AUBURN, Ala.-
First Lt. Ed Salau was feeling down early in his recovery from an injury sustained in Iraq, when his son bounded into his room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The 12-year-old boy’s words are burned into Salau’s memory: “Dad, you’re so lucky. You only lost one leg!”
His son had been talking to an amputee who lost both legs and an arm but was in good spirits, cracking jokes. At that moment, Salau said Wednesday at the Wounded & Injured Veteran’s Summit at Auburn University, he began thinking differently about the loss of his left leg.
“I’m not disabled–unless of course it’s to find a good parking space at the mall,” he joked before the crowd of about 200 representatives from the military, government and business at the two-day program on ways to help wounded, injured and disabled veterans find work and fulfillment. “I’m mildly inconvenienced.”
John Melia, executive director of the Wounded Warrior Project, said business recruiters often dismiss veterans who list job titles such as “tanker” or “gravel agitator” on their resumes because they don’t see how those skills are applicable to the business setting.
What recruiters need to realize, Melia said, is that because of their military training, veterans are well-suited for jobs that require discipline, leadership and computer skills.
Because of improvements in emergency combat medical treatment, fewer servicemembers are dying from their wounds, said Maj. Gen Kenneth L. Farmer, Jr., former commanding general at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. As a result, there are more surviving soldiers with severe extremity wounds.
To respond to their needs, the military has made efforts such as a mentor program that matches new amputees with veterans who have learned to live with amputated limbs.
The Wounded Warrior Project was founded in 2003 “to fill in a gap that we saw in providing services to wounded service members and their families,” said Melia, a former Marine who was wounded in a helicopter crash in 1992.
Though amputees are the most visible group of injured veterans, Melia said, it is important to remember those with less obvious wounds.
Michelle Saunders, a former Army sergeant, was awarded a Purple Heart when she ruptured two disks in her back while trying to help a fellow soldier felled by enemy fire when their unit was caught in an ambush in Iraq in May 2004.
She was injured enough to be discharged but not seriously enough to be medically retired. She falls into what Melia calls a “gray area” of service members who suffer from psychological trauma but who don’t necessarily have serious physical injuries and thus don’t get as much attention from the military.
Pointing to the Wounded Warrior Project logo–an image of one soldier carrying another on his back–Melia said, “We always think about the guy who’s on the top, the guy who’s being carried. We never think about the one who’s doing the carrying.”
Salau lost his left leg just above the knee when his Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle was hit in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq in 2004. He walks with a prosthetic limb.
The biggest challenge he has faced, he said, is looks of pity from employers, co-workers or people in the grocery store.
“Keep your pity,” he said, adding that wounded veterans just want to be treated like other employees. “Give us the same challenges. Give us the same opportunities, and we will excel. I promise you that.”
——
On the Net:
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
