there, and it all made sense."
I believe what he is doing is merely expressing some of the frustration anybody gets in Iraq from time to time. The most patriotic and committed Americans feel this way on occasion in Iraq. Sometimes, it just doesn't make sense. When surrounded by that 24/7 for an extended period of time, it's going to get to you now and then.
This is a beautiful story and one of so many that are never reported.
I'm glad this one made it to the light of day.
Thank you for pointing that out. I have been here for such a long time, sometimes I forget about how much passion Americans (conservs) have :)
Yep, must be a bug on the server...
Another noble act by Michael "Fn" Moore's "Freedom Fighters." Those are the bastards Rosie "dysfunction walking" O'Donnel said we shouldn't fear because "they're mothers and fathers..."
God bless our heroes like SSG Falcon!
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