Special to The VOICE, Part 5 of 8
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EVERY OTHER DAY, THE PERSONNEL ASSIGNED TO LANDSTUHL REGIONAL Medical Center, a
major Army installation located near Landstuhl, Germany, welcomes a flight of America’s
wounded warriors from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan stopping over for transitional
care en route to their ultimate destination point: the United States. The medical
transport that carried Zac and SPC Schultz from Bagram landed at Ramstein Air Force
Base. From there, they and the other wounded were boarded onto two blue ambulance
buses and driven the twenty miles to Landstuhl. Outside the hospital, in a reception
area located off the emergency entrance, a four-soldier honor detail stood at mute
attention, solemnly awaiting their arrival.
After the buses curled into a wraparound driveway and slowed to a stop, each soldier,
one by one and in the sequence of the severity of their injuries, was loaded off
a circular elevator. One at a time, battlefield casualty followed battlefield casualty.
Time after time, the reception team marched forward in sharp procession, assuming
their places at the corners of a gurney. Each time, the highest level of respect
of one soldier in uniform for another was paid to those who had given so much in
the line of duty. Facing inward and on command and in perfect unison, the squad
members lowered themselves, grasping the stretcher in their hands. Holding that
position, they waited until the next order was given: “Prepare to lift,” which was
followed by the directive “Lift.” After rising, the honor team, in synchronized
step, shepherded each litter to the reception area. There, one after another, each
of the wounded was greeted by a chaplain who offered a few words of encouragement.
The soldiers were then escorted off to predetermined hospital wards, again based
on the nature and seriousness of their injuries.
Colonel Laura Ludwig watched anxiously in front of the emergency entrance as each
casualty was in turn disembarked and rendered honors. From the Forward Surgical
Team in Afghanistan, she had received notification of her nephew’s injuries and
of his forthcoming airlift to Landstuhl. Visible inside the ambulance were the gurneys
stacked like bunk beds and Zac was one of the last removed from the second bus.
As had been done each time before, the reception team marched one of the fallen—this
one named Blaisdell—into the reception area. Audible was the command—“Detail halt”—followed
by “Prepare to lower” and then “Lower.” At that moment Laura stepped forward, taking
a position on Zac’s right. Two of the honor guardsmen were at his shoulders, two
were at his feet, and there was the chaplain. Struggling to lean down to him through
all the wires and equipment, Laura reached out and placed her hand on her nephew’s
shoulder. Although it was difficult for her to know for certain, she thought he
looked over and acknowledged her with a slight nod of his head. “Zac, it is Aunt
Laura,” she said. “I am here with you. We are going to take good care of you. It
is going to be okay.” He would be taken up to one of the floors, his aunt told him,
where she would join him shortly.
Laura felt a strong sense of relief to see him. By the medical team at Bagram she
had been fully briefed on his condition and, as horrific as his injuries were, she
knew from her long experience treating combat casualties that the absence of a traumatic
head injury or the need for a ventilator or breathing tube were very positive signs.
In just the few moments that she had had with Zac, she had observed that his wounds
were not other than they had been described. Her nephew, Laura knew, faced a long
and arduous road ahead. But she also knew something more. She knew he was going
to live.
As had been the case since his departure from COP Sayed Abad, Zac remained under
heavy sedation. In fact, from his arrival at Bagram, Zac didn’t regain consciousness
again until he was getting off the medic bus at Landstuhl. Today, he has no idea
how much time he spent in Germany, but he was there long enough to undergo three
surgeries.
As she had promised, Zac’s aunt met him in his room. Finding him medicated but awake,
she spoke with him, asking if it would be okay if they called his mom. Zac indicated
that it was. So Laura entered the numbers and placed her cell phone to his ear.
When Leanne answered, Zac could get out only two words—“Hi, mom”—before he drifted
off into sleep again.
Later, he was able to speak on the telephone. “Ahhhhh, I heard the most amazing
voice just now,” Leanne posted on her Facebook page on September 2 (probably September
3 in Germany). “YEP. Zac sounded amazing!!” “I asked him how he was doing and he
said ‘the best I can be with two broken arms.’” He was “in some pain,” he admitted,
and “was groggy.” Because he was experiencing blurred vision, a patch had been placed
over his right eye, a worrisome development.
Laura served as the anesthetist in one of the surgeries performed on Zac at Landstuhl.
She remembers sitting in the operating room whispering to him to think about some
of the things that she knew he loved the most: Minnesota, deer hunting, and hanging
out with his buddies. Slowly, he faded off into a deep sleep.
Although the welfare of her nephew tugged closest at her heart, Laura possesses
uncommon insight into the psyches of all the young men and women entrusted to her
care, those brothers and sisters in arms for whom she holds unabashed reverence.
“These wounded warriors come in and are so brave,” she relates, “but underneath,
they are just kids and so scared. We [at Landstuhl] treat them as if they are our
own sons [and daughters] and, for me, they are my family.”
In assessing the most pressing of Zac’s injuries, the trauma team determined that
it would be best to clean up and bandage his eye, but leave further treatment to
specialists in the States. His left forearm presented what Laura characterizes as
a “devastating” wound. There was little remaining tissue or muscle and both bones
had been broken. “There was talk among the medical staff,” Laura recounts, “that
we might not be able to salvage the limb and we said ‘let’s watch it another day’
and see what develops.” Although it wasn’t discussed openly, the odds that Zac would
lose his arm had been placed at 95 percent.
Those were extremely hectic days at Landstuhl and her duties were onerous, but Laura
found time for Zac. She sat with him, held his cup so he could sip water through
a straw, and checked on him while he slept, which was the majority of the time.
After about two days it was decided that Zac would be transferred to Walter Reed
in Washington, DC. There, final evaluations would be made on his eye and forearm.
On his last evening at Landstuhl, Laura came to visit, bringing ice cream bars for
them to share. The hospital commander stopped by as well. Catching Laura in the
hallway afterwards, he informed her that he had spoken with her nephew and, after
hearing some of the details of what Zac had been through, he considered it “fortunate
that his injuries were not life threatening.”
The next morning, to sedate Zac for his long flight ahead, pain medications were
administered and Laura was there to say goodbye. As he was being wheeled down the
corridor on a stretcher on his way to an ambulance bus, his aunt told him: “You’re
going home, Zac. You’re going home to your mom.”
After she had given him all the encouragement that she could and, after his transport
had departed with him from the hospital, Laura went to the telephone to call her
medical friends at Walter Reed. “He’s coming,” she told them. “Watch out for him,”
she asked. “Absolutely,” they assured her. They would be there for him from the
moment his plane touched down and they would be there in the weeks and months after
that. Finally, Laura composed an email. Zac “is a brave and stoic young man,” she
wrote to Leanne, “one of our nation’s heroes. His mission is now to heal.”
In terms of treatment, everything done for Zac in Germany had been aimed at a single
outcome: stabilizing him for transport to Walter Reed in Washington, DC. For the
bulk of his stay at Landstuhl, he had not been conscious. After he left COP Sayed
Abad until his arrival stateside, Zac relates, he had been either asleep or only
hazily aware of what was happening. On September 3—with two days having elapsed
since the attack on his MRAP and with SPC Schultz being readied for transfer to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina—his Aunt Laura had informed Zac that he would be flying
to the United States the following day. Twenty-four hours later and lying on a stretcher,
Zac, along with other similarly critical soldiers, had been loaded onto a C-17 transport.
Shortly after they were airborne, Zac had passed out again. He did not regain consciousness
until they were landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, eight miles east
of Washington.
Meeting Zac at Andrews at four-thirty in the afternoon was his best friend Jimmy
Kreiman’s older brother and truly a big brother of Zac’s as well, twenty-seven-year-old
Matthew Monjes. Now an off-duty Air Force Aeromedical Flight Technician, the fellow
Centennial High School graduate had served in Iraq and his current job was transporting
military patients between Germany and the United States. In fact, he had been in
Germany just the week before the attack on Zac’s MRAP. From his younger brother,
Matt had learned of Zac’s flight and had volunteered to greet him. “I will be at
the plane as the doors open to meet him,” he had assured Leanne. Matt “wanted Zac
to be able to see someone he knew and recognized when he got there.”
The huge transport taxied to a stop and the airport ground crew secured the plane.
The hydraulic lifts lowered the rear ramp, revealing the traveling hospital inside.
The Aeromedical Evacuation Team consisted of seven medics and nurses for the non-critical
patients. For the most severely injured, a critical care physician and nurse were
onboard.
Matt’s entry onto the plane triggered an unforgettable reunion. Zac, who had no
idea that someone would be there, was “totally” shocked to see his childhood friend,
Matt remembers. Although it was apparent that Zac was “truly hurting,” his “face
really lit up and he recognized my voice. He even said my name,” a response which
Matt describes as “really amazing!” “Just to shake his hand and make that contact
with him,” he beams, “was incredible and meant so much” to the two of them. Assessing
his own state of mind, Matt remarks: “You feel so bad that this has happened to
someone so close to you, but you are also just so glad that they are alive.”
A reception detail of four soldiers (although not an honor guard like at Landstuhl)
disembarked the wounded in the order of their injuries. Life-threatened IED patients
came off first. Placed in ambulances and with lights flashing and sirens blaring,
they were rushed directly to either Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval Hospital. Zac
was one of the first off in the second phase. Boarded on yet another ambulance bus,
he was driven to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the northern section of the
nation’s capital. After being admitted, he was wheeled to Ward 65, Room 6532 on
the sixth floor. A small, rectangular space, it would be, for as long as anyone
could project into a daunting and unknowable future, Zac’s home and the nexus of
his survival.
Matt, having left Zac as he departed on the short run into Walter Reed, stopped
for a moment to send a brief message. “Hey Leanne,” he wrote. “You have one strong
hearted boy.” He next called his brother, but their exchange conveyed a more somber
tone. “How’s he looking?” Jimmy wanted to know. “Not good,” Matt responded, which
Jimmy says described exactly how he was feeling inside.
The next day Matt visited a local mall, purchasing a DVD player for Zac and picking
up movies for him to watch. Taking those to Walter Reed, he caught Zac out of his
room in surgery. But a nurse promised that she would hook up the machine for him
and make sure he got the videos. Today, downplaying his thoughtfulness for his “little
brother,” Matt says simply: “Zac would have done the same for me in a heartbeat.”
For Leanne, the outpouring of support for her son verged on the overwhelming. “Zac
is one of the luckiest soldiers I know,” she posted on her Facebook page as Zac
was in flight back to the States and on his way to Walter Reed. “His Aunt was with
him at the most difficult time, & it’s the Aunt he looks up to & admires for her
service & sacrifice for the Army . . . & now for Matt” coming to be with him. “Wow!!!!!”
“Blessed!!!!”
Pictured: Zacery Blaisdell in his room at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany
shortly after his arrival there. His right eye has been covered with a patch and
his left forearm and right hand are heavily bandaged. Not visible in the image are
the injuries to his left kneecap and lower left leg. Zac was met by his aunt in
Germany, Colonel Laura Ludwig, an Army trauma nurse stationed at Landstuhl.
Leaning forward is Senior Airman Matthew Monjes, Zac’s childhood friend and next
door neighbor. An Aeromedical Flight Technician in the Air Force who served in Iraq,
Matt met Zac when his air transport landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland
and he made sure that Zac had everything he needed after he was admitted to Walter
Reed.
Night scene of the Emergency Entrance at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl,
Germany. Zac was transported here for intermediate care prior to his transfer to
Walter Reed in Washington, DC.
Zac's aunt, Colonel Laura Ludwig, United States Army trauma nurse stationed at Landstuhl
Regional Medical Center in Germany.
