Wounded troops form support network
By Kimberly Hefling
Associated Press
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Apache helicopter pilots Emanuel Pierre and Stuart Contant trained together, deployed together and crashed together in Afghanistan.
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The rehabilitation from their injuries was painful, but overcoming the mental hurdles was worse.
Chief Warrant Officers Stuart Contant, right, and Emanuel Pierre, left, pilots who were hurt in a chopper crash in Afghanistan, started a support group. At center is Terry James, a counselor at Fort Campbell, Ky.
When wounded 101st Airborne Division soldiers started returning from Iraq — some on gurneys, others without limbs — Pierre and Contant found a way to cope: They started a support group for wounded soldiers.
Twice a month, soldiers gather at Blanchfield Army Hospital to share their fears about possibly having to find a new career and adapt to life with their injuries.
"One of the reasons I was so adamant about getting this thing off the ground is that a lot of the units are not used to dealing with this stuff," said Pierre, a chief warrant officer from New York City who has back and leg injuries. He's able to walk now, but still goes to therapy twice a week.
Contant, a chief warrant officer from Boca Raton, Fla., has a spinal cord injury and nerve damage from the waist down. He can't maintain his balance at times and goes to physical therapy six days a week.
He found himself getting grouchy and discouraged, and was surprised how much better he felt after talking to someone with the same injuries.
"I had already known a friend of mine that had a spinal cord injury, and I saw him walk the same way I walked and try to keep his balance," Contant said. "It was pretty cool to see that, and we talk about what our problems are. We laugh."
Support groups for wounded soldiers have been tried in the past, but this group is different because it also brings in people with knowledge of legal and veterans' issues, said Terry James, who served 22 years in the Army and now works at Fort Campbell as a counselor.
One of the participants is Sgt. Jenni McKinley, who drives a manual transmission car she must shift with her left hand. Her right hand was crushed in the Iraqi desert when a tire blowout on her Humvee caused it to roll over.
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She's had five hand surgeries since April and may still need to have part of her arm amputated.
"One of the reasons I was so adamant about getting this thing off the ground is that a lot of the units are not used to dealing with this stuff," Emanuel Pierre said.
She has been the recipient of some good-natured teasing by military police at the Fort Campbell gate about her left-handed shifting.
"I say, 'Watch me; watch me as I go,' " said McKinley, of Fort Myers, Fla.
Laughter didn't come so easy after the accident. The support group has helped her feel more normal.
"You have to laugh," she said. "It's either laugh or cry."
Another soldier in the group is learning to write with his left hand because part of his right arm was amputated, and his signature is barely legible.
"You've got to realize what this guy was doing before this happened," Pierre said. "This was a soldier who would run through the woods, jump through the woods, shoot, throw, move, communicate. This is what he's been trained to do and what has become his life, so he can't do it any more. So what are we going to do with these 18- and 19-year-olds whose lives are being drastically changed?"
Before their injuries, Contant and Pierre flew Apache helicopters, which are lethal machines known as tank killers. The pilots who fly them have a reputation for cockiness, machismo and independence.
Pierre said that all came to a crashing halt with his injury, and that transition has been made even tougher by the fact that he is no longer surrounded by the sounds of war, such as helicopters flying.
"What exaggerates that feeling of loneliness here is that Afghanistan, Iraq, wherever, is so noisy ... then you get in this one room, it seems like total silence."
He now tells his fellow wounded soldiers they don't have to be alone.
"Call one of us, and we'll help you do something," Pierre said. "Yeah, we understand you're independent ... but, hey, call somebody to get some help."
